A Canadian in Beijing: The Wild Wall Will Not Be Tamed

by Ember Swift on

When I went to the Great Wall on that first weekend I arrived in China, I simultaneously learned about the “rest of the wall.” By this, I mean the “wild wall” that isn’t a tourist attraction but lies along the spines of mountains across China, crumbling and often forgotten.

National Geographic Adventure Magazine ran an article called “Astride the Dragon’s Back” (written by Matthew Power). My friend here loaned it to me after we returned from seeing that tourist section of the Great Wall. I read it twice. I was fascinated.

This weekend, a friend of mine took mercy on my country girl self and took me to the outskirts of Beijing so that I could breathe some fresh air. Our plans were simply to see green mountains, fresh water and breathe deeply. On Saturday morning, we were climbing the mountain roads just one hour north of Beijing on his motorbike and I finally felt the city fall away from my skin. The air was fresh and the view was breathtaking. I was laughing and singing out loud into the wind when even my laughter was replaced by a gasp at what I saw.

There, on the mountain, was the Great Wall of China, climbing like a stony vine up the ridge, sporadically spiked with watchtowers and jagged in its uneven state of deterioration.

I yelled into the wind and my friend’s ear, “Look! It’s the Great Wall!” He yelled back, “No, Ember, that’s just the wild wall. The Great Wall is over there!” and he pointed to where “Mu Tian Yu,” the tourist site that I visited two months ago is located a few miles away. I yelled back , “but that’s still the Great Wall and it’s even more gorgeous! No McDonald’s and postcard vendors!” and he laughed.

And then, suddenly, he slowed down, turned off the road and parked the bike. It turns out that walking up to the wild wall is very easy. You just park your vehicle, find a path and walk up the mountain! Some paths are more worn in than others. We found this out the hard way and had to descend once before finding a more worn way that didn’t require crawling through weeds and overgrown spiked bushes!

Fifteen minutes later in the 38 degree heat, sweating and winded from the climb, I was standing on the Great Wall of China… speechless. There it was, just stretching before me like an open palm of history and I was on its back, atop piles of stone that had long fallen in on itself and formed more of a rounded ridge than a defensive squared-off one.

It was solid, though, and felt safe to stand on. It had been trekked before. There was evidence of footsteps and rubbish by other curious hikers, which was the only sad fact to what was otherwise a glorious moment of discovery for me. The rubbish, I mean. Happily, though, the trash was just on the flatter sections that had obviously been used as picnic sites. When we walked along, it was just stone and greenery for “gongli” after “gongli” (kilometre after kilometre.)

The article I read two months ago spoke about the first non-Chinese person to trek the Great Wall, British ex-pat William Lindsay, and his non-profit organization called “International Friends of the Great Wall,” an organization that he set up to promote both the exploration and the preservation of the “vast, unreconstructed, overgrown sections that are free of tourist kitsch, trash, vendors, graffiti, and all the encroachments of modernity.”

The article explained that some of the really remote sections are under threat. Apparently, one section of the wall located northwest of Beijing was dismantled stone by stone to pave a local highway. It was a thousand yards in length. Furthermore, the tourist areas “have been rebuilt and paved over, essentially, with little concern for historical accuracy or respect for the wall’s landscape.”

When I read about these situations, I really craved the wild wall and what it would feel like under my feet or against the palm of my hand. I really wondered if I had felt the history fully at the tourist site. I even wondered if the stones under my feet had truly been ancient stones or if they had all been replaced to accommodate the excessive traffic at those sites. For example, I have heard that Badaling, the most popular location of the Great Wall, gets over 10,000 visitors a day.

So on Saturday when I stood there on that wild section of the Great Wall, I felt huge and miniscule at once; I felt vividly alive and simultaneously conscious of the dead under my feet in a more raw way than I had before. The dust and dirt between the stones was grey and brown and black and white and I couldn’t help but wonder if those white flecks were ancient bones. I knelt down and took a handful of dirt into my right palm and circled the colours with my left fingers. I still couldn’t speak. I just heard the wind. I just breathed time into my lungs through the scent of the nearby lilacs mixed with my own sweat.

Time is all we have.

After awhile, we decided to climb up to the closest watchtower. It took another fifteen minutes to get there, but we made it. Peering out those old windows into the foothills and valley below, I felt a solemnity with time. These old stone buildings were still standing and still telling their stories. They’re not going anywhere fast. I was reminded that the earliest fortifications were built in the 7th century BC. While I have no idea when these specific sections were built, they are still ancient to this Canadian! And, there’s fierceness in how solid the rock sits against the mountain. Resolute. Determined. Stubborn.

I felt myself flood with respect.

I also wanted to clean up the rubbish and wished I had brought an extra plastic bag or twelve. The place was littered with plastic bottles and garbage and cigarette butts, not to mention covered in graffiti.

