The Great Wall’ker
Robert Loken will begin his year long walk along the Ming dynasty today starting in Jiayuguan. Surely Robert can be an inspiration to many – living his dream.
Follow Robert’s walk on his website The Great Wall’ker.
I wish him all the best on his great adventure.
Winter pictures
After two days of snow last week – Wednesday and Thursday – it was hard to resist a trip to the Great Wall in the weekend.
My favourite Great Wall section is still Baiyangyu in the eastern part of Hebei close to Tangshan, so what better place to go than back to the place that really sparkled the Great Wall interest.
Unfortunately most of the snow had already melted but it was still a very different experience than normally.
This was only the second time the Tangshan area had snow this winter so it is definitely not a normal sight in this part of China.
For more pictures please click on one of the pictures above.
Last weekend I visited the Heliukou Great Wall north of Qian’an in the eastern part of the Hebei province. A detailed account for this trip will follow later. So far please enjoy the video from Heliukou.
A slideshow option has been added to the gallery. To view the gallery click this link or see the link in the sidebar.
Not far from the Guidegou Great Wall in Ningxia is another short section of the Great Wall called Jiucaigou (韭菜沟). The sign at the bottom of the gully call this part for Jiucaigou West Great Wall, probably because another section about 1.6 km form here is also considered to be Jiucaigou.
Jiucai is a special kind of vegetable (Chinese leeks) widely used in Chinese cuisine. Not much information is available in English regarding this location, and only a short passage can be found in Bradt, however this is indeed a very interesting part of the wall, although the total length of the wall is only about 225 meters.
Jiucaigou is located northeast of the industrial city of Shizuishan in the north-western part of Ningxia and very close to the Wudangmiao temple.
The area north of the wall is military area, so don’t try to wander around or you might find yourself in trouble very soon. In fact, a fence that you need to scale to get to the wall closes the road leading up the gully. Another option is to follow the old riverbed in the bottom of the gully.
A good place to start is at a small farm restaurant that serves delicious local dishes – don’t miss the special milk tea served with some kind of grain and milk candy. Of cause the local speciality being mutton. The restaurant is located next to the monastery, and from here it’s possible to either follow the road or enter the dried-up riverbed.
From the restaurant it is about half an hours hike to the climb to reach the Great Wall. The climb seems pretty steep, but it’s possible to follow a small path most of the way and there are not so many loos stones so the climb is not very difficult.
Once at the top the strange zigzag pattern of the Jiucaigou is clearly visible. It seems like a strange place to put a wall since there is no clear sign of any wall in the bottom of the gully so the enemy could easily pass here. Two watchtowers further down do suggest that there might once have been some more wall at Jiucaigou, but the wall at the top is the only survivor today.
Considering the age (Ming dynasty), the condition of the wall is pretty good, and a few places it’s even possible to see some of the stone facing that probably used to cover and protect the wall. The top tower is still well preserved and seems to have been constructed using stones while the other towers made are of mud/adobe like the wall itself.
Click on one of the above pictures to see a Gallery with more pictures from Jiucaigou.
Entrance price: free
Date of visit: October 9, 2008
Going to my old recordings I found a few containing clips of the Great Wall. Here is to first small movie I created using Windows Movie Maker.
Great Wall Forum
Great Wall Forum is a place for Great Wall visitors, first time or experienced, to share their information on the Great Wall and ask questions on Great Wall related topics. The forum has a wide range of members from experienced multiple days hikers over single day visitors to people planing a visit to China and the Great Wall for the first time.
The forum has a lot of valuable information to plan the trip, and it have members with experience with the Great Wall in different areas of China. Members of the forum is currently working on creating the best possible map of the wall using Google Earth.
The forum is open to everybody with an interest in the Great Wall.
Autumn colors
I found some really astonishing pictures of the Jiankou Great Wall in autumn colors. Please check the pictures at China.org.cn.
Gallery update
One of the most impressive sections of the Great Wall I visited in Ningxia is the Guidegou (归德沟) section, located in the Helan Mountains close to Shizuishan. Although spending a lot of time searching Google Earth for traces of the Great Wall, this section was completely unknown to me, so fortunately some of the local people I visited was kind enough to show me this section.
The wall here is divided into two sections, a north and a south section, however theses were probably originally connected to each other. The northern section is less than 100 meter and the southern section is about 500 meters long. The northern section seems to have three watchtowers, two of the made by stone, one of them overlooking the gully below, but no traces of the wall can be seen in the bottom of the gully. At some point there was probably some kind of defensive structure down in the the gully as well, otherwise it would have left the defence wide open.
The northern sections seems to be the most interesting one, however due to heavy wind and facing a dangerous hike we decided to return to the safety of the gully. Our local guide told a story about a kid that climbed at southern wall, but he was unable to get down again and had to be rescued. When looking at the steep slope on both side of the wall it seems highly likely that one could be caught up there.
Entrance price: free
Date of visit: October 9, 2008
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