Great Wall (Qinhuangdao, China)

I know what you're thinking. "Perfect Number, you've been living in China 5 years, and you haven't shown us pictures of the Great Wall! What gives? Cough 'em up!" All right, here they are.

So, normally, when people go to the Great Wall, they go to one of the locations in Beijing. But as you may have guessed, the Great Wall is really long and there are a whole bunch of different sites along it that tourists can visit. These photos are from Qinhuangdao 秦皇岛, a "small city" (3 million people) in northern China, near Beijing.

This particular location along the Great Wall is called Jiaoshan 角山.

Here's the entrance gate at the bottom of the mountain. This is really cool because it looks like the Chinese character 山 [shān] which means "mountain."

There is a chair lift you can take. Or you can climb the Great Wall to get to the top of the mountain. I took the chair lift to go up and then walked back down. Highly recommend.

After getting off the chair lift at the top of the mountain, I walked for a REALLY LONG TIME and came to this Buddhist monastery:

Check out the view here. It was AMAZING.

Then I had to walk all the way back from the monastery to the chair lift (it was really far and such a hot day), and keep going that direction to get to the Great Wall.

But first, the bathroom!

Here's the outside of the women's bathroom. Just a small concrete room.

Here's the women's bathroom at the top of this mountain. No doors or walls, just a few holes in the concrete floor, leading right outside and down the side of the mountain. As you may have guessed, it smelled terrible. But I was thinking of you, readers, so I took the time to get a photo.

Holy crap look at the amazing view though. I was THERE. It was AWESOME.

Okay finally at the Great Wall:

The Great Wall was blocked off here- you can't walk on it in that direction. The other direction leads down to the bottom of the mountain. That's how I went.

There were some towers with ladders that you actually have to climb up. Kind of scary.

I met some friendly Chinese people on the Great Wall that day. It wasn't that crowded, and everybody felt so exhausted from climbing all the stairs, so people would just hang out in little groups on top of the towers or wherever there was a place to rest.

The view though. Wow.

Did I mention it was SO HOT there? UNBELIEVABLY HOT. China uses Celsius and I... uh... don't, so I only have a vague sense of *exactly* how hot it is, but I would guess 90 degrees Fahrenheit that day. I made sure to have a water bottle with me at all times and drank from it constantly, and I was still kind of worried I would keel over from dehydration.

There was another set of stairs for people who feel the Great Wall is too steep.

This sign says "Be careful steps, don not trust" which doesn't really make me feel safe...

It was so worth it. I love the Great Wall so much. The view was just AMAZING. Really hot day, and it's exhausting to climb all those stairs (or take the chair lift up and then walk down all the stairs, like I did). But worth it.

Photos from Qinhuangdao 秦皇岛:
Great Wall at Jiaoshan 
First Pass Under Heaven
Laolongtou (starting point of Great Wall)

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