Travel Asia: Winter in Beijing, China Part 6 (Great Wall of China)

"He who has not climbed the Great Wall is not a true man" - Mao Zedong

Despite the cold weather and heavy snow, we're finally off to pursue one of my long time dream -- to climb the Great Wall, the symbol of Chinese ingenuity, enlisted as a UNESCO Heritage site in 1988 and also considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World in July  of 2007. It was set to fortify the borders of China against Northern nomadic tribes.

The closest gateway to the Great Wall is the Badaling gate which is situated in Yanqing County, around 70 kilometers from Beijing Central. The Badaling great wall is strategically reinforced a lot of times during the Ming Dynasty to defend the capital against Mongolian intruders. Standing in it actually made me feel like I'm Mulan. LOL :)

Me and the Great Wall

How to get there:

Way 1: From Beijing North Railway Station, take the S2 train which leaves as early as 7:26am. There is an exclusive ticket booth for the S2 train, right on where the taxis are unloading their passengers. Taxi is a better option if you want to go to the railway station. But, if you opt to take the subway, just get off at Xizhimen station, expect a long walk though - about 500 meters. The train journey takes about 55 minutes plus about 15 to 20 minutes walk to the Badaling entrance. (I've read that during holidays, it can get a bit rowdy so we opted to take the bus.)

Way 2: The cheapest way to get to Badaling is by bus, it cost only RMB5 but takes about 2 hours to get there. Using the subway, get off at Jishuitan station (subway line 2) and go towards the Deshengmen gate (which is a huge ancient structure), on its north side, there's a parking lot that houses lots of buses. Look for Bus 919. Now, here's the tricky part, there'll be a lot of buses parked along the road with Bus 919 signs on them and people wearing red badges pretending to be tourist volunteers that will offer you rides. IGNORE THEM and JUST KEEP WALKING - these are just ruses. Further towards the east, you will find the real Deshengmen bus stop that is housed inside a parking lot from which the real Bus 919 departs. Just be sure that you have your map with you so you can make it clear to the driver to drop you off at the Badaling stop (which we did not do and we ended up getting lost! LOL).

The funny thing was we even picked the seat near the driver to avoid missing our stop but we did anyway. HAHA. Anyway, it made the journey more interesting and memorable for us. :)

Mountains covered in snow and traditional Chinese houses can be seen along the way, but what I did not expect is that the expressway actually runs just beside the great wall. This made things more confusing for us. 

As we sped along the expressway, we noticed that there are many other entry points to the wall. We were expecting to see a huge sign pointing us of our stop but we did not see any, plus, as I said earlier we were not able to tell the driver where we needed to go at the start and since he's driving already we can't actually talk to him and point him the map. Anyway, we just ended up admiring the view and let the expressway take us to wherever (another haha moment! LOL!). When it reached a small city, we just decided to get off at the main bus station and then asked for directions.

the great wall - shot from the bus

mountain scenery

After finding someone, who even though doesn't speak English but was patient enough to try to understand what my husband was trying to tell her, we were able to get a cab (with her doing all the talking for us). Finally, we were dropped off at the foot of the Badaling wall. (Thank you Miss helpful stranger!)

Badaling Great Wall

We climbed the great wall to our heart's content, the view is something that I only see in postcards so it was quite a momentous experience for us. We took a couple of pictures, savored the moment, and then went down that great big mountain feeling like a true man (Mao Zedong would be proud of us! LOL).

mountain view- the wall stretches on and on

the Great Wall

souvenir

The journey back to our hotel is another adventure for us. After the magnificent journey up in the mountain, we went down at around 4PM, all buses going back to Beijing is so full (there are already people standing inside the buses) and even though we were already in line, it was  getting longer and longer as visitors started to come down from the wall and as the line gets longer, fewer and fewer buses arrives. It was almost sundown when we decided to just take a risk and take a private van (a colorum van in pinoy's term! lol!) to drive us to the nearest subway station in Beijing. After many hand signals, we agreed to pay PHP400 for the 2 hour trip. We were a bit nervous that me and my husband just hold hands as we sat in his small blue mini van. He took us to many back roads which gives us a different and more interesting view of the snowy mountains. The driver was so nice that he even walked us off to the subway station which was a couple of yards away. We were so happy with him taking us there safely, we gave him a PHP100 tip. :)

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