Of the many striking things in Peter Hessler’s terrific essay in The New Yorker, this one struck me most: “There isn’t a scholar at any university in the world who specializes in the Great Wall.” Several independent scholars, however, have taken an interest in the Great Wall of China, including a six-foot-seven-inch Harvard Law School graduate David Spindler, who has spent more than a decade hiking the wall, compiling information for what he hopes will be a comprehensive book. Hessler joined him for several wall treks, and his resulting story is typical Hessler: smart, dramatic and full of detail. 

Spindler hikes wearing an outfit composed of “a red-checked wool hunting shirt, a floppy white Tilley safari hat, high-end La Sportiva mountaineering boots, and large elk-leather gloves designed for utility-line workers by J. Edwards of Chicago.”

Hessler continues:

He looked like a scarecrow of specialty gear—some limbs equipped for hard labor, others for intense recreation. Over the years, Spindler had determined that this was precisely the right ensemble for the Great Wall, where thorns and branches are common. For a face mask, he’d cut a leg off a pair of sweatpants, scissored a round hole, and pulled it over his head. ("It covers your neck.") He wore polyurethane-coated L.L. Bean hunting trousers that had been reinforced by his neighborhood tailor. Denim patches covered the pants, like a friendship quilt linking Freeport and Beijing.

Hessler shows precisely why such an outfit works for the Great Wall, weaving stories of his own tough walks with Spindler—Hessler breaks a kneecap—with historical tales of Mongol raids in rugged lands and the Chinese efforts to thwart them.

Unfortunately, Hessler’s story isn’t yet online, though the New Yorker has posted an abstract. If you can read Chinese, go to www.thegreatwall.com.cn, where Spindler and other independent and amateur scholars trade research and stories about the Great Wall.

Photo by Jim Benning.

Related on World Hum:
* Peter Hessler’s Oracle Bones: Travel Book Among National Book Awards Finalists
* Peter Hessler on World Hum’s Top 30 Travel Books
* The Great Wall, Siem Reap, Stonehenge Getting Too Much Love