Visiting the Great Wall of China
Written by Drew Descourouez
As our bus eased into a remote parking space, our tired but tenacious clan roused themselves. We were finally here – we’d arrived at the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall of China.
We proceeded down a long road lined with street vendors before beginning our steep climb up towards the Wall. The climb was tough, but it made reaching the top even more rewarding. I couldn’t help but think at how the cream colored stones seemed to stream out of the vegetation like a massive ribbon, tightly sewing shut the border of ancient China.
It was amazing to touch something one has only read about for a lifetime. Somehow no history class can quite compare to the feeling and smell of those stones. There was something within them and beneath them; something deeper, stronger, older than textbooks could ever quite capture.
We walked along the parapets happily shooting pictures rather than arrows, a true testament to the ephemerality of war. This wall could now be a place of wonder and appreciation, rather than of war and apprehension.
I marveled at the graffiti, names etched and drawn everywhere in countless different languages. Why? I wondered that perhaps even this demonstrated the desire to be part of something great, something awesome and profound.
I was amazed how the wall sloped with the mountains. The millions of stones so solid and yet apparently flexible, a reminder of the tremendous power within a cohesive and constructive group of individuals.
Supposedly, the wall was designed to keep outsiders from overtaking the kingdom. But if this wall had been built because of conflict, what was the monumental equivalent in terms of love and peace? I thought of Free The Children, and ME to WE and WE Day. Tremendous testaments to the world’s goodness, to compassion and the colossal power of young people. Perhaps we have indeed begun to build something as great as this historic wall, but for far different reasons.
This wall was an enormous monument of both human potential and human pain. Old greatness. Standing on the elevated steps of history, I looked around at my new friends from all over the world and smiled. Perhaps we were part of a new greatness.
We looked over the wall toward the future that we hoped to build. A future for humanity that would require even more sacrifice, discipline, ingenuity, and dedication than our past. But a future that just might hold the greatest examples of peace, love, and hope, our world has ever known.
Find out more about ME to WE’s youth delegation on the ground at the the Nanjing 2014 Youth Olympics here. And check out our blog regularly at www.metowe.com/blog to read updates and follow @MetoWe and @CraigKielburger on Twitter and Instagram for the latest news and photos as they happen in Nanjing.
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