The Great Wall of China at Gubeikou

Day 334 (May 28, 2019) – Gubeikou, Beijing, China

We took a bus from downtown Beijing to the northeast corner of Beijing Municipality on the boarder with Hebei Province and arrived at Gubeikou in the pouring rain. It was raining buckets, which wasn’t a good sign. We were in Gubeikou to spend some time outdoors hiking along the Great Wall. It was starting to remind us of our drenched hike in New Zealand before we even started. After taking shelter at the bus stop during the worst of it, a brief pause in the rain gave us enough time to run out and meet the host from our guesthouse, who had arrived in his car to take us the rest of the way.

Waiting for the rain to stop at the Gubeikou bus stop.

We spent the afternoon waiting out the rain. We had a lunch of cup noodles, did some trip planning, and took a nap. At around four the rain had finally let up and our host gave us some directions for visiting the wall that afternoon. He even walked us down the street to the hiking path entrance. We arranged to be back by seven when they would have dinner ready for us.

We made it to the Great Wall of China (again)!

I don’t know what I was expecting from this stop on our trip, but what we saw was so much more impressive than I imagined. When we reached the top of the steep climb up the mountain path we walked up and onto a section of brick and stone wall. On top of it was a dirt path that we followed to one of the higher guard towers nearby. From the top of the tower we could see for miles in every direction across a green mountainous landscape and for as far as we could see the great wall snaked along the tops of the mountains. The scenery was beautiful enough as it was, but the wall gave the eyes something to follow that accentuated the natural curves and bends of the mountain range. It was spectacular.

The view from the highest guard tower near our guesthouse. It's difficult to see in the photo but the wall continues up the high mountains in the background.

Most of this section of wall is from the Ming Dynasty (1300-1600s) and part of the same wall we saw thousands of miles away in Jiayuguan. In the deserts around Jiayuguan the wall is mostly made of packed earth (there isn't much else around to use as a building material) but around Beijing they had access to bricks so the architecture is much more impressive in this region. The wall around Gubeikou is largely unrestored. It’s falling apart and crumbling in many places, but it’s still there. The forest is trying to overtake it, with many plants grow right on top of the wall itself. It felt like a refreshingly authentic piece of Chinese history. And perhaps the best part was that we had it all to ourselves. That first night we walked along the wall all the way into Gubeikou town and then back to our guesthouse just in time for dinner. We might have only seen two other people on the path the entire evening. For the first time in China, I felt like we were far away from the crowds and out in nature.

These home cooked dinners at our guest house were awesome.

Back at the guesthouse we had one of our best dinners in China. It was all cooked by the lady who helped run the guesthouse. It was all made from scratch and delicious. We were also the only people staying there so it was essentially all cooked for us. I mean, it was really, exceptionally good. Travis and I were talking that night and decided that the two nights we had planned to be there were simply not enough. We wanted to see more of the wall and spend more time outdoors. A three night stay would give us enough time to hike further along the in both directions. And we were certainly up for having more of these homemade meals, so we changed our schedule around to add an extra night in Gubeikou.

Walking through the tiny town of Gubeikou (which is not to be confused with the nearby built-for-tourism town called Gubeikou Water Town).

We woke up the next morning to perfectly blue skies and better weather than we ever could have hoped for. We were offered a ride to the trail head, but we declined because we wanted to walk through the town of Gubeikou on our way there. It was a very nice and very tiny little town. On our way through we walked past a group of men and women working on a construction project. They started talking to us in Chinese and we didn’t understand a word. We told them in our best Chinese that we didn’t understand and smiled back as politely as possible. Then as we continued onward one of the guys yelled at me, “you are very tall!” which got a laugh out of both us and them.

Perfect hiking weather. And these views were some of the best we'd seen in all of China.

We never managed to find the entrance to the trail on our own. The most obvious entrance was blocked off with red tape. We first chose to ignore the red tape and then promptly got yelled at by someone who saw us walk in. We tried a couple different paths, but they all seemed to disappear into the bushes, so we had to turn around. We gave up and called our host for help. But rather than just giving us further instructions, he came with his van to pick us up and dropped us off at the start of the trail. We were glad he did because we were never going to find it on our own. There was a tiny path into the woods on the other side of some train tracks. Even if we saw it, we would have dismissed it as not possibly being where we were supposed to start this hike.

