The Great Wall of China withstands the siege of millions of tourists

Beijing. How much longer?the familiar faces they meet along the way drown out in a plea with their profiles facing the zenith, as if praying for a quick response. Almost nothing. Maybe about 15 to 20 minutes morecomes the answer that will later be proven to be fraudulent, false, lying or perhaps optimistic, because those 15 or 20 minutes depend on many things.

First of all, the anatomy/condition of the body. It is a test of how the knees are, how the heart is, how the lungs are. But also those 15 to 20 minutes depend on something much more personal than the aches and pains quasi-common; they come from the perception of time when you have already carried out more than an hour of ascending cardio.

The shortness of breath It has ceased to be rhetoric about wonder – one is in one of the so-called seven wonders of the modern world – and has become a biological requirement. Among the need for water and shade, the need for air predominates in order to reach the highest point of the fortification in one of its sections open to visitors.

Photo by Dora Villanueva

The Great Wall is just a meandering section of land spanning 9,596,961 square kilometers, but it is the main tourist symbol of China, a country that, after the coronavirus pandemic – and the closures that followed – is in the midst of a bid to boost visitor numbers.

Built in sections over more than 2,000 years, beginning with a reunification in 220 BC, the Wall dates back to the Qin, Han and Ming dynasties, which erected it as a defensive fence against invaders from the north. Today, the brick, stone and earth wall stretches for 21,200 kilometers, some of which are so heavily traveled by tourists that they have forced remediation and conservation measures in the area, which has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987.

The statistics are actually approximations. On average 10 million people visit the Great Wall of China every year, according to local media. However, the coronavirus pandemic reduced this number to less than 3 million during 2020 and there has been a recovery since then, first driven by domestic tourism and now also by foreign visitors.

Photo by Dora Villanueva

Badaling, the most frequented section of the Wall, alone saw an 81 percent increase in the number of foreign visitors in the first half of 2024 compared to last year. This section, which was the scene of photos of crowds of masked faces during the months of the pandemic, was visited by 147,000 foreign tourists by June this year, the Badaling Culture and Tourism Group reported.

At Juyongguan Pass on a Thursday morning, there are no crowds. The point of the wall closest to Beijing – about 60 kilometers – is not empty, but traffic can be slow if you don’t have the knees and heart pumping enough to continue. The same vertical steps protect the section from tourists. Even the width of the stairs becomes a bottleneck the higher you go.

In the late summer sun of Beijing – where the humidity of a beach without a breeze dominates – some climb up, panting, complaining and sweating. They cling to the highest point of the stretch like a mantra. Does it look different? Is there a dragon, imperial symbol or mythological being that needs to be reached?they ask. Some, very few in fact, add a face mask to their penance.

Photo by Dora Villanueva

The heat is only relieved by the defence towers, which are literally named in ancient times and today. They were once military barracks and customs houses on the Silk Road, and now serve as bastions where the air current allows you to cool off. From there you can see the wall upon the wall: a green valley crossed by a winding gap in which small dots lurch forward.

The breath goes out, the knees come back. The sun no longer matters. Up close, you can read faces with a certain fear of falling due to a joint failure. Descending the steps requires as much time and patience as climbing them, it had been warned before the ascent. Some of those warnings fell on deaf ears.

Later, some visitors experience this karma firsthand. A tremor turns into inactivity. Something struck meone of them exclaims. Letting the bad knee carry you away and rolling to get there in time before the buses leave with a set time to return to Beijing doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.

Shàng shān róng yì xià shān nán, Going up the mountain is easy; going down it is difficult.a couple of young Chinese women say in chorus. An old saying from this country.

Photo by Dora Villanueva