Great Wall

The Great Wall at Ba-Da-Ling


Earlier I commented on walls and their roles in securing the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven. Well there are walls and there are walls. Felicity and I are off to see a wall.


One morning Felicity and I jump the train in Beijing and head to the northern mountains. As the train grimped higher into the cordillera we started to see a structure snaking up a mountain side. People on the train became restless then excited. We leave the train at Ba-Da-Ling.



The sun is strong, the day is heating up and Felicity does not have a hat. So the first task is to go shopping. Felicity tries on quite a number of largely useless hats before she finds the right one. No! That is not it!


Then we head for the wall. Within minutes I have made my first friend. His hat has a solar powered cooling propeller so I figure he must be a cool dude. He thinks I am cool too.







We first mount the wall at the castellated watchtower lowest in the valley. Felicity breaks out into the sunshine in her new practical "Great Wall" hat.







Generally the wall follows mountain ridges so they occupy the high ground. Occasionally it runs into precipitous walls, natural impediments, so construction stops. Here Felicity and I have come to such an end. Above you can see a watchtower.






Looking the other way one sees the wall snaking down to the valley floor then, dimly, on.




At the beginning the wall is crowded with eager visitors but as we climbed and descended, then climbed again, crowds thinned.









Against this Great Wall backdrop one can now see Felicity's new Great Wall hat, serving her well that sweltering hot day.






At its steepest declines the wall was usually stepped but there were sections that were not. I took up trying to ski down some of these steep but smooth sections on my slick sandals. It was a risky venture.






At the back of our minds was always this astonishment: How the Great Wall could have constructed on such challenging terrain? Equally so, the incredible cost of that construction in resources and human life.



So while reveling in the spectacular beauty of the scenery we remained aware of its dark and bloody past.



One of the problems with going to the end of the Ba-Da-Ling wall is that you have to trek back. We forgot that on our outbound leg the sun had been climbing and the land warming. The hike back was mostly downhill so that made it bearable.


We were hot and tired as we got to valley bottom. Looking back across the valley we took one last peek at the great wall snaking across the northern frontier. At one time the wall extended 1500 miles.




Soon we were climbing aboard the return train on our way back to Beijing, all in air-conditioned comfort. Several days later I headed back to Vancouver.





Beijing - June 21st - a very special day for me, the Summer Solstice - so it was serendipitous for me to have my longest solstice ever.

It happened this way: I flew out of Beijing at 5 pm local time. Flying east (against the sun and clock) about three hours later I flew back into June 20th. A few hours later, upon hitting the International Date Line, I flew back into June 21st and the solstice, continuing on to Vancouver that June 21st. By my calculation I clocked into June 21st twice in 2011 and spend a total nearly 40 hours on June 21st. My longest day ever!