I don’t think there is a single person in the world that has heard about the great wall and doesnt want to visit. So here I am, doing something I have wanted to do for a long time, walking by the great wall. To see it I go with an excursion from a hostel and on the way they play a South Park about the great wall, it’s double funny being here.

Pictures are more panoramic than normal format. Remember you can click on it to see them bigger.

In each period the wall was built surrounding the perimeter of the empire so there is wall in several parts of China.

Beijing is a handy place to visit the wall as it’s not far and you can go and come back on the same day.

I went to visit the wall in Badaling and I made a one and a half hour walk over steps to get out of the restored part and to see the wall as time has left it.

The most occidental edge is near Dunhuang. In what is called the Hexi corridor. A string of oasis situated between the Tibetan plateau and the Gobi desert. In that place the Jade (or Yumen door) gate is found giving access to Turpan. Also, there the Lang gate gives access to Lop Nor and the south route of the Taklimakan desert. Once those doors are crossed merchants were out of the Chinese governed territory and they said “West of the Yang gate there are no friends”.

You have to be quite a paranoid leader to make your people work that hard to build this.

It is a fact that I never had clear, I always thought it was not that big to be seen from that far. Until I read about it in one of the books. The great wall is not seen from space.

The affirmation comes from the English William Stukely that in 1754 wrote: makes a considerable figure upon the terrestrial globe, and may be discerned at the moon.”.

Later on Henry Norma said in 1895: “besides its age it enjoys the reputation of being the only work of human hands on the globe visible from the moon.”

The wall is 9.1 meters wide in it’s wider place. Seen it from the moon would be like seeing a human hair from three of four kilometres.

The next post will be from Beijing.

Fernando