Brentwoodian 2019

23 China In October 2018 Mrs Rodgers led a trip to Beijing, accompanied by Dr Evans and a group of Sixth Form students, only some of whom were studying Chinese. During the week-long visit the group made the trip to The Great Wall. This is what Dr Evans wrote following the visit: Another morning, another trip: without the Great Wall, what was it all for? The one site on the tour we’ve known about since we were seven: The Great Wall of China - that and the Pyramids and Stonehenge. Emblems of time and vanished antiquity. Someone raised the old thing about it being the largest man-made thing on earth – it may be that, and so big you can see it from space. According to Tim Peake, you can if you know where to look, and look really hard. But not from the moon. I can see it from the bus, though, ten minutes before we arrive. The surroundings are mountainous, hills steep and bare, a kind of sparse scrub, and cut frequently with run-off valleys, v-shaped scorings in the earth. And then we see it, a line snaking over the horizon, little boxy forts spread out along the length. It looks exactly as it has always looked, in every picture book from when we were children. Endless, appearing over the edge of a hill from nowhere, and disappearing over another hill just as it came. And that’s part of the issue: it’s so familiar it’s hardly new, not a surprise. There’s an inevitability about the mundane ordinariness of the car park, the shuffling, revving coaches, the tourists disembarking, oohing and aahing, pulling on their backpacks, their sunglasses against the glare, tipping up their plastic water-bottles before setting off up the hill. There it is, grey and monolithic, sharp-edged as though drawn with a ruler, - which in a way it was. This section has been restored: an impressive job, the stone of the wall itself all pristine. This is a smart wonder of the world, though up close the pointing between the bricks is crude, breaking away so you can’t tell which is modern and which is original. The Chinese talk about ‘climbing’ the Wall. In Britain we talk about ‘walking’ the Wall when we mean that thing built in the reign of Hadrian. But climbing is right. The steps are uneven. How big can you make a step before it’s no longer a step, or how small can the riser be? Well, it seems that two feet is reasonable, or one inch. Sometimes one, sometimes another. Often several two-footers one after another. That’s when the climb is tough. It’s a long climb if you’re not used to mountains. If you are, it’s easier than mountaineering. Every step is more or less level, which makes it less of a scramble. It’s giddying. You have to watch every time you put your foot down, you really don’t want to tumble, and if you did you’d take a dozen other people with you. It’s crowded, but not so much as Tiananmen, and the crowd is cosmopolitan - American, Canadian, French, German, Italian, the usual crowd at international sites. It’s like this at Stonehenge, and cameras everywhere, and conversations easily struck up with someone from Ohio, who’s keen to tell you that this is a trip of a lifetime, or equally, that it’s another of the Wonders of the World to cross off from their list. The mood is actually quite jolly, everyone joined in the test of their physical stamina. And as the weather is fine, everyone’s happy. No one falls, no one staggers. Some sit down in the middle of the steps while one line goes up on one side, while the other comes down on the other. The press of people behind pushes you onwards and upwards. It’s a bit like any castle anywhere: battlements and stone, and impressive, commanding views along valleys, so it’s easy to see the strategic advantage. Wind on round the corner, and try to imagine what it must have been like for the soldiers stationed along here. Ghastly in winter, the steps utterly treacherous in ice and snow. How would one fight along its length when every footstep is uncertain? No answer. The walls of the watch- stations are a metre thick, the enclosed rooms featureless and bare. Surely there must have been fires in here at some point. The views are truly gorgeous, the Wall completely photogenic; it’s impossible to take a bad photo along here, and eventually even though we’re only on a stretch that’s less than a mile long, the scale begins to sink in. The work to build even this much is unimaginable, the power of the Emperor to say build it is humbling. This is The Wall for the tourists, and this bit is about 500 years old. Further out, to the west and the north, thousands of miles away, originally joined in unbroken line, the Wall is tumbledown, a ridge in the ground, half covered with sand, and I know the archaeologists love it. And the wall was around for a 1,000 years before this section which was built at the same time as the Forbidden City. The Emperor who caused the Wall to be built also commanded every book before his own time to "The Wall is the opposite of a maze: it goes one way only, straight on, up and down, over every obstacle, and it’s this obstinacy that also leaves an impression: the sheer determined, unstoppable will of it all."