Ever since I watched the first episode of An Idiot Abroad, I wanted to follow Karl Pilkington’s footsteps to the famous Chinese sites. He hated China and moaned throughout, basically just being very Karl, but the places he was sent were nonetheless impressive - perhaps just more colorful with his descriptions.

Qinghuangdao was the last place he went on the his trip, the place where the Great Wall meets the sea. Qinghuangdao has three primary train stations, Shanhaihguan, Qinghuangdao, and Beidaihe. The city itself is a rather small city in comparison to other cities in China but it is well-known among Chinese tourists because of its famous beach, Beidaihe. The summer meeting of the Communist Party takes place there and when Beijingers’ desire to vacation, it’s the chosen beach. It’s the best we have in the north and a rather easy day trip with the high-speed train so if you’ve got a day to kill and time to spend, why not spend some time by the beach?

Getting off at Shanhaiguan station, with little to no preparation, I decided to just follow the other tourists on the train and see where they walked to. I checked the map for the wall and it was less than a kilometer away so I just went with the flow and blindly followed a group of people. I didn’t really pay much attention at the distance we were from the beach, but we ended up at a random city wall, The First Pass Under Heaven.

Post-Covid in 2021, they’re rather xenophobic at the ticket office and foreigners have to prove they were in the country for a period, sign a separate piece of paper, show our passports (which the lady put surgical gloves on to touch) and caused a bit of a scene by having foreign visitors altogether. They were very unwelcoming and people ran away from us if we got close, haha. Ah well, tis time of Covid I supposed.

Anyway, the wall itself is not where the Great Wall meets the sea. It was a completely separate attraction but still part of the Great Wall. Shanhaiguan was built in 1381 and was built between Yanshan mountain and Bohai Sea. It’s around 1350 meters and part of the Ming Dynasty Great Wall but feels a bit more like Xi'an’s city wall. It has some cannons from that time period on display and some small displays of artefacts.

After opening a map application and realizing we were at the wrong location, we paid a taxi driver to take us to the attraction we had planned to see, The Dragon’s Head (about 6-7 km away from the city center of Shanhaiguan).

This place was much more foreign-friendly, had English speakers, and was clearly a big tourist attraction. No passport examinations or looking for stamps of when we entered the country, just straightforward and to the point. There honestly is not too much to see. It’s just a nice place to enjoy the blue water near a shipping port. You take a picture at the end of the Great Wall and that’s about it. There are some attractions nearby such as go-karts, a pellet gun shooting range, food stands and a paintball arena (which was closed in April) but seemed like it must be bustling in summer. Overall a 4/10 if I had to rate it but hey, you can see where the Great Wall ends….and with Karl’s logic, you can determine that when the tide goes out, you can just walk around so what the hell is the point of that.

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Shanhaiguan Dragon's Head