The wall running up and over a mountaintop. 

The path took us up the mountainside and provided ever greater views of the surrounding landscape. After hiking for what felt like longer than it should have been, we finally made it to the wall. We climbed on top and followed it along to one of the higher towers at the top of the mountain. The wall itself was walkable but it was extremely steep in places and the stones and bricks didn’t seem to be in the best of shape. The views from the top were amazing, but even more amazing to me was that someone even thought to build a wall on the knife edge of this mountain. The wall is already 20-30 feet above the ground, but even on the ground there are only a few feet before the edge of the mountain sides drop off. It was enough for my fear of heights to kick in, but it was also incredible.

Taking a rest and having a snack on top of one of the guard towers.

Some sections of the wall in this stretch were nothing more than piles of brick and stone.

From that tower we hiked all the way downhill, following the remaining towers. For about half of the hike the top of the wall was walkable, but for the other half there wasn't enough wall left to walk on and we followed paths through the forest that ran parallel. The wall eventually took as back into town and, of course, we met up with the main street coming out at the path that was blocked off with the red tape. We walked quietly and quickly, ducking under the tape, and made our escape before anyone could yell at us again. So in the end, we have no idea if we were supposed to be hiking there or not, but we never encountered a single other person on our hike that day.  

The wall stretched off into the distance, up and down mountains as far as we could see.

That evening we made one more trip up to the section of wall closest to our accommodation to watch the sun set over the mountains. While there we encountered a couple from Colorado who were hiking the wall and camping in the guard tower that night. Hiking and camping along the wall sounds like something we would have enjoyed, but it was starting to get cold as the sun went down and we were glad to have a proper bedroom waiting for us after a 30 minute walk downhill. We finished the night with another unbelievably awesome dinner. This time the main course was dumplings. I really should have asked her for the recipe. She spent almost the whole afternoon preparing them for us.

Waiting for sunset on top of a guard tower.

Our last day was our biggest hiking day. Our host drove us over to a section of wall called Jinshanling, where he dropped us off and we were going to hike our way back home. This section of the wall was restored so it looked much more like it would have back in the day of its use. It was very cool to see. Hiking along the refurbished wall was in some ways easier because we didn’t have to pay so much attention to each step we took, but it was still a challenge. The path was incredibly steep in sections. Most of the hike felt like walking up and down staircases all day. And in places where there weren’t stairs, I was really wishing that I still had my old hiking boots because they would have provided way better traction than my shoes. But we made it through the day free of any slips or missteps.

Walking along a restored section of the wall.

The views all along the way were incredible. I still couldn’t get over the fact that anyone would think to build such a massive structure seemingly out in the middle of nowhere and along such rough terrain. Hours later we made it to the end of the restored section of wall, past some secretive military area that had used a section of the wall and surrounding mountains as a privacy screen, and back to an unrestored section of wall again. After a very long day of hiking we eventually made it back to the same guard tower that we had watched the sunset from the day before. Too tired to stay out that late again, we went back to our guesthouse for our last great dinner with them.

We were back to unrestored sections of wall again.

It's amazing any of the towers are still standing given how bad a shape some of them are in. 

Our trip to the great wall was certainly a highlight from our time in China. It was a much more enjoyable experience than I expected. Perhaps it was the time outdoors and away from the massive cities that felt like a breath of fresh air. It was also perhaps the least Chinese thing we did on out trip. Of the few people we encountered during our hiking, we only ever saw westerners. Our host was telling us that most Chinese tourists visit the nearby tourist town called Gubeikou Water Town, where there is plenty of shopping and restaurants and at night the section of wall that runs along the surrounding mountains is lit up with lights. I’m sure it’s picturesque, but I think we were both very happy with our decision to get outside, go on a hike, and see the wall up close, even if that wasn’t what the locals were doing.