Friday, November 10, 2006
Moonrise Over the Great Wall
This post is way over-due, but I've been spending more time actually enjoying myself to bother with e-mail, web, blogging etc. Nonetheless, I do think I should share the amazing experience at the Great Wall. In the immortal words of Richard Nixon circa 1972, it really is a great wall!! Secondly, it really does go on for ever and ever. Just when you think you've seen the end of it, you see it emerging out of yet another valley and over yet another mountain. Nothing you hear about or see in photographs prepares you for the sheer majesty and grandeur of the Wall. And then you remind yourself that when the Wall was initially built, Rome was still a republic, not an empire. Emperor Chin may have been nuts, but boy, is his work of madness worth visiting. It also reminds you of the stuff that can be done when you have abundant cheap, slave-like labour.
Let's begin with a damn good tip though for anyone who wants to visit the Wall, which came my way courtesy Andrew and Mei. As I mentioned earlier, I was staying with former ZS blogger, Andrew Lih, in Beijing (in a crazy coincidence, yet another former ZS blogger, Mash, was also in Beijing at the same time). Andrew first advised me against going to the Wall at Badaling, which is a mind boggling tourist trap with hardly a pin drop of space. He took me instead to the Commune by the Great Wall run by the Kempinski group, where we had an astoundingly good Sichuan meal. From the commune, you get these fabulous views of the Shuiguan valley and the Wall. The complex is also architecturally splendid. I took some pictures of the commune, but nothing beats the photographs here.
We decided to climb the Wall closer to the commune towards evening. Turned out to be a really smart move, because we had that section of the wall entirely to ourselves without a single other tourist. After much huffing and puffing, we did climb to what looked like the topmost portion of the wall in that area, but it turns out the taller portions were simply hidden. Once we got to the top though, we were treated to one of the most spectacular things I have ever seen: the moon rising over the great wall of China. I will rank it as one of the top 3 most spectacular things I have seen. I understand full well now why moonlight raves at the wall are such a big deal. No photograph will ever do justice to what we saw (twilight and lenses are always tricky), but here's a try:
The climb up the wall left all of us in shambles given our peak physical fitness, so off we went to a Chinese foot massage place, which really worked wonders for the feet. That, however, didn't prevent me from waking up the next morning with a hamstring strain and a limp. Or from having some of the best food I've ever had, or from going clubbing, for that matter. More on that in another dispatch from Beijing.
Let's begin with a damn good tip though for anyone who wants to visit the Wall, which came my way courtesy Andrew and Mei. As I mentioned earlier, I was staying with former ZS blogger, Andrew Lih, in Beijing (in a crazy coincidence, yet another former ZS blogger, Mash, was also in Beijing at the same time). Andrew first advised me against going to the Wall at Badaling, which is a mind boggling tourist trap with hardly a pin drop of space. He took me instead to the Commune by the Great Wall run by the Kempinski group, where we had an astoundingly good Sichuan meal. From the commune, you get these fabulous views of the Shuiguan valley and the Wall. The complex is also architecturally splendid. I took some pictures of the commune, but nothing beats the photographs here.
We decided to climb the Wall closer to the commune towards evening. Turned out to be a really smart move, because we had that section of the wall entirely to ourselves without a single other tourist. After much huffing and puffing, we did climb to what looked like the topmost portion of the wall in that area, but it turns out the taller portions were simply hidden. Once we got to the top though, we were treated to one of the most spectacular things I have ever seen: the moon rising over the great wall of China. I will rank it as one of the top 3 most spectacular things I have seen. I understand full well now why moonlight raves at the wall are such a big deal. No photograph will ever do justice to what we saw (twilight and lenses are always tricky), but here's a try:
The climb up the wall left all of us in shambles given our peak physical fitness, so off we went to a Chinese foot massage place, which really worked wonders for the feet. That, however, didn't prevent me from waking up the next morning with a hamstring strain and a limp. Or from having some of the best food I've ever had, or from going clubbing, for that matter. More on that in another dispatch from Beijing.
