The Great Wall of China

In 2006 I visited The Great Wall of China as part of my 4-week China tour.
It was my first trip with IntrepidTravel.  I loved the IntrepidTravel style and I have undertaken many more trips with them.
My China trip started in Hong Kong and finished in Beijing.  ( Look at some photos here ...)

 

 

 

We travelled by bus to Simatai, about 110km north-east of Beijing for our visit to The Great Wall.  It was a slow and dangerous trip on poor, narrow roads with lots of trucks and poor driving.  It took nearly 4 hours.

Simatai is one of the lesser known sections of the wall and fortunately there were few people there.

Some of us caught the chairlift and a short funicular railway for most of the way to the wall on top of the mountains.
















     




















     

The Great Wall

 

The myth that the Great Wall is visible from the moon with the naked eye was finally put to rest in 2003, when China's first astronaut, Yang Liewi, observed that he could not see the barrier from space.

The Great Wall is certainly not visible from the moon, where even individual continents are barely perceptible. The myth is to be edited from Chinese textbooks, where it has cast its spell over millions of Chinese.

The wall never did perform its function as an impenetrable line of defence.  As Genghis Khan said "The strength of a wall depends on the courage of those who defend it."  Sentries could be bribed.  However it did work very well as a kind of elevated highway, transporting people and equipment across mountainous terrain.

 


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