There's likely few people who couldn't identify the Great Wall. The long, meandering battlement snaking in and around rugged hills, the myth of it's visibility from space, images of Mongol invaders scaling it's precipice. Nice images. But rather unreal.
Most people go to sections of the wall that are completely restored and polished, and inundated with aggressive hawkers, touts, cheap souvenir stands, endless tour buses. There is no serenity or peacefulness there.
So we, along with Herbert and Marta, 2 wonderful Germans, hire a guide to take us to Jiangkou.... a bit further out, and a whole lot more authentic. Its an area closed off to the the masses, so no throngs, and no chotchca vendors. Here the wall is real and wild. The crumbling bricks compete for space with overgrown bush and weeds. There are more salamandars than people. It is wild and far more entrancing than the gringo route, as it shoots off into the hills, often forcing us to scamper up 70 degrees of forested and rubbled trail.
Our guide has a music phone that he can't put down. With every Chinese popster that he sings along to, he is befuddled that we can't recognize them. Then Michael Jackson comes on and he jumps onto a watchtower with a vertigo drop that would kill an elephant, and he feigns a moon walk. Occasionally he lets off a Tarzan yell and awaits a reply from competing guides. He is from a poor province to the south. Twenty nine years old, he tells us how lucky his 23yr old girlfriend is. He speaks English (not well), has his own biz--his own travel company of 6 years employing 5 others, and he flexes his biceps. He is a rare Chinese man who doesn't smoke.
The weather has cooperated. It has been the only smogless, cloudless day so far and easily our best day. We gaze off into the endless winding wall studded with watchtowers, and realize how rare it is to be so secluded, and alone with such a significant piece of history.
