The Great Wall at Badaling
on Tina's Journal (China), 05/Jan/2010 11:15, 34 days ago
On Sunday I woke up to heavy snow and freezing temperatures in Beijing. Yanhui, who works in the VSO office, picked me up from the hotel and we set off with her friend Nancy to Badaling to see the Great Wall. We took the train because of the heavy snow as we were worried about the conditions on the road. It took just over an hour to get there, but it was lovely to observe from the train the lovely white freshness of untouched snow, much better to look at than experience. Once we arrived in Badaling it's about a kilometere's walk from the station to get on the wall itself. It was bitterly cold and we were walking straight into the direction of the blowing snow. I think the temperature was about -16C. We walked along the wall for about 40 minutes. I was impressed with the engineering of this incredible fortress which stretches nearly 9000Km from east to west. It is definitely worth visiting and it was amazing to see in the snow, but I believe it would have been much more spectacular to see on a clear day. I was ready to leave after about an hour as it was bitterly cold so we headed back to the small station to take the train back only to find that there were serious delays with the trains. As the buses had stopped running the only way back was by train which meant they were filling up pretty quickly. After an hour of waiting we were told to go and stand on the platform and wait for the next train. After standing out for 30 minutes, I thought my toes were going to fall off my feet because of possible frost bite! The train eventually turned up and we were told to just try and get on. Well, I couldn't believe how packed it was, people were squashed right up to the windows so there was no-way we were going to attempt to get on. I was having palpitations just at the thought. We then went back into the station to find even more people had arrived and no-one had any idea when the next one would come. I was starting to panic because it was sounding pretty bad and I needed to get back to Beijing that day to catch my flight home the next day. Anyway, after panicking and trying to keep warm for 4 hours we finally got on a safe train that was full but enough space to breath! We made it back to Beijing North Station and we decided to treat ourselves to some spicy Sichuan food which was delicious. I got back to my hotel about 10pm and just fell into bed, relieved and happy to make it back! It was wonderful to see, but not worth all the stress in those awful conditions, I am not good in very cold weather!