We had to hike up a little dirt trail to reach the wall. It was really steep and gravely, but within 5 minutes, we were at a little entry way to step up onto the wall. Siderick and I took the lead, Johanna was in the middle, and Richard and Loyanda brought up the rear.
Climbing up onto it, we were right by one of the crumbling guard towers. Looking around, you could make out where separate little rooms used to be. The roof was totally gone, but some of the windows were still intact.
We sat around just outside the tower on a little flat section of the wall. Johana prepared us a little buffet of salad with olive oil dressing, lunch meat and cheese, French bread, and humus.
“Can you open this?” Johana asked, handing me a bottle of rose wine and a corkscrew.
I looked at it. I wasn’t actually sure I could.
“Sure,” I said. I twisted the cork screw into the cork.
“My birthday was a week ago,” I said. “This will actually be my first drink since I turned 21.”
“I actually saw that on the roster," she said. "I was going to make a 21 year old joke but I decided against it."
I laughed as I tried in vain to wiggle the cork out.
“Let a Frenchmen show you how that works,” Siderick said stepping in. I handed it to him and he popped the cork out, pulling it straight from the bottle.
“I’ll have to practice,” I joked.
“Surely you drank before?” Richard asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I tired beer in Europe but I didn’t really like it, so I mostly drank orange soda. In the States, my Mom has introduced me to some good wine, but I don’t drink beyond that. I’ve had a glass or two of wine since I’ve been here, and I sampled the Baijiu and Tsaotsing, but again, I mostly drink Orange soda.”
Siderick poured glasses of the wine for us. It was really good!It reminded me of the sparkling dessert wine that I had with Mary in Switzerland.
We sat around and ate, enjoying the stunning view. On one side of the wall was a man-made lake, on the other a beautiful valley. In front of us, the wall plunged down to the valley before climbing up the very top of the jagged peaks ahead of us. Behind the guard tower, parts of the wall were crumbling as it climbed up the peak to a ridge just out of view.
“Here,” Loyanda said motioning to my iPhone. “Let me take a photo for you to send to your Mum.”
“She’d like that!” I said.
“I noticed the sign on the way up said that there was no public access to this part of the wall,” Loyonda said.
“That’s bad English again” Johana said. “It’s an inaccurate translation of the Chinese. If you read the Chinese, it’s more of a warning that this section hasn’t been restored yet, so it may be less safe than the tourist sections.”
After lunch, Rich and Loyanda decided to stay there at the tower with Johana. Siderick and I started climbing up the steep part behind us. I will say, everyone I’d met had told me it was steep, but it was still so much steeper than I expected. Looking back behind us, it looked like a roller coaster. You could see the flat sections curve away and then plunge down the hill, but the plunge was almost entirely out of view. It also was not as wide as I expected.
“This is just incredible,” I said. ‘I mean the way they were able to build it so that it had a perfectly flat top…it’s just awesome.” I looked over the edge at how the bricks were angled. They started flat on the ground, then started to change to steps as the wall got higher, before rounding out to be flat again on the top.
There were some sections of stairs and some sections that were rubble, but for an unrestored section, it was incredible. It felt anchient and significant. Not to mention, we didn’t see a single other person except for our group the entire time we were hiking.
We stopped a few times to catch our breath, take photos, and drink water. Siderick was a pilot and we talked about travel.
“Honestly,” he said as we took a seat on the steps of another guard tower, “as a Frenchmen we are not supposed to say this, but I love Americans. They are so friendly and optimistic. They are open to different ideas and will respect people with differences. I would take an American over a Brit any day.”
We laughed.
“It’s funny,” I said. “People always say that American tourists are loud and rude, but I’ve noticed that Brits are just as loud and opinionated.”
“Oh worse,” he said. “English are the worst tourists in the world.”
It made me laugh. After traveling Europe, it was hard to find anything about American culture that didn’t drive me crazy. But I have to say, I have loved China—and I have all the respect in the world for this Eastern lifestyle—but I can now recognize some things I do like about living in America.
We made it to the top, although we were practically crawling the last stretch it was so steep. We took lots of pictures before hiking down. It took nearly 30 minutes to reach the top, but only about 5 to get back down to the tower. In a lot ways, the view going down was better as we could look out over the valley and see the wall jump up towards the sky.
At the guard tower where we left the others, we packed up and headed down the dirt trail. At one point we lost Richard and Loyanda.
“Are they coming?” Johana asked.
“I hope they are okay,” Siderick said.
“I am an Emergency First Responder,” I joked.
“That’s interesting,” Johana said. “I haven’t heard that term since I left the states. Safety just isn’t a thing her. Like CPR does not exist.”
At the bottom, Johanna passed out ice cold beers. She bought me an orange soda from a lady selling drinks on the side of the road. We enjoyed them before going to get our drivers and taking off.
The drive back was just as beautiful. Despite the roaring engine of the motor, I found that I could almost doze off. Of course as we got closer to Beijing the traffic got heavier, which meant the driving got more exciting. We bobbed and weaved through stopped traffic, cutting along the shoulders and between 18 wheeler buses. At one point we pulled over to stretch out legs and Johana explained that most Beijing-ers go out of the city on the weekend, so the traffic is bad since everyone is going back.
We said goodbye several times since Siderick was going straight to the train station, Rich and Loyanda were going to their hotel with Johana, and I was going back to mine. With traffic the way it was, we kept meeting up again…and again…and again.
When we did part company, we made it back to my hostel about 6:30. Eric added me on WeChat before heading off. I walked inside grinning from ear to ear. When I got to the bathroom I looked in the mirror. My shirt was covered in bug guts, and my face was so tanned, I almost looked Polynesian (except for the curly hair and white-boy features of course.)
I took a shower and most of the tan washed off (although I do have epic tan lines on my chest, arms, and legs.) Afterwards, I went to get dumplings again at the noodle house next door. Beijing is the capital of dumplings so this seemed like the place to enjoy them.
It was such a cool day! It totally exceeded my expectations and was just…awesome! 
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