I talked to an American friend today, who at the moment is in China to visit the Great Wall. Unfortunately, it seems that all the wild Great Wall in the Beijing area is off-limit now because of the Olympic, and it seems to be unknown when the wall will be reopened. A lot of local public security volunteers seems to be stationed at the entrance to the Great Wall to ward off away people trying to enter the wall. I’m not sure about the situation outside the Beijing area, but I doubt that there should be any problems here.

I’m not sure exactly why the wild Great Wall is off-limit now. Maybe the authorities are afraid of people getting injured if the try to enter the wall and that would create some unwanted bad publicity during the Olympic, however everyone hiking on this type of wall should be aware of the danger and know that it’s at their own risk. The Great Wall have previous been used to stage demonstrations, but I doubt that anyone would use the wild Great Wall to stage any kind of demonstration since no media would ever go here.