Local area information

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Shuitou Village is an isolated farming settlement that is now starting to empty out. On our first visits it was difficult to reach due to a rough and rocky road, and the village was rustic to the point that it made Big Boss Xiran feel like she was back in 80s-era China. The road was fixed up in the 2010s and it looked like the village might develop a little, with a focus on guesthouses and weekend stays. But overall the village is just too hard to get to. So it’s kind of like a time capsule—a visit here will show you a much older side of China’s countryside lifestyle.

A visit here will also show you some unique Great Wall.

The Great Wall at Shuitou is at the western end of the long line of Great Wall that starts at Shuiguan and passes through Badaling, Shixiaguan, Big Camp Plate, and Zhenbiancheng. It’s not exactly the fully westernmost part of Beijing’s Ming Dynasty Great Wall—there’s some more Ming Great Wall further out in west Mentougou, and Shuitou is actually in Hebei Province—but this main line of wall does stop here, and there are a lot of mountains between Shuitou and the next parts of Great Wall.

It’s also some of the highest wall in the Beijing area. Up by the mountain-top fort the elevation is around 1,560m above sea level. That’s similar to the wall at Huangcaoliang in Mentougou (also 1,560m-ish), and significantly higher than the ‘High Tower’ (1,440m).

The mountain-top fort is also an uncommon find. Usually the forts are down in the valleys, where they’re easier to supply. The other mountain-top fort in the Beijing area is the one by Nine-Eyes Tower, at the Jiankou Great Wall. The fort here at Shuitou is smaller than the Nine-Eyes Tower fort. It’s also much more difficult to get to—either a steep climb up the wall, or a long hike up the valley. (On this hike we’ll go up the valley and down the wall. You can decide which you’d prefer if you were doing a supplies run!)

The wall we’ll be seeing on this hike has the look of early Ming-Dynasty-era Great Wall. It’s built mainly with rocks and stones, and in a few spots it’s still in good condition with fitted-stone crenellations. We’ll see the foundations of a few ruined towers, which might have been added later in the Ming Dynasty. (The sign of later Ming construction is often brickwork. We won’t see a lot of brickwork during the hike, but in Shuitou Village we can spot a lot of vintage bricks—probably not a coincidence.)

The wall dips down into a valley, and then goes up the other side. In the valley is the remaining foundation of a large fortification. There is an arched gate in the foundation, and you can imagine that there would have been a large tower on top. This valley was an important location in the Great Wall that defended Beijing—a little bit further up the valley is a dip in the mountains, and on the other side of the dip is a broader valley that eventually opens up on the Beijing side of the mountains. That broader valley was one of the easier ways through to Beijing, and there are several larger forts along the way. On the other side of the Shuitou dip is the Zhenbiancheng Fort, a little further north of Zhenbiancheng is Hengling Fort, and on the Beijing end of the passage is Baiyanggou Fort.

The hike

The hike begins with a walk that follows farming tracks in the fields around Shuitou Village. The fields fill the flatter ground at the foot of the tall mountains behind the village. We’ll be looking for the apricot orchard that marks the beginning of the valley trail up to the Great Wall.

Once we’ve found that orchard – very easy to spot when the flowers are in bloom! – we’ll start our hike up into the mountains.

It’s a long, steady climb with just a few steep bits. The first part is in a rocky valley where we’ll cross some slips and washed out sections. Further up, we start working our way up into the forest, leaving the valley floor and taking a winding path through the trees.

At the top, we’ll arrive at a clearing on the ridgeline, which is where we’ll find the remains of the old fort, and the beginning of the Great Wall. We’ll take a longer break here, with the option to make a short detour over to a repaired gate that’s also the back door of a far-off canyon scenic area.

The next part of the hike follows the Great Wall, first up towards and around the local peak, and then down the ridge and into the valley.

To begin with we’ll be on and off the Great Wall—mainly because this first part of wall is built between crags and cliffs, but also because we don’t want to get too close to those cliffs! (There’s a drop of 100m+)

On the other side of the crags and cliffs we’ll be able to walk on top of the wall and follow it all the way down to the bottom of the hill.

We’ll take another quick break at the bottom of the hill to check out the remains of the fortified pass, and then we’ll hike out along dirt roads back to Shuitou Village to finish.