The article explained that recent economic growth in the past twenty years has meant the advent of the first “Chinese hiker,” or city people (once having emptied the countryside for the city in hopes of finding urban work) now exploring the countryside again, this time as wealthy tourists. One of my favourite quotes from the article is this one: “It seems ironic that the city the Great Wall was built to protect is now, in a sense, its greatest threat.”

Environmentalism is not exactly thriving here, but Lindsay’s organization is trying to promote a sense of mutual ownership, conservation and stewardship of this huge piece of ancient history. And, really, in terms of the municipality of Beijing (which is about the size of New Jersey) we’re talking about four hundred miles of The Great Wall that line its northern mountains, of which only a few have been reconstructed for tourism. Constant preservation is impossible, but instilling a sense of respect and honour for such an important piece of history is not.

My friend, who is Chinese, had never seen the wild wall before. He stood there as amazed as I was. He, too, was silent. He told me it would not be his last visit to see the wall in its natural state, crumbling back into the chaos of nature where it began.

William Lindsay is quoted as saying, “The Great Wall is an entire landscape, not just the wall itself. Its greatness is in its wholeness, and every alteration, every tourist trap makes it less.”

I wholeheartedly agree.

A Canadian in Beijing: 798 Arts District Accepts the Cultural Baton

by Ember Swift on

The arts district of Beijing is called the “798” district. That’s its address, to be precise. It’s technically in “Da Shan Zi ???” (which is the area of the city) and this complex used to be a series of factories that have now all been converted to galleries and cafes. It’s quite beautiful and peaceful there and I have been meaning to tell you about it for a while.

My friend and I took the bus to the district. I don’t take the city buses here often because I frankly can’t figure them out. I’m sure they’re easy, but it’s confusing to me and I’d rather stick to the subways and taxis. Two out of three is not so bad, I say. Maybe I’ll work on understanding the Beijing bus system in my future, but not now. Anyway, this time it was fine because my friend is a Beijing expert and she knew exactly what bus to take, how much to pay and where to get off. Gotta love the escort service of seasoned ex-pats!

We arrived at “798” and I wasn’t sure what to expect. I have been through many gallery districts in North America, but I wasn’t expecting this labyrinth – a maze of alleys where any possible door could lead to another display of daring sculptures, huge paintings or strange installations of giant eggs or huge wax sculptures of naked men in the act of urination. I appreciate visual art but I’m not always a contemporary art lover, I must admit.

What I found especially beautiful about this area, architecturally, were how the above-ground pipes combined with the trees to form what felt like a living organism. The pipes were the veins and the trees were its limbs and the buildings housed the heart – the art. These pipes connected all the buildings and were obviously designed this way during the industrial activity of these old factories. Now, I have no idea If these pipes are still in use, but they seemed mythical somehow as they stretched above our heads and linked it all into one cohesive artistic force. If nothing else, may this be their perpetual use.

We turned a corner and came upon what my friend told me was a famous installation here in Da Shan Zi. It sits inside a circular, glassed-in, gazebo-style structure. It’s a series of posters that use very famous communist imagery like the face of Chairman Mao, the star motif, the colour red, large lettering, etc. These images are combined with the logos and slogans of famous brands like McDonald’s and Heineken as well as their logos and slogans. To me, this combination embodies all that China has become in its modern identity as a communist-capitalist country. Striking to see how branding exists in both a political movement and capitalist advertising. Both are so insistent. Both have spent time being ever-present and solicitous in this society. Communism is currently handing over the baton to capitalism and I feel as though this era is that moment of transfer. In my opinion, this art captures this perception precisely.

In one gallery there was a display of mops piled high all together. Yes, I said “mops” – the kind of mops that you’d use to mop a floor. These were all different brilliant colours, however. While it looked colourful and festive, I didn’t understand it until I looked at its reflection on the white wall. With a specially angled light pointing at it, it cast the shadow of a person’s profile with a huge mohawk, fittingly in black and white (of course, considering it was just a shadow). The artist had depicted something so everyday in a colourfully visible and elaborate way while something so unusual here which is commonly so colourful and elaborate (i.e. a punk hairstyle, which is growing in popularity, by the way) was muted and in the background.

The old begets the new.

Such is this entire district. Crumbling factory walls housing brand new ideas. Rusty pipes casting their reflection on shiny gallery windows. What used to be everyday here has now become a shadow. What is new and emerging is what was once just a shadow of a thought during the Cultural Revolution.

(Speaking of which, taking photos in art galleries is usually against the rules in Canada. Not so here. All photography was fine. This photo does not do the installation justice, but at least it gives you some idea.)

But, what makes me terrible as an art gallery attendee is that I did not take down the name of this artist, nor the gallery. I walked aimlessly and without my “investigative / photo journalist” hat on. I didn’t write anything down that day, actually. I just shot the odd photo and enjoyed the directionlessness. That’s just the way it was.

I did notice that many of the galleries are owned and/or staffed by non-Chinese (mostly white) people. There was a huge concentration of non-Chinese faces here, in face, which made me wonder how much this area caters to the ex-pat scene and tourist community as opposed to the local Chinese arts scene.

