The Great Wall, China: Trip of a Lifetime

The Great Wall, China: Trip of a Lifetime
Continuing our series, Chris Moss offers a guide to visiting The Great Wall, with advice on the best tour operators and tips on where to stay

The Great Wall, China: Trip of a Lifetime Wall4_2800060b

The Great Wall roughly marks the southern edge of Inner Mongolia – formerly part of Genghis Khan’s Mongol empire Photo: ALAMY

By Chris Moss
1:55PM GMT 23 Jan 2014
3 Comments

The Great Wall is far more than a triumph of engineering. It is a direct link with the legendary emperors of China’s past, and seems to embody our sense of China as a nation separate from the rest of the world. To see the wall – made from brick, stone, tamped earth and wood – snaking away over the parched mountainsides of northern China – is to imagine more than two millennia of cultural isolation and political resistance.
Many people are satisfied with a day trip, but for those who want to explore, it’s possible to run or cycle along sections, take a helicopter flight, spend a night beside the wall in a boutique hotel, or even sleep in a watchtower. There are cable cars and toboggan rides for those travelling with children. Many people combine the Wall with visits to the Ming tombs, Eastern Qing tombs, the Ming-era village of Chuandixia or the Qing-era summer palace at Chendge.
The history
The Great Wall is a series of fortifications that stretches from Shanhaiguan, on the Bohai Sea, to Lop Lake in the Gobi Desert. It roughly marks the southern edge of Inner Mongolia – formerly part of Genghis Khan’s Mongol empire.

The Great Wall, China: Trip of a Lifetime Wall1_2800063a

The Great Wall, China: Trip of a Lifetime Harbin-ice-festiva_2781691k

Over 7,000 artists and workers in the northern Chinese city of Harbin have been working around the clock putting the finishing touches to the annual Ice Festival groundsPicture: REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

The Great Wall, China: Trip of a Lifetime Harbin-ice-festiva_2781692k

Now in its 30th year, the Ice Festival features huge sculptures of famous buildings, a gigantic 240-metre-long ice slide and even a loving tribute to Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman's globe trotting rubber duckPicture: REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon