I married an engineer. There. I admit it. It was never supposed to happen (I was obviously supposed to marry an Irish poet and live in a garret in Paris, but that’s hardly the point), but it did. And now I am stuck with a lifetime of talk about steel and bearings and cranes and all kinds of other stuff that I will never understand, mostly because I don’t really want to.

And so, when we started talking about changing our plans for China, it soon became obvious that we would have to go to the Great Wall. Not because it is a famous Chinese landmark and a national emblem, but because it is a famous ENGINEERING landmark. When we decided to go to Beijing instead, T got all hot and bothered about the prospect of being so close to a structure of such mammoth size and BLAH BLAH BLAH. (Keep in mind that this is a man who gets distracted when driving down the highway when he sees cool bridges. It is a terrifying experience, let me tell you.)

Because I am such a GLORIOUS wife, I gave him the Great Wall for Christmas. I also gave him the Great Wall because we are profoundly poverty stricken and carrying giant backpacks with no room for extra presents. So, T gets the wall.

We decided to do the walk from Jinshanling to Simatai. It was a 9km walk along the wall, which was only half restored. Psh, no problem! Anyone can walk for 9km, even me! After all, I climbed two glaciers of doom in New Zealand! Walking on a wall is EASY!

Would that this were the truth. It all started when we had to leave at SIX AM. SIX AM, PEOPLE! There is a reason the sun is not even awake at this hour! We climbed into a minubus, which took us to another minibus, which took us to the wall. We arrived two hours later. The two hour difference made absolutely no difference in the temperature, which was still arctic. We were immediately taken en masse to the bathrooms. I don’t know if this is too much information, but it is not an enjoyable experience using a squat toilet when it is 20 degrees. Use your imagination…that’s all I’m saying.

Upon exiting the toilets, we were immediately joined by a large band of local women. At first I thought they were going to work somewhere on the wall. I don’t know how I was so naive. They were coming to work us somewhere on the wall. They were our sellers for the day. They walked with us up to the wall, all yelling at each other in Chinese, and after a surprisingly difficult climb to the wall, they suddenly disbanded and assigned themselves to us. We were greeted by a pink-cheeked woman named Lim Pia (or some approximation thereof), who showed us some books on the wall and informed us that “At the end, you buy from me.” Deal. At least we would be spared the “you buy from her, you buy from me” nonsense.

And so we started walking. And oh my, was it pretty. Despite the frigid temperature, it was a perfect day. We were far from the ever-charming Beijing smog and could see for miles. The sun was shining and it was definitely crisp.

The wall…oh, the wall. This is the part you dont tell T–the part about how he was right. The wall was amazing. It wound up and down the hills like a crooked spine, for as far as we could see. The hills around us looked like a crumpled tapestry of purple and grey, making the wall stand out even more. The sky was perfectly clear, and about every ten feet for the first half of the walk, we felt the need to take pictures. It was freaking spectacular.

Also spectacular was the walking experience. At every tower, Lim Pia and her friends would update us how many more we had to go. There were 30 in total, and it would take us about 4 hours to walk it in its entirety. The Chinese women would patiently wait for the fat Westerners to catch up, chatting to each other in Chinese and occasionally offering to take a photo. These women do this walk every day. It hurts just to think about.

After the first towers, we noticed it becoming significantly less restored…as in, it was not restored at all. Giant bricks were lying willy-nilly all over the place, and there were big holes in the wall. There was a Danish family on the trip with us, and the mother had a really hard time getting up and down the hills and around the unrestored parts. It was lucky for her that two of the Chinese women had assigned themselves to her, and at every hill, these tiny old women would be dragging her up, holding her hands.

Halfway through, the locals told us they were leaving. It was time to buy. T and I bought a book, and Lim Pia literally ran away, calling to us that the rest was easy as she fled.

Lim Pia lied. About 3/4 of the way through, my good knee decided to rebel and become very, very angry. By the end of the walk, I was limping with every downward step. With about a half kilometer to go there was a zip line to the end that took people across the water to the car park. I should have take it, but I was afeered of death. So I kept walking.

At the end of the wall, before we even got to the zip line, T and I waited for the Danish woman to finish. We cheered her on as she sat down in exhaustion (her guides stayed on past the halfway point, but left her with about five towers to go). She looked at us and told us that she would rather give birth again than go through that walk. She was not kidding.

Despite the fact that it took me about two weeks to walk properly again, I’m glad we did it. I figure if it comes down to having children or doing the Great Wall, I’m off the hook! The wall only took four hours and crippled me for two weeks. A pretty good deal, compared to pregnancy and childbirth, I’d say.