We didn’t stay for long but it felt like an important district to visit here in Beijing. I left joking that at least now I can tell everyone that I’ve taken in “some culture”! The joke is of course because this style of gallery is so very European or North American whereas the streets are where the Chinese culture sits fully and completely in every moment.

Leaving those busy streets for this quiet (and sometimes posh) gallery district was choosing to leave the inherent culture of what Beijing has to offer in its every breath. Instead, this 798 district “culture” is about taking in a new community, a new area, a new form of artistic expression here in China. And in its newness, it too has become part of what modern culture is here in Beijing – a small part, but still part of the culture of this city, nonetheless. So, I suppose that there’s no “leaving” of one kind of culture to take in another being done here; it’s more of an addition to what already exists. . . or, an extension into yet another definition of what this culture is.

Another leg in the race?

China’s joined the contemporary art relay.

And now, contemporary Chinese artists are starting to establish a global presence thanks to this 798 community, this movement, this newness. I’m sure their profiles will only continue to grow.

(And perhaps that’s what the egg is trying to tell me. . .)

One for the Road: Ireland’s Literary Revival

by Kelly Amabile on

I’ve already mentioned how much I love the Roaring Forties ArtPlace series, but I won’t apologize for saying it again. The latest creative guide in this fantastic alternative series is A Journey into Ireland’s Literary Revival by R. Todd Felton. Instead of focusing on the life of one artist in a particular city, this unique guide takes a look at an entire group of writers and their individual relationships with various nooks and crannies of the entire Emerald Isle.

Felton takes the authentically Irish literature of writers such as W. B. Yeats, Lady Augusta Gregory and Sean O’Casey and uses it as a tool for exploration. This historic literary travelogue takes readers to places like Galway, Mayo, Sligo and Dublin. And along the way makes visits to the cottages, castles, theaters and pubs where some of the country’s finest writers shaped a vision of Ireland. This is a nice series for armchair travelers looking to bypass logistical details, and a perfect fit for literary fans who wish to see the country from a cultural perspective.

Famous Tourist Site Frauds: Where “Original” and “Authentic” are Blatant Lies

by Neil Woodburn on

There is nothing more powerful than standing in a spot where some famous historical event occurred, surrounded by exactly the same objects as were there hundreds of years ago.

Tourism’s greatest fraud, however, is that so many historical places have been so thoroughly renovated or rebuilt that one really wonders what is real anymore.

I first ran across this in Warsaw. Wandering through the UNESCO Old Town, I was hit with an odd feeling of disconnect. The buildings all appeared very old and beautiful, but wasn’t Warsaw flatten during the war? The reality is that Warsaw’s entire Old Town was completely rebuilt like some type of Disneyland. Sure, they did an outstanding job, and replicated it almost perfectly based on photos taken prior to World War II, but that sense of history just isn’t there. In fact, one could argue that the entire Old Town is a bit of a fraud.

With the recent fire on board the historic Cutty Sark, journalist Nick Trend began to wonder what exactly it was going to be like when it was rebuilt and that sense of standing in the middle of history becomes lost amongst 21st renovations (much like the HMS Victory, he points out–a historical boat in which only 17 percent of the original wood remains).

As with the Warsaw example, the Cutty Sark is not the only famous tourist site claiming to be the real thing. Trend has put together a rather eye-opening list which sadly undermines a handful of sites I’ve visited in the past under the assumption that I was gazing upon the real deal–not some recently painted or renovated replica.

The most striking example was the Parthenon in Athens which actually blew up in 1687 and has been completely rebuilt. Had I known this at the time when I visited, it would have gnawed away at the back of my mind and detracted from my experience.

So, under the premise that ignorance is bliss, I would recommend that you do not click on over to Trend’s article detailing Ten famous buildings and artworks that are not quite what they seem. If, on the other hand, you are a seeker of truth, check it out and be prepared to be slightly saddened.

Dr. Warmlove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Climate Change

by Erik Olsen on

The panic and mayhem that seems to surround global warming sometimes gets so shrill you’d think the world was going to end. And maybe it will. For some people.

But for others, global warming could be a boon. Once icy climes could turn positively cozy, and just imagine what that will do for real estate values. So you see, there is a bright side.

And perhaps no one sees that bright side more than the folks living in Greenland. Yes, you know, Greenland. It’s the place that’s all white. Though perhaps not for long. And the people there are not very green either, in fact, according to this piece in the Washington Post, they seem to be cheering on the arrival of climate change. “It’s good for me,” said Ernst Lund, one of 51 farmers raising sheep on the world’s largest island. “I can keep the sheep out two weeks longer to feed in hills in the autumn. And I can grow more hay. The sheep get fatter,” he said. Now that’s optimism. And its not just the sheep that are enjoying the rising temps. The cod are too. Cod have been in serious decline all over the globe, but particularly in once thriving fisheries like the Northeast US. And, says the story, seals are now easier to reach to kill for grub. The list goes on in this fascinating, sometimes uplifting (in an irony-laden Don DeLillo way) piece.