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All kinds of vehicles on Beijing highways<\/p><\/div>\n
We visited the\u00a0Mutianyu<\/a>\u00a0part of the wall. This section has been restored recently, but\u00a0that\u00a0didn’t detract from the incredible views and majesty\u00a0of the site. This is still a giant brick wall built on top of a mountain, and it’s impossible to see it without imagining the massive effort that originally put it there almost 1500 years ago.\u00a0If\u00a0you get bored thinking about that, you can look both directions and imagine that\u00a0the 2.2 kilometers you\u00a0see is 0.03% of the 6000 kilometers of wall, and that’s enough to make any mind boggle.<\/p>\n Mutianyu facing west<\/p><\/div>\n When we arrived at the wall, I headed\u00a0west to the unrestored Jiankou<\/a> section, while Kate and Ruby stayed in the Mutianyu area.<\/p>\n I was able to walk unhindered until watchtower 23, where the path is bricked up and any further progress must be made “of one’s own will” (according to the nearby vendor’s translation app). After vaulting over the barrier, I encountered two more vendors catering to hikers\u00a0on the way to Jiankou, so apparently\u00a0it was expected that some people would continue.<\/p>\n Soon the wall became more clearly original, with huge granite stones bearing marks of hand tools, and more difficult to traverse. Nature was slowly returning the area to its original state. By this point I was totally alone, and thinking about the consequences of falling in a place where I had no cellphone service and no companions to send for help.<\/p>\n The path was narrow and treacherous<\/a>\u00a0at times, requiring careful footwork, and the steep stairs and ramps were aerobically demanding.<\/p>\n Ultimately I made it to the part of Jiankou called Ox Horn Edge<\/a>, a watchtower at the top of a long\u00a0ramp that I could only climb by grasping the wall and pulling myself up<\/a>. By this time I was exhausted but proud and totally immersed\u00a0in the atmosphere of the place. I wanted to continue west, but I had to head back to catch the tour bus.<\/p>\n Facing west from Ox Horn Edge with Zhengbei tower\u00a0in the distance<\/p><\/div>\n The rugged terrain of the path between Mutianyu and Jiankou made it\u00a0far more interesting to me than the restored area. If you’re trying to decide which section to visit, I recommend giving Jiankou a try.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The main goal in China was to visit the Great Wall. Kate had visited the Badaling section during her previous trip to Asia, but I’d never\u00a0been, so we scheduled a few days in Beijing. Originally we planned\u00a0to see other sights like the Forbidden City, but that changed when we cut a day to stay longer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameisruby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameisruby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameisruby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameisruby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameisruby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2154"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameisruby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2393,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameisruby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2154\/revisions\/2393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameisruby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameisruby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameisruby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"dsc01239\"](\"https:\/\/travelingrubycom.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/09\/dsc01239.jpg?w=2048\")
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