The Great Wall of China: Walking the Dragon's Spine

The Great Wall of China is not a single continuous wall but a series of fortifications built, rebuilt, and extended over more than two millennia by successive Chinese dynasties. The earliest walls were built in the 7th century BC, but the most substantial sections were constructed during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), which built or renovated over 8,850 kilometres of wall across northern China. The total length of all walls built throughout history, including branches and parallel sections, exceeds 21,000 kilometres — a distance equivalent to half the circumference of the Earth.

The Jinshanling section of the Great Wall, 130 kilometres northeast of Beijing, is widely regarded as the finest section for hiking — a 10-kilometre stretch of Ming-dynasty wall in varying states of preservation, from fully restored towers to crumbling battlements being reclaimed by the forest. The hike from Jinshanling to Simatai, which takes four to five hours, passes through a landscape of extraordinary beauty — the wall undulating over ridges and through valleys, with the mountains of Hebei province stretching to the horizon in every direction. The autumn colours, when the forest turns gold and red in October, make this one of the most beautiful hikes in China.

The Mutianyu section, 70 kilometres north of Beijing, is the most popular alternative to the heavily touristed Badaling section and offers a good balance between accessibility and authenticity. The wall here is well-restored and runs along a ridge with views in both directions, and the cable car and toboggan run that serve the site make it accessible to visitors of all ages and fitness levels. The Gubeikou section, near Jinshanling, is one of the least-visited and most atmospheric sections — a stretch of wall that has been left largely unrestored, with watchtowers in various states of ruin and the forest growing through the battlements.

The construction of the Great Wall was one of the largest engineering projects in human history, requiring the labour of hundreds of thousands of workers — soldiers, peasants, and prisoners — over centuries. The wall was built from whatever materials were available locally: rammed earth in the arid northwest, granite and limestone in the mountains of Hebei and Liaoning, and fired brick in the sections closest to Beijing. The watchtowers, spaced at intervals of one to two kilometres along the wall, served as signal stations — fires and smoke signals could relay a message from the frontier to Beijing in a matter of hours.

The strategic effectiveness of the Great Wall has been debated by historians for centuries. The wall was never a single impenetrable barrier — it was breached repeatedly by nomadic peoples from the north, most famously by the Mongols under Genghis Khan in the 13th century and by the Manchus in 1644. Its primary function was probably not to stop invasions outright but to slow them, channel them through controlled passes, and provide a platform for the rapid deployment of troops along the frontier. The wall also served as a road — the top of the Ming-dynasty wall is wide enough for five horses to ride abreast — and as a customs barrier controlling trade and migration.

Beijing, the nearest major city to the most visited sections of the Great Wall, is one of the great cities of Asia — a metropolis of 21 million people that combines imperial grandeur with rapid modernisation. The Forbidden City, the imperial palace of the Ming and Qing dynasties, is the world's largest palace complex, with 980 buildings on a 72-hectare site enclosed by a moat and 10-metre walls. The Temple of Heaven, where the emperors performed annual ceremonies to pray for good harvests, is a masterpiece of Ming architecture set in a park of ancient cypress trees. The hutongs — the narrow alleyways of traditional courtyard houses — that survive in the neighbourhoods around the Drum Tower offer a glimpse of the Beijing that existed before the 20th century.

The best time to visit the Great Wall is in autumn (September-November), when the air is clear, the temperatures are comfortable, and the forest around the wall is at its most colourful. Spring (April-May) is also excellent, with wildflowers on the hillsides and fewer crowds than in the summer peak. The summer months of June to August are hot and humid, with frequent thunderstorms, and the wall can be extremely crowded at the popular sections. Winter visits, from December to February, offer the extraordinary sight of the wall covered in snow, with very few other visitors — but the temperatures can drop to minus 20 degrees Celsius, and some sections may be closed.