Jinshanling Great Wall

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The distance between Jinshanling Great Wall to Simatai Great Wall is the section that best preserved its original appearance in Beijing area. In this section ancient military installations are the most complete with solid constructions. Jinshanling Great Wall is the section foreign visitor most would like to hike. There are more foreigners hiking Jinshanling Great Wall than Chinese, said a local famer.

Advantages of hiking Jinshanling Great Wall: A. this section of Great Wall is almost without maintenance, including 24 look-out tower. It has preserved the original appearance 400 hundred years ago. B. This entourage is relative safe, and distance is moderate. The distance between Jinshanling Great Wall to Simatai Great Wall is about 10 kilometers, its take 4 hours to walk. C. Don’t like hiking other sections of Great Wall, visitors have to return back, the far they gone, the long distance thy need to return back. No backtrack is another advantage of Jinshanling Great Wall.

The Great Wall bears witness to their vicissitudes, and demonstrates the Chinese people’s hard working spirit, and the splendid culture and history of the Chinese civilization. The best place to take pictures of the Great Wall is not Badaling or Shanghaiguan, but Jinshanling Great Wall. It is famous among photographers. Many overseas visitors choose Great Wall from Simatai Great Wall to Jinshanling Great Wall because it is the best preserved stretch. People say that anyone who has climbed Jinshanling Great Wall is not interested in seeing any other part of the Great Wall, as it retains its original Ming Dynasty outlook, and so vividly reflects the full ethos of that epoch.

Many of the members in Great Wall Green Project Investigation Group who have walked the entire length of the Great Wall believed that Jinshanling Great Wall is the most beautiful section. Not having been fully renovated, parts of Jinshanling Great Wall are in ruins, so it has a more natural ambience than other stretches of the wall that have been completely rebuilt.

Jinshanling Great Wall is far less crowded than Badaling or the Shanhaiguan Great Wall.

The Jinshanlig Great Wall has more than 4 hundreds years’ history and with many destroys from both natural factors and artificial destructions, such as the earthquake and wars of ancient China. But they are almost in the original structure. Many treasures were discovered here and from which we can see the science and technology of certain dynasty. Five stone radiums with 2 kilograms of gunpowder were discovered in a watchtower which belong to the Ming Dynasty and passed more than 3 hundred years from now. They are now still can be sparked and put into use. There is some information on the Great Wall which is telling us the exact making year of each part of Jinshanling Great Wall.    

This section is featured by its wildness, ruined structure, well-preserved wall and the uniqueness. The hiking from east Jinshanling to the west Simatai which is about 12 kilometers will take you for about 4 to 5 hours. It would be the most challenging part of the Great Wall hike trip. In this section there are 30 towers 2 passes. The cable car is also available up to the Jinshanling Great Wall here but it will skip over 5 watch towers. You can see the beautiful scenery once you hike and will really enjoy the marvelous Great Wall.

Most of the watch towers on Jinshanling Great Wall have two tiers and two doors (east door and west door). But the Black tower has three tiers (underground, middle and upper). The Black Tower also has two doors but the difference is that the west door is underground door, which is leading to the middle and upper floors. If the underground is taken by enemies in a fight, the soldiers on the middle and upper floors still have an advantage to wipe off the enemies.

The name came from a legend. The legend says that an old general from Ningxia wanted to come here for building the Great Wall but his only daughter nicknamed “Black Girl” was worried and insisted to go with him. One day, the newly built tower was on fire and the “Black Girl” charged into the fire without hesitation but unfortunately, she dead in the fire. The soldiers were moved and rebuilt a new tower based on the original one and named the tower “Black Girl Tower” in memory of “Black Girl”. And the name is shortened “Black Tower” for generation and generation passed by.

This section of the Great Wall is about 11 kilometers (6.8 miles) of the total length and the covers an area of 32 square kilometers. The Wall is about seven to eight meters high and five to six meters wide, which is made of brick and stone. It is about 700 meters high on the top of which is standing Watching Beijing Tower from where you can have a bird-view of Beijing. There are more than 100 watch towers along the Jinshanling Great Wall with different structures and appearances. Some of the watch towers were store rooms to place food, hay and weapons. For there are relatively small size of tourists, it is a good place for climbing.