Collin and I started our journey to the Great Wall at 7am. It was pretty rough for a Saturday morning, but I was able to cope. We met at the 801 bus stop (right in front of my dorm). We took bus 801 to Jinsong Subway station (I'm going to warn you now, there are many legs to this journey). We got on the subway at Jinsong, made a few transfers (ended up transferring to Line 1, which is craziness. Line 1 was the original subway and it's always super crowded--if you know anything about these subways, you know they pack people in like sardines and it's really uncomfortable. Line 1 is the worst of the worst), and ended up at the Jishuitan Subway station.
This is good--this is where the directions say we should be. However, we ended up going out the wrong exit. Our mistake happened to work out really well. There was a bus station right outside of the subway station exit that took us to the bus stop we were supposed to find next. So it was just really convenient. Next, we had to get on a bus at Deshengmen that is supposed to take us right to the Great Wall at Badaling. Conveniently, there was a bus waiting there that we just hopped on. This wasn't the bus, but this was what it looked like.
Usually public buses cost 1 kuai for each trip, but this one cost 12 kuai because the trip is so long. I get a 60% discount because I'm a student, so the bus ride only cost 4.4 kuai for me (altogether it cost me 14 kuai, which translates to about 2 dollars--not too shabby for a trip to the Great Wall!).
The bus ride wasn't too bad. The bus was air conditioned and relatively comfortable. It ran like a normal public bus, so every now and then it stopped at a bus station to pick people up or drop them off. It took us out into what seemed like rural Beijing (we never actually left Beijing--the part of the wall we went to is even in Beijing). There were still a lot of cars, just narrower roads, more mountains, and less buildings. It was actually really very pretty.
On our bus ride, we passed by two other Great Wall sites. Since the Great Wall is huge, you basically just have to pick a spot on the wall to visit. You can just go one place and roam free on the wall. The places on the wall you can visit is actually pretty limited since it's crumbling in places.
We got stuck in traffic for, like, an hour. We saw a red sports car get hit by a truck--that was crazy. It made a crunching sound rather than a crashing sound, too.
At some point, we made it out of the traffic jam alive and we arrived at our destination--sort of. Part of the road to get to Badaling Great Wall was shut down for some reason (they never really gave a reason why), so the bus driver pulled over and told us to walk the rest of the way. When stuff like that happens, you just kind of have to go with it. So Collin and I got off the bus and went where we were directed to go. We ended up going to this touristy place with a lot of street vendors to wait in line to take a shuttle to the GW. There are some things that I really like about China--like the food. There are some things that I really don't like about China, too. For example, they have no concept of a line. So we just stood in a mob of people to wait for the shuttle bus. As soon as the shuttle bus came, people start pushing and shoving to get to the shuttle bus. They're really unnecessarily pushy. So you can imagine how that went. We ended up getting on a shuttle bus which took us to Badaling Great Wall.
Here's the entrance. It's very fancy and pretty.
We finally made it! We decided that we wanted to take a cable car to get to the Great Wall, so we bought our GW and cable car tickets. And then we had to wait in line for another 30-45 minutes. Apparently the cable car is pretty much the only way to get to the GW, unless you want to hike the way to it (and once you see the pictures of my view from the cable car and of the landscape, you'll know why everyone chooses the cable car over the hike).
So Collin and I finally get a cable car to go to the Great Wall. It was really fun, actually. A little bit scary at first because it's Chinese and could break at any moment, but we survived. Here is a picture of the cable car that was taken while we were waiting in line.
Here is a picture that I took while we were in the cable car, as we were heading to the Great Wall.
Here is another picture from the cable car. You can see why we didn't want to climb to the Great Wall.
The cable car took us right past the Great Wall, so I snapped a picture of it from the cable car. You can tell by the grossness on the cable car's window in the picture.
FINALLY we had made it. Actually, we had to stand in line again to get into the Great Wall. But, yes, basically we were there.
These were the first pictures I took of the Great Wall.
Notice that we're not actually ON the Great Wall yet. In order to get up onto it, you have to go into one of those tower things and climb up a bunch of steps to the top of the Great Wall. The person at the first tower told us that we couldn't go in because there were too many people, so we had to go to the next tower.
On our way to the next tower, I was looking at the hills over in the distance. You can see the GW in the distance, going up and down with the undulating hills. It's really very beautiful. And it has that misty, Chinese-y appearance to it too.
So, we got to the tower. We peeked around inside a little bit. There's nothing really special inside. I couldn't get a good picture, but Collin did. I'll try to steal that from him. But I did take a picture from the inside of the tower looking out.
Then, we made it up ONTO the wall. I even have some pictures of ME on the wall! You can see how many people there were that day. It was pretty crazy.
We walked a little bit of the wall. It's pretty much all stairs. You can imagine the difficulty of that at noontime in the Chinese climate.
While we were walking, there were 3 of what I would say were typical college boys. They were like, "hey, where are you from?" They were definitely from the States. I said "America!" And then they asked, "from where?" I said, "Maine." And then they're like "Right on! South Dakota! WHOOO!" and then continued their ascent up the Great Wall.
After a little bit of walking, Collin and I called it quits and went to go get something to eat. We had to wait to leave (I think Collin and I went at peak hours on Saturday and that's why we had to wait for everything). I ate some noodles. They were delicious.
After that, I decided to go souvenir hunting. There were a whole bunch of street vendors in the area selling Great Wall stuff. So Collin and I went and peeked around a bit. I'm pretty much comfortable with my Chinese enough to bargain for myself. Sometimes Collin helps me. One place, they sold some key chains that have a picture of the GW and then it says GW in Chinese and English and on the back it says "I climbed the great wall" in chinese and then it has a place where you can engrave the date and your name. I thought it was super cool, so I got it. She said 20 kuai I think initially, but I got it down to 7. When another lady was engraving it for me, the lady who sold it to me was scolding Collin in Chinese for helping me bargain. She said it was sort of dishonorable in a way to help me because I'm American and he's Chinese. Oh well.
Another place I went to buy a little Bird's Nest item. The lady wanted me to pay like 15 kuai for it. I told her I'd pay 5 for it. Then she came over to me and was like, "This is..." and I couldn't understand the rest of what she said, but I know she was trying to make it sound like it was worth more than it actually is. So, I said "Bu shi" emphatically, which basically means, "no it's not." She chuckled and was like, okay 5 kuai. Success.
The people who work at these places are really active salesmen. They'll get all up in your face with their products to try to sell them to you. One lady was selling t-shirts. I wasn't really into the t-shirts. I mean, they're cute and everything, but it just wasn't something I needed. She initially said 45 kuai. As Collin and I kept walking, she said 20 kuai. And then she said 10 kuai. I'm like, seriously? 10 kuai = roughly 1.50 USD. A dollar and a half for a souvenir t-shirt is a steal, so I bought one. I took a picture of my shirt for you.
I also bought you guys some things. I think you'll like them. You'll get them when I get back. :)
After buying some trinkets, Collin and I caught a bus back. But before catching the bus, I took some pictures. Here's a random street sign.
And here's the picture of the bus station sign.
This bus went straight to Deshengmen, so it went a lot quicker than the ride to the Great Wall. After we arrived at Deshengmen, we took a subway back to Dawanglu subway station and then finally a bus back to the dorm.
We started at 7am and got back at about 5:30. I was exhausted.
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