JUYONGUAN, China — Beijing is one of the few Olympics where you can combine sightseeing with work. The men’s cycling road race made seven loops past the Great Wall on Saturday and had its finish line right below it. As I’m writing this in the press room, I’m gazing up through the window at the only man-made structure on Earth you can allegedly see from the moon. You can’t.
Unfortunately, because of the smog, you can’t see much of it from the press room, either. Still, I arrived early to climb to the second turreted tower, possibly 2,500 to 3,000 feet above sea level. It was not easy.
More than 2,000 years ago, hundreds of thousands of workers spent 10 years building the 3,750-mile wall to keep out marauding nomads from pouring south. If the Mongols had to climb the steps instead of traverse its walls, Genghis Khan would have said, “To heck with it,” and returned north to his yurt.
The portion I climbed, at what is known as Simatai, is 1,149 steps (yes, I counted). Some of the stones were 2 1/2 feet high. I once climbed one of the Great Pyramids in Egypt. This was just as hard. The view was worth it. I could see the wall snake and climb in both directions seemingly atop the canopy of the surrounding forest. I saw helicopters hovering below me, and above, pagodas near the finish line.
Mao Zedong once said, “He who has not climbed the Great Wall is not a true man.” My pride is intact.
Zaijian from China,
John Henderson
