Skinned Knee

Simatei

Somewhere in my mother's house lies a picture of me at the age of four, wearing bright red shorts, with band-aids on both knees. So before yesterday, I don't think I had skinned a knee in 25 years. But after more than three hours on the Great Wall and a 10 km walk, I had a skinned knee and ripped pants. It's a good thing I'm used to it.

Most Beijing tourists visit the Badaling location of the Great Wall, which is somewhat closer to the city center and usually overrun by visitors. So instead we headed to the Simatei section, which is somewhat further away, and requires an earlier start. By 5:40 A.M., we were standing bleary-eyed in the Peking University Youth Hostel, waiting for our ride.

Because of the language gap, we didn't quite know the full details of our trip. So when we got into a small van with another couple at the Hostel, we expected to head straight to the Wall. Instead we stopped at four other hostels around Beijing, and loaded the van to full capacity with tourists from France, Germany, and the U.K. In east Beijing, we exited the van and boarded a 39-person tour bus that was almost full. By 10:30, still recovering from a mild bout of car sickness thanks to our brake-happy bus driver, we were standing on the Wall.

The language gap also caused us to be slightly unprepared for the walk. When our guide stood at trail head and said the trip would involve a four-hour, 10 km hike, I choked a bit on my Snickers Bar. Had we known that our trip would involve such a hike, we would have brought a first aid kit, given the condition of the Wall in some places. The section of the Wall that we visited travels across the Beijing/Hubei provincial border, and the lack of funding in Hubei for Wall repairs was readily apparent.

But it was actually a hillside that got me. One of the towers on the Wall doesn't have stairs going down on the opposite side, so you have to walk around it. One loose patch of dirt later, and I was using hand sanitizer to sterilize my bleeding leg.

As you can tell from the pictures, however, one skinned knee was a small price to pay for walking along the only man-made structure visible from space. The Wall is an amazing sight/site, and everyone able to visit China should come to see it. Avoid the tour bus, though, and get your own van for the day. Waiting for two hours for out-of-shape people to finish up and eat lunch is no way to spend an afternoon.