The Blue Wall of China

South of Yanshan, between Beijing and Chengde, the Great Wall of China runs through the North China Plain. What few people know is that between a crook in a river and a tight canyon pass, the Wall forks off into unplumbed lands. This is the Blue Wall of China, the branch I found myself lost on by happenstance.

I had walked the Wall for many days, from the touristy conflagrations around Beijing and then further north, when I saw it—out of the corner of my eyes was a speck of sky-blue, yet it wasn’t above me. I climbed, with difficulty, down the weather-beaten sides of the wall and walked through the brush to where the blue had come from. When I turned the corner of a cliff, there it was—the Blue Wall of China. It looked like the Great Wall, but blue.

It occurred to me at first that someone must have painted it this colour because it sparkled in the sunlight like a polished car, but as I reached it, it became apparent that the colour came from the stones themselves; they were lapis lazuli, and the great bricks of it ran, stacked on top of each other, far off into the horizon, up over the mountains to where it looked as though it blended with the sky itself. To spite the baking sun and the harsh reality of the plains, the stone was cool and smooth as a raconteur’s larynx. The “regular” wall was out of sight, hidden behind the rolling hills behind me.

I climbed over the parapet and onto the crenellated battlement. All the stones were so blue. It must’ve been the beginning of this section of the wall, and to my surprise, no one was there but my lonesome self. Supplies filled my backpack, and I felt I had stumbled upon something anomalous, so I walked towards the mountain without further thought.

My boots clinked on the stones with each step. The sun reached its zenith; it cooked the surrounding earth and the top of my head, but it was as though the Wall’s stones pushed away the defiling heat with a cooling effect. In front of me was a watchtower, and at steady intervals were more of them, all the way up the mountain. I entered the first watchtower; it was like the inside of an igloo. A disconnect took place in my brain as it tried to connect the soldering heat with the icy-looking interior. Outside the embrasures, the plains were plain, and I wondered where civilisation had run off to. Nothing was inside the tower.

I made my way to the next tower, and then the next. All the same, they were. The shade they offered between the walkways connecting them turned them into beacons of restitution. The incline grew steeper past every watchtower. I had undertaken a baton race with myself; for every watchtower, I handed the baton of perseverance to my other hand.

The foot of the Yanshan had monstrous toes, and its knees were no different. Its hips were a cliff and its navel a boulder; its chest was cosmic, and its shoulders perched. At the top of its head, the Blue Wall of China ran into the sky in a clash with infinitude. I rested between those toes in the shade of the final watchtower before the ascent, collecting the power of will and the clarity of mind to go on, when a Buddhist monk strolled past me. His maroon Kāṣāya flowed with the ripples of wind passing through the embrasures. He paid no mind to me, and neither did he stop for a rest; he walked upwards and onwards, and before I knew it, he had passed the knees.

The next time I stopped for a rest, another man entered my watchtower, but he wasn’t a monk—he was naked, wearing nothing but the robes of his airs, so it was difficult to tell what he was. Maybe he was nothing but a man. This man waited—like I had—and I knew it was time to go when he sat down, crossed his legs, and let his testicles flood across a defenceless blue brick. He didn’t seem to notice my presence. I left him alone.

The climb was arduous, but with effort, I made it to the cliffy hips. Here, another watchtower waited with a rough embrace. Splaying out on the bricky floor cooled my back. I fell asleep and slept for a while.

It was dark outside the tower when I woke, but from the Blue Wall of China there emanated a pulsing light which illuminated the travellers’ path. A woman was sitting in the corner, leaning against the wall. ‘Did I wake you?’ she said as I opened my eyes.

She was an outline in the dark, blue-hued room. Like the man from before, she was naked, but the bricks could lower their defences in her presence—and then I realised I was naked. Along with my clothes, my backpack was gone as well. Moonlight fell over my shoulder from the slit in the wall behind me.

‘How’s your journey so far?’ she said. Her voice was calm and reassuring, like the voice of a mother. I couldn’t make out if she was looking at me.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked her.

‘Up, as far as I can tell.’

‘For how long?’

She didn’t respond. She hugged her knees and crossed her legs.

‘I didn’t mean to come here,’ I said.

‘Few people do, I think.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Can’t you feel it?’ she said. ‘The vibrations in the stones, the shade of the towers…the path verging into the sky. It’s not for everyone.’

‘I guess you’re right,’ I said.

