a short story

It is five in the morning. The sun has yet to rise. I start to pack my haversack, loading it with food to last me a meal and enough water to drink for approximately ten hours. I am going to scale the Great wall of China.

I am in the heart of Beijing currently. I will be taking a bus to the suburbs of Beijing, towards the north, at 慕田峪 (Mu Tian Yu) - which is also the part of the great wall of China I am going to scale today. It is winter now, with a temperature of -12 degree Celsius. It is going to be colder and more windy up there, at the great wall.

Alighting from the bus, I took a taxi towards the Great wall. It was magnificent. It stood up tall, heading into the heavens. You could barely see the top at ground level. Occasionally, you could see heads bobbing up and down along the walls, like ants marching around energetically.

I wasted no time and started to ascend the Great wall. Though this part of the wall is rebuilt, the steps were still uneven-some narrow, some steep; some flat, some protruding; some slanted; some perfect.

It was a tiring journey from the stairs. As I ascend, I got more exhausted. It was made worse by the increasing altitude meaning less oxygen for me to take in. However it was not that bad. I finally got up to the higher point of the wall, where I could continue my journey.

To my astoundment, this is only the beginning. According to a map, the walkway runs 2.2 km wide. Though 2.2 km may sound short to you, in this case, it is not. The 2.2 km does not include the length of the steps, as specified on the map. There are two possible routes: one to my left, the other to my right. Since it was near lunch time, I decided to take the route closer to my left as it was shorter.

As I trekked towards the left end, I could see the Chinese characters: '忠于毛主席' in English-loyalty to Chairman Mao...Mao Ze Dong, carved onto the mountain, right next to the end of the great wall.

Then, I saw a long flight of stairs, very, very long. It had to be at least 400 steps long, without any stops to rest! Worse than my ascend previously. Still I had to climb it so that I would never miss this rare opportunity. It was exhausting. I panting hard, my breathing rate increase every time I ascend more. It was like the stair way to heaven.

Well, this was just the easy part. The challenging one is to descend! Mucous was literally coming out like water running from a tap as I descend, my head bobbing up and down. Soon I reach the end of the treacherous stairs.

It was worth while. From the top, I could see the village of Mu Tian Yu. Cars running along the expressways, smog coming out of the little factories.

The sun was high and bright in the sky, it illuminated the watchtowers and I could admire the architect of the Chinese in the past-6th century to be precise. Then, I began to head back to my starting point.

After having a meal, I started part two of the adventure-towards the right. I thought that this part would be more comfortable to trek, but I was wrong.

It was worse than the 400 flight of stairs I had encountered 2 hours ago. Halfway through, I saw another flight of steps. I could not see the top of the steps. It was like 10 times of the 400 flight of steps.

The stairs were more steep and uneven this time. Every step I made was executed with caution and care for fear of tripping. I wondered how I could possibly descend these stairs. Persistent still kept me on. I ascended the stairs. It was fruitful. I could see ancient cannons mounted on the stairs every 50 metres pointing towards the open air in the mountain. Then, I broke a sweat. It was so sweaty that I had to take off my outer jacket. I could not feel the coldness of the environment.

Alas, I have reached the highest point of the wall!

I saw the village again, This time too small to see the exact details. To my right, I saw cable cars. Cable cars? I am so silly! I should have taken the cable car up the wall and not waste my time walking up the wall! How silly of me!

But to be optimistic, I am able to take the cable car down the wall, instead of taking the route of peril again.

When I got down the wall, I flagged a cab and headed home. Just in time for dinner. On the cab, I conversed with the taxi-driver. From him, I learnt that an average China citizen would have taken only 4 hours to scale this whole stretch of wall! I reflected on myself. I am still young and energetic and healthy. The stark contrast of 4 hours and 8 hours. I am really weak. At this moment, pain started to settle in to my thigh and knees...

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The above fictitious story was written by my elder son. I happened to open a text file with the filename 'story' when I was using a spare thumb drive which was lying around. I read it with great interest as the story sounds very familiar...it was like an exact account of what we did when we went up the Great Wall of China (Mutianyu section) last winter. I asked my son where he took the story from, as I thought it was copied from some travel blogs, I would love to read the original post. To my surprise, he told me he wrote it. It was meant to be a March school's holiday assignment, but he didn't submit it as he wrote another one with the storyline 'how I forced my brother to eat soap...'???

Anyway, I took the liberty (that is, without his permission) to post his original work here since I have been wanting to write about our trips (we've been to Mutianyu twice, and Simatai once) to the Great Wall. The photos we took were able to fit in the storyline almost perfectly! (There were better pictures but since we were staring right at the camera lens, I am not allowed to post them.) However, I may remove this post if it upsets him, a lot. Do pardon the grammatical errors, awkward sentence structures as my son is very weak in his languages, be it written or verbal. No editing is done, except for typo errors he made, so as to keep to its originality.