Simatai Great Wall

I'm currently preparing a series of retrospective posts about my first visit to China. I spent four days in Beijing while travelling to the UK for business in 1998. You read about my first time in Tiananmen Square here, and my first tour of the Summer Palace here. This post covers my first visit to the Great Wall of China. It was the first of four I've enjoyed over the years.

Like everyone visiting China for the first time, I was keen to see the Great Wall of China. However, I also wanted to experience more of the real China. As a result, while briefing my hotel's tour desk, I asked to see a section of the wall most tourists never visit. The desk manager took heed of my brief and organized a day trip with a private guide and driver to Simatai.

The Simatai Great Wall is located 120 km northeast of Beijing. It takes a couple of hours to reach it by car offering a section of wall that's 5.4 km long, punctuated by 35 beacon towers. At the time of my visit, some parts were fully restored, while others remained in disrepair. Since then, if tourism websites are to be believed very little has changed.

The wall is separated by a valley into eastern and western sections. The eastern section is the more dramatic of the two. It ascends steeply from the valley floor, about 200 metres above sea level, and traces the ridge line of increasingly rugged terrain that rapidly morphs into dramatic cliffs and 1000-metre-high peaks.

I spent my time exploring the eastern section as the western section is closed to tourists. An open-air cable car ascends from the valley car park to a restored mid-section of the wall. From here you can either walk down towards the valley on a partially restored wall or climb more ramshackle sections that eventually straddle a steep granite cliff face. I decided to climb the entire downhill stretch from the valley floor up to the last restored section, before retracing my steps back to the cable car.

The return hike took several hours, far longer than I’d anticipated. I also forgot to factor in a leisurely return journey on the cable car. As a result, by the time I'd returned to my guide and driver, I was more than an hour late. My guide was beside herself. She thought I’d experienced some sort of misfortune and was beginning to panic. The return journey to Beijing was rather uncomfortable as she continually reminded me how she’d never had a guest run so late.

Simatai was magic. The landscape is truly stunning, while the combination of restored and ramshackle walls feels more authentic than other sections I’ve subsequently explored. The hillside’s steep rise also meant that even the restored wall was often narrower than other popular tourist sections, and thus felt even more dramatic.

The wall is so steep in parts that it narrows into an endless series of stairs barely wide enough for one person to pass, while other sections were broad and gentle enough for ancient soldiers to traverse it on horseback. Its varying construction also means you can experience ramparts extending from both sides of the wall, as well as slimmer alternatives that only extend outwards to the once hostile north.

If you've enjoyed this post, you can relive my day trips to the Great Wall at Mutianyu, first with Garry in 2003, and then again with my parents in 2012. I also visited the Great Wall in the dead of winter at Badaling in January 2003. Without a doubt, walking the wall in falling snow was truly memorable!