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Mutianyu is 1 1/2 hour bus ride outside Beijing. The most accessible and the most spectacular of the 3 Great Wall destinations outside Beijing. Very well maintained. Two ski lifts and one alpine slide provide easy up and down transportation. It takes less than 15 minutes to walk up the footpath to the bottom of the Wall. This section of the Great Wall has been restored from the one built in the Ming Dynasty around 1500 A.D. It was built as much for function as for aesthetics. Usually, battlements were built on top of the parapet on the outer rim for defensive purpose. But here battlements were also built on the inner rim for decorative purpose. The maximum length of the Great Wall extended to 3915 miles. The Great Wall was not only a massive defense system. It was also the world's longest and fastest east-west foot expressway capable of moving a lot of people over rough terrain quickly and comfortably. The average height of the Wall is from 17 to 33 feet and the width from 16 to 26 feet. At the top there are parapets on each side with a roadway in the middle. About every 462 feet there is an observation tower. The immensity of the work and the hardship involved in this enormous undertaking are unthinkable. In ancient times, there were no cranes, no powered transportation. How did the construction workers move big stones each weighing more than a ton to such mountainous regions and erect them in such a big number? One wonders what the opportunity costs of this project might have been. Ironically, the Great Wall was unable to keep out the Mongols and the Manchus when China was internally weak. It reminds me of the fall of the Soviet Union in spite of her immense nuclear arsenal. These photos were taken in mid October when the foliage was about to turn. It was a hazy day making distance shots extremely challenging. But it was a relatively cool day for walking. Note that there are no rest rooms along the Great Wall. But at the entrance downhill, I found the cleanest and best-smelling pay rest room (4 US cents) at any public places in Beijing. It was definitely up to world-class standard. No soap though. K. K. Fung
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