The Wall

06/02/02

We jumped onto the bus at 8 am and headed through and out of Beijing on a cool bright sunny morning. After a bumpy three-hour journey we were deposited at the side of a narrow sloping road, which would lead us all the way up to Jinshanling, and a ten kilometre stretch of The Great Wall taking us all the way to Simatai.

The approach to Jinshanling was spooky and surreal. We were the only people there. We walked past boarded-up shops and restaurants slowly being reclaimed by undergrowth, deserted houses so covered in fibrous fingery creepers it looked like they were having the life crushed out of them by giant spectral hands, and a silent funfair with rusting rides in the shape of giant animals, paint peeling, crying out in voiceless anguish for a pack of children to bring them back to life. My imaginary soundtrack to our walk up to The Wall was 'Ghost Town' by Coventry's finest, The Specials.

I guess the place must have once been a popular tourist destination, but hadn't seen any business in some time. I remembered the woman in the hostel the night before warning us that the walk from Jinshanling was long and tiring. Many tourists preferred the convenient on-and-off photo opportunity of Badaling. The 10 K's we wanted to walk saw The Wall slowly disintegrate, dangerously at times. This sounded perfect to me. Unfortunately for the long-gone funfair owners and restaurateurs, most tourists to The Wall seem to prefer the quick and easy these days.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah... Sometimes when you visit a renowned scenic spot or historical site, it proves to be a letdown. There are just too many tourists, and you can't see the place for the people; or it's being renovated and is covered in scaffolding; or it just doesn't look so grand as you'd seen it on TV or in the guidebooks. For us, The Wall exceeded our wildest expectations. As we ascended, stepped onto the walkway, looked around, it grabbed every morsel of air in our lungs and ripped it out.

This feeling of awe doesn't leave you. Every time you reach a high point or turn a corner, you see The Wall snaking in front of you for miles on end, or plummeting behind you into a stark ravine. The barren brown conical mountains of Simatai dominate the landscape with their sheer slopes ahead, the smaller hills of Jinshanling surround you and, for as far as you can see and on every ridge lies The Wall, a coiled snake, a whipped tail, an outstretched leg, a wisp of an eyelash. Sometimes it sits like a superimposed image against the blue sky in front of you, sometimes it looks like a bomb has exploded below, as you clamber down and over a crumbled mass of sandstone boulders.

Tranquil, tiring, affecting, memorable, the quiet hush of the windless day, the blue sky, the dry barren hillsides, the deserted watchtowers, the curve and snake of The Wall, brought about in us an almost spiritual calm, a sombre hush like that inside a cathedral. Not even the gangs of persistent postcard-hawkers tugging at our sleeves for half the way could bring us down. The Wall could have been some kind of alien temple, left behind aeons ago to a long-forgotten god.

Even the descent full of rogues and cheats couldn't spoil our mood. We had to get off The Wall at the Simatai gate then descend to the bottom, where we'd pick up our minibus again. As we tried to leave we were stopped by two 'guards', barring our path down the narrow slope, a sheer drop to our right, a sheer cliff face to our left. The men demanded 30 Yuan each from us, in order to enter Simatai. We explained that we weren't going up to Simatai, but were, in fact, heading down to our bus. No matter, we still had to pay. Then we turned a corner and were confronted by a deep ravine, the only way across a rickety rope-bridge. Of course, another two men were on guard to extort five Yuan each to simply get across it. After all this, we were half an hour late for our bus which, surprisingly, was still waiting for us at the bottom of the hill.


Frauke

When I think of The Great Wall in my dotage (not long now...), I'll most likely always associate it with a lovely German girl called Frauke. She was the only other passenger on our bus wanting to tackle the ten kilometre hike from Jinshanling, and not just continue on to Simatai and ascend from there.

Serene, dreamy blue eyes, the same colour and shade, I noticed, as the fragile blue sky above us as we walked The Wall; a serious, soft, pale face; neat, blonde hair, swept back in a ponytail; easy-going attitude; relaxed and interesting in conversation. We walked and talked about books, Europe, politics, travel.

Frauke had been working in Shanghai, for a German law firm, had finished her stint in China and was now taking the chance to see some of it. She came from Hamburg, but lived in Berlin. She described and contrasted the two cities to me: in Berlin the people are more uptight, trying too hard to be cool, fashionable, whereas in Hamburg people are more relaxed, not so worried about being cool as much as enjoying themselves. I got the feeling Frauke’s personality was stuck somewhere between the two cities, but her heart was in Hamburg.

I'm sure I'd felt something clicking between us. On the bus back to Beijing, as the driver swore uncontrollably in a thick Beijing dialect at the slow-moving rush-hour traffic, and Tam delighted in his new-found Chinese skills by translating all the swear-words for the benefit of the other backpackers ('He just called that car driver a mother-fucking cunt!'), I tried to summon up the courage to ask Frauke out. Even just ask for her email address. Something, anything, that would mean that day, that feeling, hadn't slipped through my fingers like Simatai sand. As I procrastinated, Danuka seized the moment and, as well getting Frauke's email address, invited her to the celebrations we're planning for Danuka's birthday tomorrow night. Frauke promised she'd come.