LOCAL WAY TO THE GREAT WALL $4

LOCAL WAY TO THE GREAT WALL  $4

We were up really early due to the time change, so we made coffee in the room and prepared for the day. I walked across the street to an ATM for some additional local currency. At 0600 we had our included breakfast at the hotel. The Novotel Beijing Peace has a very nice breakfast with both Eastern and Western offerings. We had steam buns, French toast, eggs, yogurt, and steamed pumpkin, along with fresh breads and pastries.

We took the Metro from the Dengskikou station to Huoying station, Line 5 transferring to Line 13, then a short, well marked walk to the Huangtudian train station. We were able to use our Metro Card for all travel thus avoiding purchasing a ticket. 

 Lynn Chilling in a very empty 1st class car 

We left the Dengskikou station just a little bit before 0700 and arrived at the train station in time to catch a 0758 train. The service on these trains is non specific with open seating in either a first-class car or a second-class car. There were very few people on this train and there was plenty of seating in the first-class cars.  All S2 trains will take you to Badaling, where you have some options for visiting the great wall, more on those later.

Should one choose to travel by Metro or train, be advised there are security checks at all entrances where your bags are X-rayed and you pass thru a metal detector, this is a very fast process.  

A bit about this journey. This isn't any old train ride.  It's a journey over the Imperial Peking–Kalgan railway, built 1905-1909. This was the first railway to be built by the Chinese themselves without western help, by a US-educated Chinese railway engineer called Zhan Tian-you , known as the Father of Chinese Railways.

Along the Guan Valley...  The train now enters a deep valley.  You'll now see Great Wall on both sides of the train - if this seems odd, here's the explanation:

Broadly speaking, the Great Wall of China runs along the mountain range north of Beijing, protecting China in the south from what was once the Tatar badlands to the north.

However, at this point the Guan Valley forms a passageway through the mountains.  The Great Wall turns to run along one side of the Guan Valley as far as Badaling, it then crosses the valley with a gateway and fort on the valley floor (this is the famous Badaling section of Wall) then it runs back along the other side of the Guan Valley before turning again to continue its usual course along the mountain range.

So at this point there is Great Wall on both sides of the Guan Valley, forming a safe passage for Chinese forces to advance through the mountains along the Guan Valley to Badaling, just short of the Tartar plains.  When necessary, the Chinese could sally forth into Tartar territory from the fort and gateway in the Great Wall at Badaling.

The switchback at Qinglongqiao West...  The railway climbs steeply up the Guan Valley, you'll feel the train struggling slowly up gradients as steep as 33.3% (1 in 30).  Chinese railway engineer Zhan Tian-you famously used a switchback on this route to gain height.  Around 10-15 minutes before Badaling, the train takes a sharp left hand curve into a side valley and comes to a stand at Qinglongqiao Xi station (Xi = West).  It's not a passenger stop so the doors remain closed.  The train changes direction and leaves Qinglongqiao West the way it went in, turning sharp left again to continue up the valley towards Badaling.

The train passes through a tunnel under the famous section of Great Wall and shortly after emerging from that it arrives at Badaling station.  There are in fact two switchbacks with reversing stations on opposite sides of the Guan Valley, one for northbound trains and one for southbound trains. 

We arrived at Badaling station at about 0915 and followed the signs towards The Great Wall.  There are basically three options for visiting the Wall. The signage for all options is well marked. 

 

Options 

 Going up

 I liked the message on the trash cans, and yes the are was very clean

 yep it is steep

 Having been there when crowds are much larger this is a very calm day. A good thing about off season, but the wind was really really chilly

Option One is to walk 260 meters from the train station to the funicular. This is often called a cable car in many of the signs. As we had not been to this south section we were going to take this option, however today it was closed. So we moved on to Option Two.

Option Two is the Cable Car and it is 830 meters from the train station. We saw a ticket booth near the bus parking that had no line so this is where we purchased our tickets. We bought a return ticket for 140 Yuan (about $20 USD). We were old enough (over 60) to get free admission to The Wall.

Option Three is to walk to the main entrance and climb The Wall.

We queued up and were soon loaded onto a cable car heading up towards the North Station. While riding up I noticed the wind socks were flying straight out so, we expected some wind.

Arriving at the top we, decided to climb even higher. This is a nice stair master kind of workout for sure. We made our way up a couple of levels over the steps of many different heights and different degrees of surfaces. We paused and got a few pictures to depict the steepness of the Wall at this section. The wind was quite noticeable as we climbed higher. We then said enough and made our way down to the Cable Car Station.

We had made a bit of a planning mistake in that we did not get times for returning trains. We had an old schedule and made an educated guess as to when the return trains would depart. We decided to take a break and get some refreshment at the cable car cafe. I had an orange drink and Lynn had cocoa. We then went through a gift shop and bought a medal which was engraved with our names and date of our visit. This will make a nice Christmas ornament.

We got back to the station at about 1130 and learned a train would be leaving at 2020 which really meant 1212. At about 1200 we were escorted to the platform and shortly thereafter the train arrived, and we soon departed.

Sitting in a railway station , got a ticket to our destination 

Very Disney Like LOL

                                          Here comes the train

After leaving the Station we again used the switchback. When returning to Beijing, and you look to the left as the train enters Qinglongqiao station, you will see the statue of Zhan Tianyou, father of Chinese railways and the man who engineered this railway line. He is buried here at Qinglongqiao station. This is also his grave. 

This section of rail was part of the Trans Siberian Railway up until the early 2000’s.
To recap, our transportation expense for this day was about 14 Yuan or about $2.00USD one way, so a total of $4.00 RT.

We were back at the hotel at about 1500 and started to regroup for our travel to Harbin. We both were felling a bit tired so we opted to go to our local guys in the Xitangzi Hutong here behind out hotel. A Hutong is basically a small neighborhood here in Beijing. They are usually only a few blocks long and a couple blocks wide. These are tight communities where everyone knows each others comings and goings. 

The Boys took good care of us for sure.

We will repack and call it a day. Thanks for following along and sharing. I hope you are inspired to get out there and experience all life has to offer.