Gleeful Morgan Freeman and sidekick Jack Nicholson zipping along the Great Wall of China on a motorcycle: The image was playing, rewinding, and playing again in my mind as a tour guide and I headed by car northeast through the suburbs of Beijing toward the mountains and world's largest cemetery.
Like Freeman and Nicholson in the movie, "The Bucket List," I planned to check off the Great Wall from my long itinerary of the world's special places.
No motorcycle for me. I would walk the wall as far as I could go.
The massive Great Wall once protected the Chinese from invaders of the north. That was before the Chinese became invaders from the south.
Sections of the Great Wall and its branches, in various states of repair, stretch across the old northern borders of China for more than 5,000 miles, a distance roughly equal to a wall from Seattle to Los Angeles to Miami to Boston.
Building began in 221 BC. Through the ages, more than 2 million Chinese workers died during construction. They were buried inside the wall, which makes it the largest cemetery in the world.
Mutianyu, a 90-minute drive from Beijing, is one of the best preserved sections of the wall. It was built mostly with granite. President Clinton visited the Mutianyu section in June 1998.
Prior to 1985, travelers spent most of their morning just getting to the wall at Mutianyu. After the drive from Beijing came a long hike. But now a cable car -- at 100 yuan (about $15) round trip -- runs up the side of the foothills. In a few minutes, you are at 3,000 feet above sea level (Beijing is at 120 feet).
Still, this is not a trek for a bad heart, tired feet or weak ankles. The walk to the cable car is steeply uphill, and pathways are full of loose stones -- as well as hawkers of shirts and other cheap souvenirs. Once at the top of the Great Wall, cobbled and loose-fitting stones on the walking path -- about 10 feet wide with a stone wall some 4 feet high on each side -- require a watchful eye and sturdy shoes.
Exhilarating, exciting, friendly
From the moment I set out westward -- the air cool, winds from the north in Mongolia -- I felt exhilarated, like standing in the Acropolis of Greece or amid the mighty ruins of Central America, southeast Asia and Great Zimbabwe.
I imagined soldiers and shouts of sentries through the centuries, of vast armies from the north popping over mountaintops to face the mighty stone wall.
I walked for more than an hour, through watchtowers and past crenulated parapets, with merlons, which, according to my guidebook, allowed marksmen to shoot at enemy soldiers on both sides of the wall, a task that might occasionally have been necessary, though, I suspect, disappointing.
Fellow wall walkers were a mix of Chinese and foreigners. I heard English, Hebrew, German, and French. Strangers offered me snacks and swigs of water (which I declined as I carried my own). What we had in common were nods of understanding and smiles of satisfaction.
On the way back to the cable car, I checked off another item on my Bucket List, which Morgan Freeman described in the movie as "things to do before I kick the bucket."
Planning a tour
From Beijing, the Great Wall can be an easy and inexpensive day tour. Buses make daily trips. For a private car, driver and guide from 9 a.m. to about 3 p.m., I paid about $160. The tour was arranged through Destination China by my hotel, The Opposite House.
Next: A cheeseburger in China
