Great Wall Blues

Three and a half years ago, I visitied a section of the Great Wall called Huang Hua outside one of Beijing's satellite towns called Huairou. I had a wonderous time when I went, mainly because it was a sunny, mild January morning and the wall was empty, aside from a few locals milling around asking for small entrance fees on their property. Not many people can say that they have spent time on the great wall without any other tourists around. I've had the wall to myselves three times. Only two of those times were pleasant memories. The third time was my last time to Huang Hua, this past August.

What proceeds is a cautionary tale of traveling in China. Keep in mind that I can speak and read to a pretty decent degree Chinese, we were with local Chinese and we still got ripped off...so don't think that foreigners are the only ones who are targets for 'creative entrepeneurship' as I like to call it.

Taking the 916 public bus from Dongzhimen Station in Beijing it takes 1.5 hrs to get to the town of Huairou. Once you get off the bus, especially if you're a foreigner (or you look remotely like a tourist), unlicensed taxi drivers will trip over each other to offer you a drive to various Great Wall sites. After haggling like mad, we were able to get a return trip to Huanghua for 70RMB. The whole drive there, the driver was complaining saying we ripped him off. I'm not sure why that would be, he agreed on that price?

Anyway, we got there after about 40 minutes and began our hike up the wall. The entrance to the wall was a bit different from where I remembered but I thought it was probably due to increased tourist activity in the area, there were a few more restaurants and guest houses catering to backpackers than when I was last there but it wasn't overrun by these businessess.

It must be noted that this part of the Great Wall is known as a 'wild wall'., which means that it hasn't been reconstructed and as such isn't molested by Chinese tourist groups because it is pretty dangerous due to the natural weathering of the wall. In other words, it's a perfect site to visit for semi-adventurous travelers such as myself.

After clambering up a trail through a forest, we climbed onto a battlement and were faced with a very steep wall of steps. The steps were weathered and they were more stone and sand than actual steps. After we negotiated our way up these steps, we encountered three locals who proceeded to to block us from continuing claiming that this part of the wall was under reconstruction. Now that would have been believable if we saw workers in the act of reconstructing the wall but besides a few locals wandering around the wall and these three characters, there were no other people, definitely no construction workers.

I questioned their identities and they said they were government officials. Keep in mind I've met a number of government officials in China, from local town and bigger city officials all the way up to the central government in Beijing and this motley crew on the wall, two of which weren't wearing t shirts (it wasn't even a hot day), were definitely not government officials. I proceeded to continue walking and the three blocked my path. Having spent over 2 hours to get to the wall, I wasn't going to let these three guys ruin my day, so I didn't bother beating around the bush. I asked them how much money they wanted..I figured I wouldn't pay more than 20-30RMB.
To my surprise, they didn't want anything and were hellbent on not letting us onward. Feeling defeated, we lingered around and admired the territory we had conquered before heading down back to our waiting taxi.

As we descended we walked along a dam and reservoir that acts as an alternate entrance but is a five minute walk from the parking lot of the entrance we stopped at. In the reservoir, we saw the gem of a sign that you see on the right. It states, "To protect the Great Wall is everyone's duty, the Great Wall closeo (sic) for reconstruction." This sign really pissed me off for a couple of reasons.

1. Why is this goddamn sign sitting inconspicuously in the reservoir?

2. Why didn't our driver tell us that the wall was closed? There is no way in hell he wouldn't know it was closed..

3. Why didn't any other locals around the wall tell us it was closed? They happily collected 2RMB from us to go through their gardens as tolls to get up to the wall.

After we got back to the car, we asked our driver if he knew it was closed. Of course he did, and he poured fuel on the fire by saying if we had paid him more for the trip over to the wall, he would have told us it was closed!?! I had no idea where his logic was going. Keep in mind if you give a vendor in China an unfavourable price they will refuse services/goods to you. We didn't force him to drive us.

At this point my blood was boiling and I went into a mini-tirade saying that he messed with the wrong crowd. As foreigners, we would go home, spew venom about the town of Huairou and the great wall sections in the area and in the long run foreigners wouldn't come anymore. He was silent when he figured my logic was correct and was quiet the rest of the trip back to Huairou. He wasn't the only one who knew it was closed, when they approached us when we got off the bus, we told all the drivers that we wanted to go to Huang Hua so all the drivers he was with where in on the scam.

So here I am delivering on my promise. We have put the license plate number of the driver's car on Beijing travel BBS websites warning other Chinese travelers not to take the car. I'm posting what I've written on Lonely Planet's BBS to warn foreign travelers as well. We mean business.

Of course not all Chinese businessmen and women are unethical like this but I've run into it too many times to remember. It's only one of the many reasons why I've tired of traveling in mainland China and will start to spend my vacation money in other countries. I used to disagree with those foreign backpackers I met who said they'd never return to China because of bad experiences like this one but in the future I just might join them.