Mutianyu

The Great Wall

Mutianyu Village is located in a ravine at the base of the Yanshan Mountains, approximately 70 kilometers to the northeast of Beijing. Two facts of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) history made this location particularly auspicious. The first was Ming enthusiasm for wall building, motivated in large part by a persistent fear that the Mongolians, whom the Ming had defeated in order to become the next ruling dynasty of China, remained a formidable threat to their grip on power. The physical space buffering the divide between the Han Chinese and Mongolian civilizations thus became prime building ground for defensive walls to keep the Mongols out.

The second fact was that in 1402, the Yongle Emperor usurped the Ming throne and subsequently returned the capital city from Nanjin in the south back to Beijing, This development elevated the strategic importance of Great Wall sites closest to the capital as a last line of defense against a Mongol invasion.

The Village

Leaving the Great Wall site, the view of the village is framed on both sides by mountains and hillsides that are sprinkled on both sides by mountains and hillsides that are sprinkled with ancient pines and sliced into bits of terrace just wide enough to accommodate a pair of apricot or chestnut trees. The main road that serves as the primary vein of village life snakes its way down into the ravine, as if someone started drawing an 's' and forgot to stop.

To the east of the main road, smaller dirt roads spread like fingers with houses at the end of their tips. To the west, the much flatter terrain permits a horizontal clustering of homes arranged in maze-like fashion. Some of the homes are coated with a thin layer of whitewash with bits of bare brick showing through in spots, and their facades are adorned with small garden patches fronted by doorways lined with long red strips of glossy paper whose bulbous gold-coloured "Good Fortune" characters become distorted as the corners start to peel away.

Mutianyu: Off the Great Wall- E. Williams