One of the highlights of my recent trip to Beijing was getting another chance to visit the Great Wall. This time I visited an older section further out from the city at Mutianyu (about 80km northeast from Beijing), generally regarded as one of the best preserved and most impressive sections of the whole wall. It’s also a good choice for those who want to avoid the hoards of tourists who plague Badaling most of the year.
After an interesting bus trip riding along with a horde of migrant workers I arrived near the base of Mutianyu - there are probably easier ways to get there on organised trips but this seemed more interesting! For the intrepid you’ll want to look for bus no. 916 from Dongzhimen bus station. It’s about a 30 min climb to the wall which was built in the Qi Dynasty (550 - 557) and provides around 4km of rugged walking with watchtowers approximately every kilometer.
Magnificent views are to be had in every direction although the best time of year to visit is probably in the spring/autumn when there is green foliage on the trees which cover the sounding mountains. The day I visited was a bit overcast but pleasant enough to enjoy the fresh breeze and a chance to stretch my legs. One part is particularly steep and potentially dangerous so the old and unfit be warned.
Sadly once you reach the end of the maintained section the wall starts to dramatically crumble away and is overgrown with weeds. Although it’s tempting to continue along the wall into the looming mountains there is a guard to stop intrepid tourists - I saw him wittling a stick with a rather large knife so you’ll probably not want to cross him!
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There can never be any substitute for going somewhere “in the flesh” but there are times, for obvious reasons, when you can’t go there in person or you want a taste of where you’re going before you depart. With fast connections becoming ubiquitous, richer and more immersive online maps are growing in popularity and diversity. Most people are familiar with the big players in the west (Google, Yahoo, Live etc.) here are a few you may not have heard of but provide a unique virtual experience:
EveryScape
Captures some amazing 3D walkthroughs in North America and Asia using 2D photos stitched together combined with GPS data which you can wander through as your own pace or be “driven” through on autopilot. Transitions between different areas in one location is especially impressive with the environment rushing past you (ala Hyperspace). I particularly liked the Forbidden City and Great Wall captures in China which is all the more surprising considering how tight the Chinese authorities usually are in allowing the capture and use of geodata within its borders. A friend of mine who worked at a large online mapping company in Beijing told me that, whilst they had all the satellite images to be able to provide a service like Google Maps, they were not allowed to use them for reasons of “national security”…
Edushi
Take a virtual tour of Shanghai (and 21 other cities in China) rendered Sim City style - seriously cool! A part of me can’t help feeling sorry for the people at Edushi (short for E-City in Chinese) who must have had to painstakingly draw this but the result is surprisingly compelling. The maps appear to be ad supported and rather depressingly even have dedicated buttons to show your nearest MacDonalds/KFC - don’t you just love globalisation? Even if you can’t read Chinese the maps are well worth a look, even if it’s just to check out the shear audaciousness of it all!
City8.com
More virtual panoramas from China allowing you to step through some high-res 360 degree imagery from a plethora of locations in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Jinan and Wenzhou. Similar to Google Maps Street View you can navigate within the environment in some areas allowing you to take virtual walks, just try to avoid being run down by the crazy drivers! I like the way it presents a traditional map next to the image also highlighting your angle of vision.
Also worth checking out are Panoramas.dk for some amazing Quicktime VR and the Google Sightseeing blog which highlights some of the more quirky discoveries on Google Earth. Do you know of any others worthy of a mention?
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