THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA — CESAR MENDEZ | WORLD TRAVEL PHOTOGRAPHY

If you think of China, which is the first thought that comes to your mind? Maybe the food, panda bears, Oriental people? I can assure you that the Great Wall of China is going to be one of the TOP 5, and this is because is one of the most famous landmarks not only in China, but in the whole world!

And if you have read about the Great Wall you’ll know that the wall is (or at least it was) more than 7000 km long, so the first question that comes in mind is, where to start? The answer to the question is simple, Beijing.

Beijing, capital of China; if you come to China is almost certain that one of your many stops would be this amazing city, from here you can go and visit the Great Wall, you can either go with a tour bus filled with tourist, or if you drive (hope not!) you can take your car and drive, you can hitchhike, or you can hire someone to take you; in my case I always hire someone to take me, my first trip to the Great Wall I hired someone, which is kind of difficult if you don’t speak Chinese, I do speak some Chinese because I was living in China at the moment, so I was able to have basic conversations and so I manage to hire someone from the street to take me and my wife there; the second time I hired a proper driver and guide from a tour company, and this because I was traveling now with my wife and newly born daughter, let’s say that I wasn’t in the adventurous mood with my four month old child, so I took the commodity even if it cost me more.

Now, there are many parts of the wall that you can visit, the nearest five and most famous from Beijing are Badaling, Mutianyu, Juyongguan, Jinshanling, Simatai and Shuiguan; these are all very well preserverd and renovated, Jinshanling and Simatai are also preserved but they are a little more in original state, and then there are other parts that are the wild sections, but you are not allowed to go there for safety reasons even though I know some people that have visited them.

Important note: do not visit Badaling!! Unless you love crowded places (crowded in China is possibly more than anything you have seen before, so take it under consideration).

Badaling is one of the best-preserved sections of the Great Wall and it is located just outside Beijing, this makes this part of the wall crowded in ways that only if you live in China can imagine, so, if you are like me you will avoid this part of the wall, unless you don’t have a choice, then by any means go there.

Our first trip to the wall we decided to adventure a little more than your average tourist, so we went to Jinshanling that is located 130 km from downtown Beijing, because of its distance from the city is not as visited as Badaling, in fact, the day I went up there I didn’t find any tourist, believe me, not one!! The wall was all for ourselves.

But before starting our ascent to the top of the wall, we decided to stop for lunch at a local house from one of the villagers that lived near the foot of the mountain. We ordered two plates of noodles, one for me and one for my wife, when the plates arrived to our table we were surprised to see the size of the meal, each plate was certainly more than half a kilo of noodles, even one plate was way too much for both of us, I get a little bit mad when something like this happens, first, because is obvious that the portions are exaggerated and they do not warn you about it, and second, I hate to waste food, there are many people in this world that struggles to keep food in their stomachs and therefore I just hate the idea of wasting food, and the price was not a problem, each plate it costs us like 1 USD, practically nothing; leaving that thought aside I’m pretty sure that the house people took the leftovers and keep them to themselves, we were the only customers anyway.

After filling our stomachs we head back to the road, our intrepid driver left us on the foot of the mountain, and we had to walk all the way up, only if we knew that there was another entrance with a cable car!!!so we took the courage to start this little but difficult hike, it took us around 45 minutes to get to the top of the mountain, my wife was not used to exercise, so it was very challenging for her to complete the hike, in fact we stopped several times to catch our breaths, fortunately for her, a couple Chinese women were following us since we start the hike, when they saw her having trouble continuing they decided to help and blow some air with their Chinese fans, after the heroic save, they start trying to sell us souvenirs, so they followed us all the way up, once on the wall they continue their attempt to sell me something, they were very persistent, then I finally gave up and bought them a photo book they were selling (a very hard way to sell souvenirs if I you have to go up and down the mountain following the tourists).

Starting our hike to Jinshanling, souvenir sells women following us since the beggining

My wife getting assistance from this lovely lady

This section of the great wall is amazing, it zigs zags in harmony from Longyu Pass in the west all the way to Wangjing tower in the east with a total length of 10.5 km. The view is spectacular, you can have so much fun up there as a photographer, or you can just enjoy a unique hike in this beautiful part of the world.

Now if you like long hikes you could try to get all the way to Simatai, but I believe that is around a 9 hour walk, so, only professionals I think.

So we stayed a couple of hours exploring the place and snapping some shots, the day was a little bit hazy, so no portfolio worthy pictures this time.

Our second trip to the wall we decide to go to Mutianyu, is only 70 km from Beijing, but this makes it less crowded that Badaling, and in fact in my opinion is one of the most beautiful parts of the wall to visit. The total length of this sections is roughly 5,5 km long, and the scenery is breathtaking, special for photography.

Wife and daughter, on our way to Mutianyu

This time I hired a sunset tour guide because I wanted to take photos at sunset, even though the tour it says they do the sunset you’ll have to make sure they understand what you want to do, theoretically they close at 17:00 hours while sunset was around 18:15 at that time of the year, so every tourist disappear around five o’clock, so again we had the wall all to ourselves to take the photos I wanted; thankfully there was no security near by because nobody came to ask us to leave the place, the only one who left from our group was our tour man, I suppose that he was hungry, in China they have a precise time to eat, and dinner is around 17:30, to tell the truth I was a little bit worried that perhaps he would get tire of waiting for us and eventually leave us there at wall (that would have been a disaster!!), I am happy that he didn’t, he just went down and waited for us with our driver.

That afternoon I had an ok sunset, actually, I think that was really good to China standards, it is really difficult to have clear days in China, specially in Beijing, in fact, I always planned my trips to Beijing the two days prior to the probable departure, this because I was always monitoring the Air Quality App, and when I saw that a Wednesday was a hazy free day, I would plan to depart the next Friday to Beijing, this method does not guarantee that I will have a clear weekend, but I think the odds are on your favor planning this way.

As you can see in my portfolio, I love blue hour shots, but in this case, there is no artificial light to work with, so I took the photo a little before the sun peaked behind the mountain, otherwise I would have lost all the beautiful golden light hitting the wall.

The gear that I used for this photo, was my tripod, Nikon D810, Nikkor 28-300 mm f3.5/f5.6, no filters; I did a 3 photo pano.

NIKON D810, Nikkor 28-300mm f3.5/f5.6, 1/15sec, f22, ISO200

After the photo I gather my wife and daughter and enjoyed the descent, we took a path that zig zags down the woods all the way to the park entrance where our no longer hungry driver was waiting for us, ready to take us back to our hotel in Beijing.

Note: There is a slide that takes you down the mountain, but to take this fun transportation you need to get down before closure time.