The Great Wall, Part Two

As Mr. Li drove us the last stretch of the two hour trip to the Jinshanling Great Wall, we had a sense that we were in the mountains, but the sandstorm prevented us from confirming so. The sun was beginning to shine through what we imagined were clouds above when we left Mr. Li to hang out in the parking lot, packed up our water, power bars, layers of clothing and cameras, and set off for The Wall.

From the Jinshanling parking lot it's quite a climb up to The Wall, so we wisely chose to take the cableway, Angie and Kristy in car 29 and me in car 30. During the ascent I noticed a woman hiking up the hills below us carrying a bag full of goods. I suspected that she was carrying water and beer to replenish the vending posts at each of the towers along The Wall, and I began to root for our cable car to hurry up and beat her to the top. The cars were remarkably slow; many times I had to remind myself of what the sign at the bottom had said: "If the cableway is breaking down, do not be afraid." And the woman just kept climbing. She didn't look like she had done this very often but clearly she had. She was sturdy and young, and climbed as if highly motivated.

When we reached the top the views erased the young woman from my mind. As the ticket we had purchased at the bottom said, they were "Dreath-taking." The haze seemed to be dissipating and we could now see that it was indeed a great wall. Angie was taking pictures of Kristy and me when the young woman appeared at her shoulder.

"Hello."

"Oh - hi. Hey, are you the same girl I was talking with at the bottom?"

"Yes."

"Wow! You got up here quickly. That's amazing!"

"Yes, it took me 17 minutes. It took you 16," she explained in fairly decent English.

"Do you do this often?"

"Yes." There was a pause as she caught her breath and then continued talking to Angie. "You said you would like a book?"

"Oh. Well, maybe when we're done."

We stepped from the trail onto the Great Wall. It had been rebuilt at this section and was impressive, wide enough to drive a truck on it, though as we soon would learn this truck would have to be capable of driving vertically. From afar, we couldn't fully appreciate how steep The Wall is, and despite having visited in 2003 (albeit a different section), I was completely unprepared for the utter terror that lie ahead. My fear of heights is so great that when I first went to the top of the arch in St. Louis, I dropped to the floor and held on for dear life. But our walk in the Simatai direction started out pleasantly enough.

After reaching the next tower we noticed that the fast-climbing bookseller was still with us, and now an older friend had joined. The friend carried a bag similar to the first woman's and struck up a friendly conversation. It turns out that she's a Mongolian corn farmer with two children who lives a two-hour walk from where we were standing on the wall. She recommended that we walk to the "Five Window Tower," which looked awfully far away to me but was about one-tenth what Angie was lobbying for us to do. We continued, ascending and descending from tower to tower as The Wall seemed to fall into disrepair under our feet. Soon some excited talk in Chinese was followed by a third companion sprinting up and down the wall to join us. She, too, carried a bag.

Concerned about what sort of implicit contract we'd entered into with these women, Kristy shot a quick text in Phil's direction. About this time we came upon The Climb. The Mongolian Farmer explained that it was 123 steps to the tower. The steps went straight up, and there were no walls alongside to hold onto or against which to faint. And the steps were so broken and worn out that several workers were actually in the process of replacing them. The thought of The Climb made me woozy, and by this point I'd been hiking up and down uneven steps for an hour on legs that spend their days tucked neatly under a desk in my home office. I was thankful that at least the layout of my home forced me to climb stairs to get coffee and lunch during the day.

By the time I had taken a deep breath and given myself a pep talk, Kristy, Angie, and our entourage were half-way up. Now the construction workers were looking down at me wondering what the heck I was doing. So I began to climb, counting each step to see if it was really 123. By the time I got to 18, numbers and their proper sequence stopped making sense to me. 20, 31, 9, noodles. The trees and hills to my left and right seemed to be rushing past like a swollen river, and the steps didn't look like steps at all, more like chunks of gray. I leaned forward and steadied myself with my hands.

In other words, I was crawling. Some laughter registered as I kept moving. Something was said about the horror film The Grudge. "Are you ok?" All I knew is I wanted everyone the hell out of my way. I was climbing The Wall.

The Climb.