Day 2 - The Great Wall and Some Kung Fu

Well it an early start today, breakfast at 7am, which I loved... Noodles for breakfast, what else can I say!

After breakfast, I headed towards the pickup point for the Great Wall Hike!

The Great Wall of China at Jingshanling

It was the perfect chance for my to test out my new GPS watch, the walk I did has come out as below!

I had done a lot of research on seeing the wall, and there seemed to be a lot of people at the main tourism spot of Badaling, instead I searched around and found a hiking trip on the wall at Jinghanling. This was clearly the right choice, the company I booked it with was called Great Wall Hiking, and the literature said the groups didn’t exceed 8 people, when I arrived; there was 4 of us, Matt and Reagan from Texas, Yaxin our guide and me.

The drive was approximately 2 hours and we were taken to the border of the Hebei province.

Once arrived at the wall welcome centre, we were welcomed with a map to show the area where we would walk and Yaxin gave us the info on this. 

It started with a 40 minute hike, (all up the worlds steepest hill) to get to the wall. Once we got above the main tree line of the section, the wall started to open up, giving is this amazing view.

This was where we were climbing to, named the Tower with 5 arrow holes in the east! 40 minutes later… we arrived at the top!! We started at the east side, which was the wild wall.. this is the parts of the wall that has not been reconstructed and in original condition, we would walk upto the Taochun Pass, exactly 4 miles away, which is in the reconstructed section of the wall (and more tourists about).

We finally arrived to the top of the mountain, at the tower, first thing that had to be done was photo time!

The view: All that can be said is breath taking; unfortunately photos cannot do this justice! We were walking approx. 2.5miles on the old wall section until we got to the new.

The first wall was built in 221bc and it has been built upon, left, reused, left and rebuilt numerous times since, the last time the military being stationed here was in 1937 to prevent the Japanese invasion.

Many people thought the wall was the border between China and Mongolia, it is not though, the border was 500kms away, there was smaller defences on the way in, with the great wall being the final line of defence for China.

Old Wall

Once we completed the old wall section, we got to the new, so now we could see what it looked like 1000 years ago! This was rebuilt in 1988 as part of the economic reforms of China.

The walk was amazing, which took 4 hours from the start point to getting back to the car park! I would highly recommend this section instead of the main touristy areas, as you can see there are very few people here compared to the other sections… until.. we saw some TV cameras, local programs are being made and I met a Chinese beauty queen!

Of course she wanted a pic with me!

After The hike.. I got a well deserved lunch.. and a beer!

The Legend of Kung Fu

On the way back, we were chatting in the van and all agreed we’d like to see the Kung Fu show they have back in Beijing, so Yaxin said he could drop us off at the theatre to see this, we immediately accepted. I was pleasantly surprised when arriving at the theatre. 

Unfortunatelty photography was banned at the show, except for the end so there are no fighting pics.

The show had a great start, when a child was doing back flips and spinning on his head, a sign of a new thing to see!

The show was the story of the legend of Kung Fu and how a youngeer figher grew up to be the master of the temple.

We saw a lot of fighting, and tests where the main star lay on 3 swords, had a bed of nails layed on top of him, then another person on top, finally a concrete block, which was then broken with a hammer.

The time and dedication that must take place to be able to do this level is martial arts is amazing and a true commitment. These people deserve a lot of respect. 

Overall the day way truly amazing, it’ll be hard to top today in the trip, but I will try hard to do that!!

Tomorrow: The Forbidden Palace, seeing Mao Tse Tung lying in state and the summer palace!