Keeping invaders out is the ironic lure that seems to draw more people in daily.
Picture this: an elaborate serpent built from stone. Its body is ancient and decrepit in some places but is seemingly immortal as it stretches more than 13,000 miles. This mystical beast should come out of a fairy tale book in the way it valiantly protected its people from outsiders and engulfed those 400,000 sacrificed to it, so that their bones could follow the stones into immortality too. Rather than a mere story, this snake-like legend emerged from history books, dating back to the third century B.C. It is: The Great Wall of China.
Built under the orders of Emperor Qin Shi Huang starting back in 221 B.C., The Great Wall rises 15-30 feet into the air with ramparts that are 12+ feet higher. Guard towers were placed at intervals to protect the Chinese people from outside tribes that threatened China’s unification as well as protect the Silk Road trading routes that ran along the wall.
The Great Wall may have lost the mythical protector status it once held, it has since become a thing to marvel. With hundreds of thousands pouring in yearly just to gawk, maybe it should begin protecting what threatens that of the civilized world, the scariest and funniest thing of all: tourists.
We were just that: tourists. There was no hope in hiding it. From Hannah’s rice hat that she bought for next to nothing from a cart vendor — which we used for funny pictures rather than using it to protect ourselves from a grueling sun while working tirelessly in the rice fields — to the American flag shirt my mom had bought me and the camera practically glued to my eye, we were as touristy as tourists could get. But we didn’t care as we chattered excitedly for our two free hours to explore the wall.
Quoting Mulan and laughing at the peculiarity of a man who rode into the parking lot, bought a ticket, and parked his camel before leaving to go up the wall himself, we debated which way to go. Left, a flat landscape following along the base of the Yan mountains (Yanshan in their Chinese name), or right, go up it.
“Come on guys!” I complained. “Just think of the view we could get if we went right.”
I was out voted. We went left. And boy, was I lucky that we did so.
After a half mile into the walk, I looked back to see wall crawling up the side of the mountain. On it was monster that morphed with the wall stretching the expanse of the walkway like it was doing the Chinese Dragon Dance, pressing tightly against the modern guardrails and serpentine up the stone. The monster had hundreds of heads pivoting side-to-side with cameras equally glued to their eyes as mine was.
While each head of the monster fought for control, I spread my arms and spun to see the tips of the vibrant, green trees peaking their way over the castle-like tips of the wall. It was ours — for two hours. Me. Three friends. An ancient wall. Mountains and a little bit of fog. My breath caught.
My breath was completely stolen we entered the guard tower. The smell was abysmal. Finally, something authentic to what the past would have been like. In the back was a dead opossum or a raccoon or a mystery animal, it was too dead to tell. I wanted to puke.
We rushed up the stairs, partly from the smell and the other half was from us being more skittish about someone scolding us for exploring what we shouldn’t. But no one did. It was just the four of us and absolute peace. A little over an hour outside of Beijing, could have been an entirely new world. And it was. The city was loud, overpopulated city with people constantly trying to take pictures of us while out here in Huairou Qu, China, on the wall, it was serene. A cool breeze rolling in a soft fog and sunlight making its lazy way into the world, making the trees seem to glow off the stark contrast off the wall that was older than them. However, the section of wall that we were on could have rivaled the trees in age, it had looked as if it was recently renovated.
Further down was a house. I was a strange contrast to the Great Wall. It was obvious that the house was newer that the wall itself; however, the house was much more decrepit. It was an ancient Chinese-style house that looked as if it were once beautiful. But now, it was peeling mahogany-colored paint, old wood, and inside the cracked doorway a flood of cans. Alcoholic, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, everywhere. It was like looking at the topographic map of the mountain range we were in, only made from aluminum.
“Do you think it’s all right to go in?” I asked.
My friends didn’t respond.
There was a grunt. Much deeper than what we could make.
We jumped.
A slim man in a ragged, once grey shirt stepped out of the house.
He grunted again.
We fumbled about our words, but only knowing how to say, “thank you” (spelled in English: Xiexie, pronounced: she-a-she-a) didn’t help us much.
He grunted, smiled a little, and walked outside the house.
“Name?” I asked. (We eventually rightfully named him Paul for simplicity.)
Nothing.
“Picture?” I said motioning to my camera.
Paul nodded. We took pictures with the man and he took one of us nicely modeling our sweaty selves in front of his home. Afterwards, he handed the camera back, grunted, and went back inside. His stint in an up-and-coming modeling career died quickly.
We thanked him through the door and were on our way back to the busses.
We would come to find out later that he was the maintenance man of the Great Wall. Instead of burly guards to protect from the overbearing tourism, they simply have silent men who clean up after them instead. We never realized how clean the wall actually was until after leaving, it seemed too surreal.
“Maybe we should have told him about the raccoon-opossum thing,” I said once settled into my bus seat.