WHS enthusiasts might be interested in details of the 2 “extremities” of the Great Wall at Shanhaiguan and Jiayagaun - called by the Chinese “First door under the heaven” and “Last door under the heaven” to indicate the passage away from/to the non-Chinese “barbarian” lands) respectively.

As indicated by other reviewers, the sections of the Great Wall around Beijing are very touristy and crowded (particularly with Chinese) and heavily restored. The Government has opened several locations to try to relieve the pressure from the “original” at Badaling and we have visited some of these on different visits. Each is certainly worth going to despite the carnival atmosphere.

The town of Shanhaiguan contains “The First Gate” but the true end/start of the wall is a few kms away on the shore of the Bohai Sea. It too is heavily restored but it is quite nice to literally see the wall going “into” the sea. This is seaside for the Chinese and it gets very crowded. We experienced a wonderful example of the need to “dot all the is and cross all the ts” (or whatever the equivalent is in Chinese characters) when our taxi driver from town explained that the price we had carefully negotiated was in fact only for 1 way! The Jinshan Guesthouse also holds our record as the dirtiest hotel in China. The uncaring, noodle slurping staff were quite happy to give us a bucket and mop for us to be the first people to clean our bathroom in weeks

Our preference as the most “atmospheric” location is at Jiayaguan. Not at the enormous reconstructed fort but a few kms away where the mud wall which extends from the fort ends in a mound above a ravine which drops down to a river – this is all that is left of the last watch tower on the wall. Beyond is desert as far as the eye can see. We took a delightful little 3 wheel taxi along dirt tracks and were virtually the only people there to sense the “end of the civilised world” (photo)

(Trivia Question :- Which is the “longest” WHS? Well the “length” of the Great Wall of China is stated generally as being around 6000kms although other estimates including all its many branches go as high as 50000kms! I have however had some difficulty in establishing just how far apart the 2 “traditional” extremities described above are (Some sources, however, extend the wall as far east as the Yalu river). Based on a great circle distance for 20 degrees of longitude at an average 40 degrees north these 2 points are around 2350 kms apart. The 2 furthest points of the Struve Geodetic Arc, newly inscribed in 2005, are stated as being 2820kms apart. So in terms of “straddling” the Earth’s surface it looks as if the Arc just gets it!)