Eric Demay

Instead of heading back to Beijing after walking the Great Wall from Jinshanling to Simatai, we had arranged to stay in a nearby village, granting us a few hot meals, a place to crash for the night and the opportunity to climb up the next morning to the inaccessible 16th tower of the wall in Simatai, perched at 986m, the highest point of the great wall in all Beijing. It is said that on a clear night, “one can see the lights of Beijing shimmering in the distance”, 130km away.

We set out at 6, the valley still sound asleep, barely discerning the dozen of towers perched atop the crest of the mountain, remembering their silhouettes overshadowing the village the previous afternoon. Only a few roosters had shouted since, the dogs now joined the chorus as we walked past them one behind another between the farm houses. It wasn’t long we abandonned the dirt road and were now walking on a small beaten path making its way through the neighboring corn fields towards the hill.

The burning tabacco from Mr. Liu’s cigarette was crisp and dry, flowing past us as he lead the way. His little feet—the old man was a head and half shorter than I—would shuffle untirelessly, each footstep sound and steady no matter the steepness or slipperyness of the terrain. Following close second behind him, I was trying to mimic his ability, stepping exactly in his yet instant footprints betting it would assure an easy climb. But as snow covered more and more of the path on the North side of the mountain and as the hill became steeper, the walk slowly turned to ascension and gripping to rocks and branches of neighboring shrubs became necessity—even Liu seemed to struggle from time to time, sometimes even taking his hands out of his wool coat pockets.

The chosen tower, our final destination, was patiently awaiting us, hanging up there defying gravity like it has done for the last 1500 years. Mr. Liu stopped and turned around:

“Lei bu lei?”, inquiring if we were tired or not yet.
“Bu lei”, I answered slightly panting, but still quite enthousiast about it all.
“Zuo ba”, replied Liu, gesturing us to sit awhile.

Sitting on a rock and looking back to what we had climbed up to now was out of proportion, we were much higher than I expected, the village now lost afar buried in the valley. However, looking up towards the tower now lingering only a few hundred feet above our head quickly readjusted my sense of scale, it seemed all almost vertical from here… But before we knew it, we had managed the rest of the mountain, negociating around cliffs and other vertigo laden areas of the path.

Tower number 15 in the morning sun overshadowed by its tall neighbor.

The sun had beaten us to it by only a few minutes, its rays flowing horizontally throughout the mountainous country side, hitting the east facade of the tower with all its mighty warmth. We sat silently gazing at the view, our backs leaning on the tower, Mr. Liu’s dry tobacco burning in the morning sun.