WALLnut

No one knows how long it is. Its location is sometimes based more on a compromise than on empirical evidence. On the map it looks like a broken chain - meandering along mountain ridges, sometimes with its legs astride, popping up in an unexpected spot. Most of us will recognise it as the only man-made structure visible from space (some even go as far as claiming it can be seen from the Moon!). David Copperfield's fans will remember his graceful passage through it. It is not just a wall. It is the GREAT WALL.
My knowledge of it was limited solely to the above when I got the idea of China Challenge . As it came closer, my mind was filled with a more and more romantic vision of a solitary randez-vous on the Dragon's back*.
When I finally got the Great Wall within reach, I pounced on it while scouting Beijing's surroundings. Shanhaiguan Wall turned out to be a renovated shred of time- worn eastern wall. The greyness of the clouded sky concealed it and only colorful T-shirts of the few tourists climbing giant stairs seemed to give it away. Above a modest temple veiled in incense smoke there was only a thin winding skeleton of the once great WALL . Observed by a few monks I tried to 'camouflage' my wild walk by frequent photo stops.
Such efforts weren't necessary on Huanyaguan Wall which , beside the touristically poor renovated part, quietly offered a longer encounter with its COARSE BACK barely visible through thick vegetation and foggy ridges.
Slightly discouraged by the adverse weather of northern summer I gave the Wall one more chance. Hoping for a bit more extreme experience I climbed the SIMATAI WALL. Before I could even get breathless a line of slanting-eyed hawkers created a shadow that was to follow me for the next few hours. The weather was almost perfect, however, so I could satiate my eyes with a picture-like image of the winding Great Wall. To my delight I managed to leave all human element behind when I reached GUBEIKOU WALL , where I spent the night in one of the watch towers in a discreete company of bats. The red sunset and the orange sunrise were for sure the highlights of my China trip.
Great Wall is a peculiar phenomenon. Silent and absent-like for centuries, it was just an insignificant element of the landscape, cut through by developing infrastructure, often providing free building material to local farmers. A few dacades ago Chinese propaganda started making up for the years of negligence by giving some of the Great Wall stretches an extreme makeover. Today it resembles Frankenstein - majestic and awe-inspiring yet somehow lacking authenticity by its patchwork character.

* My dragon association turned out surprisingly adequate - the place where the Great Wall plunges into the Yellow See was of a dragon's head shape - nowadays completely ruined, recognisible only by name - Dragon's Head