The Great Wall

There is something truly therapeutic in climbing the Great Wall. There is something in climbing up those impossibly steep and narrow stone steps and feeling the wind in your hair, tracing the carvings in the ancient watch towers with your bare fingers, and gazing out into the mountainous landscape of Northern Beijing that puts work, you and I, and our lives, into perspective.

Built as a series of fortifications made of brick, mud, tampered earth, and stone along China’s historical northern borders, the Great Wall served to protect the Empire from the nomadic peoples of the north, who at the time were roaming the vast steppes of Northeast Asia. To the Qin emperor sitting faraway in his throne in the capital of Chang’an, there was nothing more frightening. Perhaps that was why he commissioned one of the more ambitious engineering projects of the ancient world – to build a wall stretching 20,000 km from East to West, meandering across the snow-capped mountains and great lakes separating the middle plains from the Inner Mongolia, and sacrificing countless lives along the way.

Climbing the Great Wall is an activity I simply must do every time I’m back in Beijing. Yes, it is difficult to get to and constantly swarming with tourists, but it never ceases to overwhelm me with wonder and fulfillment. It is a palce where, on a clear day, you can look across hundreds of peaks towards Shanhaiguan – the ancient border post, and imagine how sentries from dynasties bygone had done the same thing while preparing to light signal fires. You can imagine how the ancient border posts along the Wall collected customs from Persian, Jewish, Arabic, and Chinese traders travelling along the Silk Wall, their horses heavy with delicate silks and ceramic. it is a place that sets your mind free.

And the most ironic thing? My father’s people – the Manchus – were Nomadic tribes in Northeast Asia that descended from a branch of the Huns – the exact people my mother’s ancestors – the Han Chinese – were deathly fearful of. Oh how times have changed.