An Intense Moment at the Great Wall of China After several months teaching English in Beijing, a colleague invited us to go see the Great Wall. It was a Saturday, his day off - and the day off of millions of other Beijingers and tourists.
We approached the entrance to the Wall by going past shops, restaurants, a museum - and crowds. It was a lovely spring day, sunny and with surprisingly clear air.
The first impression I had of the Wall was how steep it was, then how crumbly parts of the walkway were - though not nearly as bad as the alternate route that is purported to be for those who want exercise, and definitely not for tourists.
The next impression was that I was not well-dressed for the walk: the clear skies were due to winds that were modest enough at ground level, but up here on the Wall were blustery and cold.
The Wall has high walls alternating with lower ones, possibly openings for shooting arrows at the enemy. It was a lot warmer to stand against the high walls and out of the breeze.
We could see the Wall twisting along on the crests of hills way ahead of us. It is called The Dragon in Beijing - a very large dragon.
The steepness nearly required crawling at some points, at least for me. For some of the children there with their parents, running up and down seemed to work well.
The crowds - families, foreigners, everyone seemingly feeling festive, both dressed for a holiday and acting exhilarated - continued to grow throughout the morning.
We climbed, took photos, climbed some more.
Every so often a guard station had been built. At these points, instead of in open pathways with walls on each side, we found ourselves beneath a tower with side rooms and stairs that appeared to go up two more storeys. It required going up a step into each guard tower, then out the other side.
These towers are entered and exited through somewhat narrower doorways, and that design feature was the source of my intense adventure.
It happened well into our morning walk, when the crowds had thickened to the point where entering a guard station to continue our trek required a long wait while the crowd on our side sorted itself out with the crowd returning from the end of the public portion of the Great Wall.
By this time of day, the crowds on the two sides of the tower were of about the same mass, so very few were managing to move through.
I've always been good at finding my niche in traffic, so I forged ahead looking for an opening. I thought I had found it, over to the right of the press of humanity converging on the narrow opening of the tower.
When I reached the threshhold, the single rather steep stair was before me, and without thinking I stepped up and into the guard station.
At this point the crowd coming down from the top surged ahead. It threatened to push me back off the step, and in fact the only reason I didn't fall backward onto the rocky walkway below was because of the equally pressing crowd from behind. I did hang there for an interminable moment and ponder my fate, however.
I could see clearly that going forward was the only option, as unlikely as it was.
Then I remembered the side chambers, the little rooms that were part of each guard station. My goal became simply to take refuge there.
That I managed to do. I think I just pushed and leaned and did babysteps till I could squeeze into it.
The plan after that was to wait and see. I do recall getting out of the guard station, and waiting on the far side for husband and friend. They didn't know what had happened to me, and kept looking back toward the guard station till I called to them. They were amazed I had made it through.
Me too. Little did they know!
When we got to the end of the walkable part of the Wall, we opted to take the tramway back down. It was interesting and relaxing and rather a calm end to a day with its intense moments.
