Beijing and the (Un) Restored Part of the Great Wall

Another successful trip with students as I added two more bucket list items- Beijing and the Great Wall of China.  I would like to thank CCC Travel for this great trip.  They did an amazing job with the program, organization, and food for everyone involved.  They seem to have it down when it comes to not spending to much time in one place or make activities boring.  Thank you Iris and CCC Travel for this amazing program and look forward to working with you again in the future. 

Mr. Bill Zander has been doing this trip for 4 years now and it keeps getting better and better.  The students and chaperones had an amazing time, and your careful attention to detail has made this a life long experience that no one will ever forget. 

We took 56 students from our school for a few days trip to see the sites of Beijing.  I never had very high expectations of Beijing, but I can honestly say I was pleasantly surprised at what the city had to offer.  The food was some of the better I have had in a big city in China and the sites (on the day we were there) were not busy.

The Forbidden City had been used as an imperial palace for about 500 years.  I was in pure awe at the size of this structure which would constitute a downtown area for most small cities.  A walk through it takes you back to the time of the Ming Dynasty which was the first to use it. 

We then went to one of the old neighborhoods (Hutong) of Beijing.  The area where we were concentrated in seeing is Xuanwu hutong 宣武胡同.    We got on bicycle carts which were run by the local people as they took us around the narrow streets of this small neighborhood.  With streets that were much like alleyways, you can see people that had lived in the neighborhood for their whole lives and inherited it from family members before them.  We were able to go into one of the nicer houses in the area which had two elderly couple living there and they talked about their lives there.

Our next stop was Tienanmen Square and got to see the Monument to the People’s Heroes, the Great Hall of the People, the National Museum of China, and the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong.   The Gate of the Heavenly Palace is probably one of the most iconic images here with a picture of Mao Zedong hanging in the middle.  It was surreal to actually be in this place, because of how many things in Chinese history that happened here..

Great Wall Hiking and Camping

The Great Wall of China is one of the most recognizable images in the world today.  It is one of the many sites that China is famous for and has a history that spans back thousands of years to before the Qin Dynasty.   Over thousands of years, it has been fortified and rebuilt by many of the dynasties as the existing wall was mostly built and restored by the Ming Dynasty.

The images that you have seen with thousands of people each day crowding the walls is only one part of the wall, which is restored as is mostly a tourist attraction.  The pictures you will see is a remote part of the wall that is not restored, thus you will see no tourists and very few people if any.  This part of China is Huailai between Beijing and Hebei ( 怀来 在北京和河北交界, ). 

We took students hiking around 10 km which was mostly up and down hill along the part of the wall that looks like it did possibly hundreds of years ago.  Most of the stones were out of place and not restored with plants and other brush growing out from its sides. 

We then camped along a part of the wall in the middle of the wilderness where the students set up their tents and got to experience a bonfire party along with grilled lamb and vegetables and marshmallows.  We woke up early in the morning to see the sunrise and continued to hike up a very treacherous path to a more restored yet very isolated part of the wall. 

I believe in the next few years that this part of the wall will be restored thus bringing in hundreds of tourists that will ruin the tranquility and serenity of this beautiful part of the wall.