Last weekend, I took part in the Hopkins Nanjing Center City Wall Walk, an annual tradition where students, faculty -- and anyone else who dares -- trek 20 miles in one day along Nanjing's 600-year-old city wall.

Nanjing was established as the capital of the Ming Dynasty by Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang in 1368. The city's topography is complex, with Purple Mountain rising in the east and the Yangtze River running from the northwest to the southeast.

Nanjing's 14th century architects therefore made use of the city's natural barriers to keep intruders out. When the 34-km wall was built, it was the longest in the world. Today, it remains one of the longest city walls in China and one of the best preserved. The Nanjing government has spent millions of yuan each year to restore this ancient treasure. (read more)

A bus dropped us off at 7 a.m. on the west side of the city, where our journey began.

As we passed through a park to reach the first section of the wall, hundreds of Nanjing's older residents were already well into their morning exercise routines.

The morning air was clear and cool. It felt wonderful to walk and take in Nanjing's lovely scenery. With the exception of our group and the morning exercisers, everything was very still, including the water.

About two thirds of the original wall is still intact. We sometimes walked on the wall, but mostly alongside it. (You have to pay admission to walk on some sections.)

The wall originally had 13 gates and more were added during the Qing dynasty. This is Zhonghua Ximen (Zhonghua west gate).

A good portion of the walk was navigating Nanjing's busy streets, trying not to get run over by cars and bicycles.

Other sections were shaded and beautiful, almost like the city and its traffic had melted away.

The wall was constructed with granite, rectangular stones and limestone packed together with broken bricks, gravel and yellow earth. About.com had this to add: "All the brickwork joints were poured with mixed lime, water in which glutinous rice had been cooked and tong oil because the coagulated mixture was very strong. That is why the city wall has stood for a long time."

Our walk leader did a superb job of keeping us all together. About 30 people started the walk at 6:30 a.m., with some classmates dropping off and others joining us along the way. We almost lost our group at this tricky section.

The home stretch! This area of the wall borders Xuanwu Lake. The tallest building in the distance is very near HNC (we walked back to school after the hike).

We stopped for a photo near Jiefang Gate with the city skyline in the background and Xuanwu Lake on the right.

Altogether, more than a dozen people finished the entire 20-mile walk. When we returned home just after 4 p.m., my legs felt like jelly. We all went out for a big meal to celebrate!

The Nanjing city wall has been an important backdrop for events in this historic city, from the days of emperors to the Japanese invasion in 1937. Even though I was exhausted, I finished the walk with a much deeper appreciation of Nanjing and the architects of its amazing city wall.

Tags: China, hopkins nanjing center, nanjing, nanjing city wall

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 29th, 2009 at 6:53 am and is filed under China, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.