If you go to China, the one thing everyone will ask you about is if you saw the Great Wall. It is definitely China’s most famous landmark and 100% awesome. But visiting it isn’t as easy as you would think for something that’s 4000 miles long. Unless you’re a hardcore backpacker type, or you’re out visiting the more distant and less populated northern provinces (highly unlikely), you will be seeing the wall in Beijing.

There are three main sections that tourists can see that are just outside of Beijing. They are: Simatai, Mutianyu, and Badaling. I’m going to save you some trouble; Badaling is pile of shit. Ok, so I’ve never been to the Badaling section, but I know many who have. It is the closest section to Beijing, which means it is the most popular, which means unholy masses of people descending upon it, and hawkers all over the place. I hate the whole tourist thing, and I wouldn’t even want to see all kinds of idiots climbing over the thing with their “I climbed all over the Wall” t-shirts. Also Badaling is almost completely rebuilt, so not only is it covered in cretins, it’s as fake as those DVDs you picked up in Beijing.

Your best options to see the Wall are Mutianyu and Simatai. First thing is how you’re going to get there. I would recommend either hiring a private driver or driving there yourself if your dumb enough to have rented a car in Beijing. You can get a private driver for the day for about 800-1000RMB, which is like $150. If you go with friends it just gets cheaper. Of course there is the tried and torturous tour method. Doing this, your going to spend about 200RMB, you’re going to get about 45 mins at the wall, and 3 times that trapped in some silk museum or gem factory that turns into a giant maze of a store selling over priced feces. If you’re going with other people it’s definitely worth the extra money and if you’re by yourself it might be a little steep but it’s well worth it for the extra time it gives you. The driver will go straight to the wall and back without any commercial detours and because he’ll be napping while you’re on the wall, he’ll want you to take as much time as you can. The trip to Mutianyu takes about 1.5 hours in decent traffic but remember that the traffic in Beijing moves at a glacial pace whenever it knows you need to be somewhere and this adds on an hour.

I’ve been to Mutianyu twice, so I can vouch for it being decent. Upon arriving there you will be faced with a gauntlet run through a number of hawkers selling all kinds of crap, just walk quickly through and ignore them because everything is junk and overpriced. No matter whom you go with whether it’s a tour bus or private driver, they’re going to try and convince you to take the cable car up. If you’re a lazy degenerate or you’re under time constrictions you probably will. Honestly though it’s a 10 minute hike and it’s all paved with easy steps and handrails. If you can’t climb it you’ve got some serious fucking fitness issues. Once you get to the top, you’re at tower 7 or 8 out of 20. The entire stretch is about 2.2 KM so you can go either way, but going to tower 20 is more of a climb. At Mutianyu, it is generally empty of tourists, making it quite serene. Once you do get to tower 1 or 20, the wall disintegrates and they’ll be a guard type person (basically an old famer) who’s there to make sure you don’t try to go any further, which is a shame cause past tower 20 it looks to be a crazy climb. Some of the Mutianyu section has been rebuilt which is obvious, but some parts use the original granite. To get down, just take the same trail you came up, avoid the slider thing, it sucks, everyone I know whos tried it said it sucked and all the guide books say it sucks.

Simatai is supposedly the best of the three because it is the most original, but it is the furthest away. I always forget about it because its farther and not really advertised, but I’m sure I’ll make it out there one day. The best time to see the wall is the same as the rest of Beijing, and that’s when it’s cold in the winter. Reason being, the air isn’t like working in a mustard gas factory and you won’t drown in your own sweat climbing up it. In the summer it’s about 36 degrees and the air turns into a mix of chemicals that makes smoking seem like a healthy activity. For some reason there is also way more tourists in the summer, as if they were there to get their annual sulphur dioxide intake. I was dumb enough to go in the summer once, and you can contrast one of the pics I took then versus just recently in the March.

The Wall in summer

The Wall in winter

Filed under: tourist shit