Memoirs of Lloyd Moss: 1927
One other event that should be recorded was our trip to the Great Wall about twenty miles north by railroad. The Peking-Mukden Railroad ran through Chinwangtao and there was a dinky little station building all by itself between the town and the sea cost. Someone in the ship's personnel office bought the tickets for our liberty party and on the proper day we were waiting at the station well before the eight o'clock scheduled departing time. Someone knew in advance about our picnic because along came a couple of enterprising Chinamen selling bottles of champagne and the usual open top 5-gallon Standard Oil cans with cracked ice in them. (Italian Swiss Colony "Golden State" California champagne). 1 pt. 10 fluid ounces. The price per bottle was 1.80 Chinese Mex dollars, approximately .60 in our money. Where they got either the wine or the ice I'll never know. Maybe from the restricted British colony located around the point of land from where we were anchored. Anyway they soon sold out their entire stock and everyone was pretty happy when a train appeared about 8:15 but not for long because it turned out to be a freight. So we waited. After half an hour another freight came along much to our disgust. So with the assistance of the champagne we all resolutely made up our minds that we would get on the next train no matter what it was. At 9 o'clock along came a train composed mostly of the low-sided wooden freight carriers loaded with red bricks. It didn't even stop but was going slow enough so that we all piled on champagne buckets and all. As you can imagine we were all pretty merry by that time anyway and some of the fellows took to building high chimneys out of the bricks. When the train went around a curve naturally some of these chimneys toppled over and the last we saw as we went along were Chinese farmers running from their fields to gather up this great bounty that fell their way.
We got off the train at Shanhaikwan, a little walled city built up against the Great Wall near where the latter meets the sea. We were met by both rickshaws, men and donkeys for hire. It was quite apparent that a rickshaw couldn't get up on the wall so I hired a donkey and rode up a ramp onto the city wall and from there to the Great Wall. It was a tremendous experience for me and I rode along the top a couple of miles across the level plain, the wall being some forty feet high in places and with a varying width at the top but enough of a path to ride on. When I came to the hills the wall's construction changed from mortared grey blocks to dry irregular stone. As I went higher up toward the mountains I found the wall to be very crooked and to follow along the top of all cliffs and similar natural obstacles. There were watch towers spaced along the entire distance. Some of the ones down on the plain were quite large and would have sheltered a large group of soldiers. There were stone or block fences along the top. The side facing Manchuria was crenelated to furnish openings for the bowmen to fire on attacking Mongols.
After a few hours I had satisfied my curiosity about this wonder of the ancient world and being hungry returned to the town and found a little establishment near the R.R. station with signs on it in English - "The North Hotel". The front entrance seemed to be also the dining room so I went in and sat down. Never in my life had I seen a place so thick with flies. Apparently the air space was so filled with them flying about that they kept bumping into one, a circumstance that I've never observed anywhere else. I was rather desperate for food as I had just ridden some distance so I looked at the English side of the menu and noted the words "All chickens killed when ordered". So I ordered chicken and sure enough just outside the back door of the one room wide building I heard a short scuffle and a chicken squawk and in a reasonable time the steaming hot fried bird was placed on my table and I gobbled it up before it got cool enough for the flies to light on it.