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The Great Wall of China snakes through the countryside along the highway to the north of Beijing. It lies to both the right and the left of the road, and even in the middle of the road at one point, as the freeway runs right through it.
At Badaling, the main visitor stop off point for visiting the Wall from Beijing, we opt to take the cable car to the '8th Watchtower' before walking back down. The Wall is especially well fortified in this section - the Juyongguan Pass - to help defend Beijing from the Mongols. The cable car itself comes straight from a 1950s Soviet vision of the future. Built in a 'space pod' style they're now a little faded and rusty, and the white paint has long since gone beige. They job adequately nonetheless, clattering their way to the summit as they have for the past 30 years.
Predictably the wall is busy near the summit, and we take a short walk to relieve ourselves of the crowds. It's a majestic sight as the Wall disappears almost every which way over the horizon in the surrounding hills continuing its 4000 mile journey across the country. The Wall is surprisingly steep, it has been reconstructed at the key tourist hotspots, but parts of it are without steps and offer a rather steep slope. That's not to mention the fact that it is incredibly well reconstructed, so the slopes are smooth, and hence quite slippery. Hawkers have set up camp after making their daily climb. They're all selling the usual tat, slide-whistles, plastic buddhas and the like. One more inventive vendor tries to sell me a pop-up hat for "500 dollar!"
Despite the crowds given a walk of a mile or so it's easy to find sections all to yourself.
After climbing down from the wall, we now find ourselves in a hastily developed area for Chinese tourists. It's all very crude, from the fluorescent coloured "slide car" taking you up to the wall (it resembles something you may find at Blackpool Pleasure Beach), to the awful "bear park" (consisting of a black bear in a confined, rusting, pen), to the row after row of kitch souvenir stalls.
We are forced to eat locally in the evening, Stephen's car is one of the 20% of cars banned from driving on main roads on Wednesdays, in one of the more ridiculous attempts to cure congestion I have encounters. It's not such a bad thing though, the more Peking Duck the better. Hao Chi!
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