You can’t really go to China without seeing its wonder – the Great Wall. Here’s my experience of hiking the Jinshanling Great Wall, a less known section of the Great Wall of China. And how did I see the Great Wall for free?

Ever Heard of Jinshanling Great Wall?

Everyone is familiar with the Great Wall of China. But how much do you actually know about it? That it’s one of the New 7 Wonders of the world? That it’s always crowded? The funny thing is, the Great Wall is almost 9,000 km long – you know, hence the Great. Yet when most tourists come to China, they almost always head for the same part of the wall: Badaling. Badaling is the most popular part for several reasons – it is the part closest to Beijing, it has been completely restored and it was the first part of the Great Wall ever opened to tourists.

Naturally then, Badaling is always full of people. And there was no way I was going to Badaling! Why, when the Great Wall has so many other sections, maybe less known but not any less interesting (quite the opposite, in fact)?

After reading about all the different options, I decided to see the Jinshanling Great Wall. Jinshanling is slightly further but still accessible from Beijing. Of course, you don’t have tourist buses going there like in the case of Badaling which makes getting there slightly harder. Private taxis are expensive and I was not willing to go on a group tour…

Getting to Jinshanling by Bus

Luckily, I found a cheaper way to get to the wall: a public bus. Sounds easy? Remember it’s China we are talking about. I studied all the Internet instructions from other travellers on how to find the right bus and get to Jinshanling and came prepared with screenshots, offline maps and Chinese names on my phone.

If you would like to take the public bus from Beijing to Jinshanling, too, the instructions I followed can be found here and here. It costs about 20 RMB one way.

After walking back and forth around a tiny bus station at Wangjing West, showing people Chinese characters for “Jinshanling Great Wall” and “Luanping” and still not entirely sure where to find my bus, I took my chances and joined a queue of people boarding a bus nearby. The Chinese characters on the bus window indicating the destination didn’t look like the ones on my phone but a lady next to me nodded when I showed her where I was going…

And then, when it was my turn to get on the bus, the lady selling tickets simply looked at me and asked: “Jinshanling Great Wall?” in ENGLISH. For a second I thought I misheard. (You see, English in China is very hard to come by.)

Long story short, after a 90 min bus ride I made it to Jinshanling. I was the only foreigner on the bus but I had spent five weeks in China by this point so it was just no surprise to me.

The Great Wall of China for Free?

The bus dropped me off at a service station from which and you can either walk or take a taxi to the Great Wall. Of course I didn’t take a taxi.

Now we are getting to the part where I sneaked onto the Great Wall… (Did you only scroll down here to read this?? 😀 )

If you are here looking for instructions how to visit the Great Wall without paying, let me just make one thing clear: It was an accident! I didn’t pay because I didn’t want to pay. I just happened to not come across the ticket office on my way. Honestly.

I walked about 1.5 km towards the wall when I noticed I was approaching a “back entrance” on my map. I thought to myself: “Great, a shortcut!”, expecting to pay for the entrance once I reached the wall. It wasn’t until I emerged from the forest on the official path about 15 minutes later, right next to a “No visitors” sign pointing to the route I just came from, that I realised I had accidentally bypassed the ticket office. Turns out, you don’t actually pay up on the wall, but at the entrance at the bottom of the hill. Oops!

If you are wondering, the ticket price at the Jinshanling Great Wall is 65 RMB (about $10).

Welcome to the Great Wall of China

You see, you actually have to climb the hill to get to the Great Wall first. Because if you are building a wall to protect you from enemies and want to be able to watch them from watchtowers, you need to be very high up, right? That’s why the wall stands on the top of hills.

After a sweaty hike uphill with first glimpses of the towers appearing at the peak, I made it to the Great Wall! Despite the clouds (smog, more like) and hazy horizons, the views were stunning and I could see the wall snake around the hills into the distance. I have read Jinshanling is one of the most beautiful parts of the Great Wall and it’s easy to believe.

And best of all – the wall was almost empty! OK, not completely empty, there were a few tourists here and there but you can probably tell it was a very insignificant number just by looking at my photos.

I was greeted by a few ladies selling souvenirs on the wall who come up here from their nearby village every day. They showed me which direction of the wall was better to go and insisted on taking a few photos for me. One of them told me how she was selling souvenirs to pay for her children to go to school so I eventually decided to buy a T-shirt from her (I almost never buy souvenirs, but isn’t the Great Wall of China a good place to have a souvenir from?!). There were not enough tourists for them to make a lot of money and I thought of it as my redemption for not buying a ticket…

Hiking the Jinshanling Great Wall

The Great Wall at Jinshanling is only partially restored which I actually loved – it was more authentic to see some ruins of old watchtowers and it really made me feel the history of the place. At the same time, it made hiking the wall a bit more challenging, with loose stones on the way.

It was definitely not the leisurely stroll you would probably have at Badaling. Hiking the wall involved a lot of walking up and down, many stairs and was quite steep in places. My whole body was in pain the next day! Don’t forget there is no shadow on the wall and I definitely felt the powerful sun shining through the clouds. Bring sunscreen! I also managed to scratch my arm on the wall (and still have scars to remind me of that today, four months later) but it was all worth the experience.

While there were not many people on this section of the wall, I bumped into a group of Czech people hiking with a Chinese guide. I couldn’t remember the last time I had met travellers from my own country on my travels and found it hilarious to speak Czech on this unfrequented part of the Great Wall of China.

I kept walking on the wall and crossed over 11 watchtowers, which took about an hour and a half (and I stopped a lot to take pictures). When I reached the eleventh tower, there was a cable car to take you down to another exit. I just decided to turn around and walked back to where I started.

The Journey Back

The hike back was actually harder with more stairs up than down but I met almost no one on the way and had the amazing views all to myself for most of the time. When I reached the East Five-Window Tower where I began hiking earlier, I walked down to the East entrance & exit, right past the ticket office I didn’t see in the morning.

I would have happily stayed on the wall longer but there was another challenge waiting for me: catching the bus back to Beijing. I was back at the service station (you really can’t call it a bus station) before 3pm, went inside the little shop and with the help of my Google Translator I managed to book a seat on the 4pm public bus to Beijing (most likely the last bus of the day).

Then I just spent the one hour talking to an English couple who were also waiting for the bus and made it safely back to Beijing.

…and that was my Great Wall experience and definitely one of the highlights of my trip to China. Actually, seeing the Great Wall of China was my main motivation for visiting the country – and it didn’t disappoint! (Although China turned out to be so much more than just the wall.)

Karl Pilkington may think it’s just an “alright” Wall of China but I have to disagree. The Great Wall of China definitely deserves its name!

Is the Great Wall of China on your bucket list??

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