A challenging day!

This morning we woke to the Great Wall and the mountains towering above us. Not an especially restful sleep with such hard mattresses!

On the way to our our starting point at Gubeikou (the most invasion-prone section of the wall during the Ming dynasty), Jessie told us some stories.

The first was the story about Ms Wang who was a concubine many years ago. She had been sent to the emperor's court at the age of 14 and was a great beauty. Back in those days, the court painter would paint portraits of all the new concubines and the emperor would choose the most beautiful to be those who would spend time with him. The emperor had many concubines and some would never get the chance to meet him. To improve their chance, the painter would ask for bribes from the concubines to paint them more beautiful. When asked, Ms Fang said no as she was honest and did not believe in bribes and deceit. As a result she never got to see the emperor. When she was 24 years old, the emperor made a treaty for peace with the king of Northern China (who was 70 years old) in exchange for giving him one of his daughters as a wife. The emperors daughters all refused so he asked the concubines. As she was lonely in court, Ms Fang agreed, married the King and moved to Northern China. When the king died, tradition dictated that his widows had to marry his brother or son (from a different bloodline). Ms Fang did not want to marry so asked the emperor if she could return to court. He denied her request so she remained in Northern China. When her second husband died, she did not want to return to Court as her new husband was her own age and any son she had by him would be the next king. By this time she was very powerful!

Next Jessie told us the story of General Qi's (pronounced "Chi") life. His ancestors had assisted the emperor to defend his dynasty and was given a position in the ministry that would be passed down to the eldest son. As a result he succeeded to the ministry position at the age of 10. However his family was poor so he had to make his own way in the world. He was sent to to wall to help protect and whilst there read a lot of books and criticised them. As a result of the knowledge he obtained, he was a very good general and was eventually in charge of protecting the wall around Beijing.

Originally built in 1378, Gubeikou was designed to assist in repelling the Mongolians from the north. We began our trek amidst the Woho (Crouching Tiger) and Panlong (Hidden Dragon) mountains and passed numerous watchtowers and garrisons. This section of the wall was destroyed with bombings during WWII ("Anti-Japanese War").

We had to take a diversion to bypass a military area, which took us down into the valley through many cornfields before we rejoined the wall at Jinshanling.

Named after the Jinshan Mountains it straddles, Jinshanling is perhaps one of the most spectacular sections of the wall. As the main base for the marathon on the Great Wall, the Gate was by far the most recently developed area we had seen. The wall itself here was spectacular and looks completely restored. At we reached the gate we could see a number of its 67 watchtowers which are each built in a different architectural style, with poems and stories etched into the mighty brick.

The section of our trek took 5 hours - a pretty quick speed according to our guide which was probably helped by the 21°C today! Lots of unrestored and rocky sections so the going was tough at times but we survived!!

From Jinshanling, it was a short walk to our hotel where we showered, had another yummy dinner followed by some Yanging beer.

After dinner Jessie sprang a little outing on us down to the paper cutting shop. The artist herself showed us how to cut a basic design and I bought a beautifully cut and painted scene of the Great Wall! A beautiful momento to take home with me :-)