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"A great walk ... In heaven and a little hell" is how Sylvia Berjas-Morales, 69, described her journey along China's Great Wall in a poem written in French.
Berjas-Morales has traveled more than 3,000 kilometers along the wall since 2008, the year when Beijing hosted the Olympic Games.
"By walking along it, I can learn not only about the Great Wall but about the real China," she says.
Farmers fetch water from wells, plow fields with cattle and cook by wood fire - things that are never seen in Beijing or Shanghai, she says. "This is the very root of China. I hope more people can see this."
The idea of walking along the Great Wall occurred to Berjas-Morales in 1999, when she was a nurse caring for an Alzheimer's patient in Australia.
"The patient had been to China and kept telling me about the country," she recalls, adding he was so depressed when he realized he was going to lose his memory that he could not stop crying until Berjas-Morales mentioned "something very big and very important" - the Great Wall.
"I said to him: 'Max, if you stop crying, I will walk the Great Wall of China'," she recalls.
Berjas-Morales had remembered her promise in mind, but it was not a simple thing to make happen. In 2003, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. It took much of her energy and savings to fight the disease.
She finally left for China in 2007. In walking the Great Wall, she is raising funds for a cancer charity. The journey started at Yumenguan, in northwestern Gansu province, where the Wall dates back to the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD).
"It was amazing. It's incredible that's still there after all these years," she says, adding that was the first section of the Great Wall she had seen.
On her journey, she carried little candles with her and lit one every hundred kilometers to acknowledge the people who built the wall. "It was such an achievement. It deserves a little bit of respect."
Dating back to around 200 BC when the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC) had fortifications built to stop invasions by northern tribes, the Great Wall has been rebuilt many times. As most of the wall sections were built in remote areas, walking alone is anything but safe.
Near Gansu province's Anxi county, she woke up to find paw prints of wolves outside her tent. In the Gobi Desert with the daily temperature difference, she did not dare sleep at night. There was one time when she ran out of water and lost her way while looking for more water. "Luckily, a truck driver found me and helped me call the police," she says.
She has written poems on what she saw and how she felt along the journey, and plans to write a book.
"China is very big. It is not just Beijing, and it deserves to be known and to be seen," she says.
On her 70th birthday in November 2015, she plans to end her trip by walking around the Bird's Nest, which was the main venue for the 2008 Olympics.
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Sylvia Berjas-Morales poses at a section of the Great Wall in Huairou district of Beijing during her 3,000-kilometer journey along the Great Wall. Wang Peng / Xinhua |