She stood and walked to the doorway leading onwards. ‘You coming?’ she said, looking at me over her shoulder.

I rose and followed.

Outside, the world below was gone. Stars lit up the sky above the mountain. The Blue Wall of China ran as an indigo serpent up Yanshan. She walked in front of me; the bricks’ pulses lit her up from beneath, making her shadows drape across her figure from her feet and upwards, counteracting the sun’s day job of making them fall from above. Her body swayed with every pulse of light. I tried not to stare too much, but it was hard since she was walking in front of me, and those shadows, and what they hid, kept yelling for my attention. ‘What’s your name?’ I said.

‘I don’t remember. Do you remember yours?’

My name was gone—I must’ve left it in a watchtower farther down the wall. ‘I guess not,’ I said.

We continued like this for five or six more towers; her in front, me behind. For every tower, every interval, I asked her another question about who she was, and with each answer she gave, I realised I didn’t know the answer to that same question myself, either.

What had her job been? She didn’t know and I couldn’t remember mine.

Had she been married? Who could tell? she told me. No ring on her finger and none on mine, either.

Had she had kids? I don’t even know if I had had kids—maybe.

What was her favourite dish? She imagined it might have been something layered—maybe cake or lasagna—but she couldn’t be sure. Myself? No idea. We weren’t hungry, so food wasn’t on our minds, anyway.

Had she been happy? She told me that was a good question, but she didn’t know the answer. I lied to her and told her I had been happy, but I didn’t know, either. I just didn’t know….

We took another break when we reached the cosmic chest, but we weren’t tired anymore—the farther up the mountain we got, and the more towers we passed, the lighter our legs and the more portable the weight of our fatigue became. It was as though we had climbed high enough to escape Earth’s gravity. This time, we sat next to each other. Our shoulders touched. We were naked and on display, but our skin, lit up by the lazurite, felt like clothing; either way, we had no shame, nothing to hide. We had hidden our indignity and embarrassment, too, in a previous tower.

‘We’re supposed to be here…’ I said, more to myself than to her. A star peeped through the embrasure before me, into the tower. It was far away, yet it seemed so close; like I could almost reach out for it, grasp it like a grain of rice between my fingers and roll it around my mouth, over my teeth and across the roof, with my tongue. The Star Sucker, they would call me.

After a while, she said, ‘I think so, too.’

‘I wonder how high up we have to go.’ I looked up the mountain but I couldn’t see the top. Its head was hiding somewhere between an instant and an eternity.

‘Could be up to us, don’t you think?’ she said.

‘I’d like to believe that.’

Our feet were gone up to our ankles; they had walked away from us. I hoped they stayed on the paved path since they wore no shoes and the brush around the wall looked spiky and rugged. We didn’t mind their departure—anyway, neither of us mentioned it. When we came to the shoulders, all our four legs had disappeared. Where could they have gone with no feet to lead them? Rolled down the mountain, I presumed—or slithered like snakes with only one vertebra. Now it was nothing but air below my waist. My crotch had skulked off, but maybe I didn’t need it after all. These disappearances raised the question of whether what we were doing could still be called “walking” or not.

When we reached the perching shoulders, we looked out at the horizon, leaning over the parapet. The Blue Wall of China lay before us, a remembrance of where we had come from—but no memory persisted. All of them were gone; I didn’t even remember how long I had travelled with her. Forever?

Now our stomachs said goodbye, and they didn’t rumble or tumble. All that remained were our breasts and arms and shoulders and heads. With these remains, we climbed across the face of Yanshan until we stood at the vertex of its head. I wanted to say I had the butterflies from what was to come, but then again, I had nowhere to put them—maybe that’s why my stomach left; It never cared much for butterflies, I told myself. We waved at each other, and then our arms flew away like featherless wings. She joked that this must be the birthplace of Chinese dragons because they have no wings, either.

Our two heads circled each other, and we looked into each other’s eyes. Our noses touched their tips together and our earlobes sang a song for each other. My chin felt cold, so she warmed it with her cheek. We kissed. The serpent kept rising above us, blue and blue and bluer still.

‘Shall we go?’ I said, and she nodded. Our heads bobbed up beyond the confines of the mountain and I don’t know for how long they climbed, rolled, turned, floated and bounced, but in the end, they, too, retreated into nothingness.

Even without a body or a form, we kept climbing, not knowing when the end would come; but all things end—perhaps even the Blue Wall of China.