Jinshanling Great Wall- Broken, but Original and Amazing 

To be honest, I prefer the natural scenery with clear water, clean air and green plants, rather than the man-made sites. Every time when I go to travel, I will go to the 'green places' first. But this time when I came to Beijing, my friend highly recommend the Great Wall of China and I accepted it.

The part he accompanied me to was not the popular Badaling, but the one in Jinshanling. He said Badaling was over touristy and we might not enjoy the Great Wall scenery freely. There were also several other reasons he chose Jinshanling: 1) the terrain slopes gently in that area, which makes Jinshanling easy to attack but hard to hold. In this case, the builder fully used the experience of the former and thought out many methods to raise the defensive capability at the same time. So, we could see many unique military facilities here like the connecting passes and towers. 2) the distinctive construction style: there are square, round and even shallow barbicans; meanwhile, the arrow towers could be divided into three-hole, four-hole and five-hole, etc. 3) Jinshanling was not so well-repaired, so it was more original and wild, did not like Badaling, which was well-preserved and much more liked newly-built Wall.

Jinshanling Great Wall

I did not know much about the construction thing, but I was really surprised by its appearance upon arrival. That's what I had expected of a historical site, no modern equipment, kind of broken… On the Jinshanling Great Wall, we could see the broken wall, worn road, weathering bricks in many places. It might not be good-looking, but it was what history should leave us.

Historical Wall

Tips: 1) the morning and evening scenery on Jinshanling Great Wall are most beautiful and good for photographing. BTW, May-October are the best time to shoot on this part of Wall; 2) to reach it, we took a long-distance bus from Beijing Dongzhimen Bus Station to Miyun county first, and then hired a van to the Jinshanling directly. It was difficult to find the bus there.