Great Wall

If you’re ever in Beijing, you have to see the Great Wall of China. The scope of these magnificent ramparts is astounding. The best is to climb on of the remote parts. Unfortunately, that was not in my itinerary and I climbed the relatively close Juyongguan section of the wall.

 

Great cost

The wall is astounding and covers over 5,500 miles. It was built and reconstructed over a couple thousand years with the most notable construction during the Qin (221 to 206 BC) and Ming dynasties (1368 to 1644 AD). It helped to defend China from Mongol and Manchu invasions from the north.

Building the great defenses came at a huge cost. It is estimated that 1/6* of the entire country died building the wall during the Qin dynasty. If that were to happen today in the US, that means that over 50 million people would have died (e.g., everyone in California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska). (* - It is hard to find sources that verify that number.)

It shows that brutality produces results. Other great architectural achievements like the Pyramids were made possible by the suffering and deaths of countless slaves. It seems that there are many successful people who pushed their people to the utter limit to accomplish great things. Yet, it simply isn’t sustainable.  As I wrote about earlier, the Qin dynasty, which built the wall and terracotta soldiers, didn’t last two decades.

At the bottom of the wall, there was a stray dog and the police guard did not want it scaring or biting tourists. So, he shooed it away in the most effective way he knew how: a fierce kick in the stomach.

Nonchalantly walking away

The American tourists were horrified; however, his brutality was an effective deterrent. The limitation of applying this to human examples is that humans are not dogs. While they can be temporarily contained and controlled by fear, they will eventually rise up and rebel and demand their freedom. The most difficult and most effective way to motivate people is through love.

I used to think that being a loving leader meant being nice, but that is way too simplistic. A great leader needs to have ambitious goals, challenge those he or she manages to be their absolute best, and hold them accountable when they fall short. Yet, there is a way to do it that is also compassionate and cares for others' long-term health and goals and love requires both discipline and empathy. I hope to be a manager that people enjoy working with, while helping them grow and develop in order to accomplish meaningful, difficult goals.

The climb

At the bottom of the climb are many tourists. It is no fun to slowly walk up steep stairs in a crowd of people with nowhere to maneuver. It was especially bad with the snow and ice on the stairs.

Luckily, the crowds thin after the first plateau as the old and obese turned around and went back down. After that, it was smooth sailing.

 

Overall, there were about seven guard towers to make it to the top. The whole climb was steep and I was exhausted climbing up the stairs. It made my respect for the Chinese troops grow tremendously as they did the climb daily in full armor and without the stairs being neatly cut for tourists.

Once you reach the watch post on the top of this picture, there are still a few more towers

The guard towers themselves were exceptionally steep as you can see in this comparison between my iPhone and one stair:

 

The wall continues all along the hill in the distance

Let It Snow

The day before I arrived in Beijing, there had been a snowstorm and the wall was coated with fresh powder.

 

As any true Minnesotan would have done, I celebrated reaching the top with a dive in the snow.

These kids thought it would be good idea to have a snowball fight.
Like noobs, they tried to defend the lower ground.

On the way down, there are two paths:

Two roads diverged in a wall, and I--
I took the one more travelled by,
and that is why I'm not in Mongolia