Of Mulan and Men: Climbing the Great Wall

Bring up the Great Wall of China in conversation and people might say one of the following:

• It can be seen from space with the naked eye (alas, not technically true)

• It’s a ruddy big, long continuous wall (whilst it IS ruddy big it is not a single wall but actually several disconnected sections)

• It’s heaving with tourists (it is in parts, although not the section we visited)

A fair proportion will picture the Disney movie Mulan. Memorably, the film begins with an animated attack at the Wall from the leader of the Huns, a fictionalised stand-in for Genghis Khan. The sequence will doubtless be restaged in live action for the forthcoming remake. As a huge fan of both the 1998 original film and martial arts movies in general, I am eagerly anticipating the film, which is released in Spring 2020.

Mulan is an empowering story of overcoming society’s expectations, particularly those surrounding gender. It’s a story that resonated with audiences in 1998 and is just as likely to connect with cinemagoers more than two decades later, when gender norms are still as rigidly, depressingly fixed. 22 years is clearly not long enough for meaningful social change. Then again, the ‘Ballad of Mulan’ has been told for over 1500 years in China. Whether based on a real-life figure or not, there is a need to tell this story, and it bears repeating.

Halfway up my climb of the Great Wall itself, all I had repeating in my head was the Disney musical’s catchiest song: ‘I’ll make a man out of you’. The deliciously ironic ear worm accompanies a training montage in which the eponymous heroine overcomes her own self-doubt, demonstrates great resilience and emerges as the ‘manliest’ soldier in the army training camp, showing the biological men how it’s done.

It’s the sort of motivating song you play when you’re on the last leg of a long run, not at the start. It’s what gets you home or sees you past the finish line.

So when I had it playing in my head after only half an hour or so of climbing the Great Wall, I suspected I was in trouble.

The decision to visit the Great Wall dated back several years. I had been to China three times already: twice with Antony and once when I was fresh out of university with a couple of friends. When my husband and I were planning another trip, I insisted we visit the Wall this time. Even if it turned out to be overrun with tourists like so many famous landmarks we’ve visited (see: the Empire State Building, Times Square, Piccadilly Circus, St. Mark’s Square (until 5pm), the bit of the Louvre with the Mona Lisa), we had to go, even if just for a few hours.

I had fleetingly researched whole holidays which involved hiking along the Great Wall, and even camping there (not an option: leaving aside the technical illegality of camping at the Great Wall, tents are anathema to me). We didn’t have time in this trip to spend several days hiking. In fact, with everything else we had planned we only had half a day to ‘do’ the Great Wall.

As we were staying in Beijing, we booked a tour to one of the nearest sections of the Wall, only 60km away from the capital city. I feared that being so close to a metropolis of over 21 million people would mean that we would have to squeeze our way along the wall, fumbling apologies in Mandarin, rather than taking great hiking strides. Happily, when we arrived at Juyyongguan, we found it practically deserted. Aside from a small car park, a ticket kiosk and a demure souvenir shop there were no signs that this was a major tourist destination. And the Wall was right there, stretching off to the right and the left, bridging a huge valley and threading along both sides for miles, disappearing to infinity.

Our guide told us we had around and hour and a half. This would not be long enough to walk the whole stretch, which actually formed a loop. To do so would take a whole day, or more. Therefore, we would have to choose a side: right or left. And even then we would have to be quick. Left was easier, being generally flat. Right was more challenging, with some inclines just the right side of ‘sheer’. Our guide warned us that climbing would mean slow progress. The Wall was a defensive structure after all and the steps had purposely been designed to be difficult to traverse. We saw what he meant: each step was a different height to the one that preceded it. Some were a couple of inches high, some were several feet.

Following the heroic example of Mulan, we channelled her indomitable spirit and headed right.

We couldn’t even see the top of the valley, but we were confident we could reach it and be back in time to not be left behind. Half an hour later we weren’t so sure. As the song goes:

I'm never gonna catch my breath / Say goodbye to those who knew me

Okay, a little melodramatic. But this was August in the early afternoon, in a valley which did a great job of trapping heat. Temperatures were in the high thirties (Celsius). We had one bottle of water between us which we consumed before getting very far.

Fortunately, there was a small shop around halfway up. We stocked up on bottled water (sorry environment) and ploughed on. Although we occasionally paused for quick photos, we had to be careful not to trip on the variously-sized steps, so our eyes were usually directed at our feet.

We eventually reached the top, less swift than a coursing river, without the force of a great typhoon. But we made it. We were men! Men inspired by the example of a (probably) fictional woman, humming a song written for a Disney musical and originally performed by Donny Osmond (that paragon of Alpha-manliness).