Sylvia takes photos with two root gatherers she met during her walk to the western boarder of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in May 2008.Photo: Courtesy of Sylvia Berjas-Morales

It was the promise to a dying patient in a hospital that drove 68-year-old Australian woman Sylvia Berjas-Morales to embark on a solo journey to walk part of the Great Wall—a trip that when finished will cover 6,000 out of the more-than 20,000 kilometers that make up the wonder of the world.

However, due to various problems such as visa issues and knee injuries, the two attempts in 2008 and 2012 were both interrupted after walking around 1,500 and 1,600 kilometers, respectively.

But Sylvia (who prefers to be referred to by her first name), a breast cancer survivor, hasn’t given up. She will continue the walk. Enchanted by the bucolic surroundings and the kindness of locals, she has decided to give something back.

“They were incredibly nice and helpful to a stranger. I really want to do something in return,” Sylvia told the Global Times in Beijing on June 9, 2014.During the walk, there were always people offering her water, food, ride and accommodation when she was in need.

She has made an ambitious plan to attract worldwide backpackers and tourists to the wall route after establishing a chain of camping grounds, improving the sanitation facilities at local villages, and providing tourism training for local villagers.

The plan’s ultimate goal is to set up a tourism service chain which shares part of the profit with charities that assist the disadvantaged. The project is still in the planning stages, with local officials currently in touch with her.

A Fateful Promise

In 1999, Sylvia took on a part-time job to provide respite care for an Alzheimer’s patient. One day, the man in his 60s, who had been to the Great Wall of China, wouldn’t stop crying.

All efforts to placate him failed until she said to him, “If you stop crying, I will walk the Great Wall for you.”

The patient has now passed away from the disease. But Sylvia kept the promise in mind. In 2002, she started planning the walk. Unfortunately, she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2003. After surgery, treatment and recovery, she resumed the plan.

Despite hearing cautionary words from friends and relatives about her health and safety, she set off on a trip to China to lay the groundwork in 2007, and then began the trek in 2008.

Starting from Yumenguan Pass, the Great Wall’s westernmost section in the Dunhuang area of Gansu Province, she started the walk with a bag on her back that was nearly half of her body weight.

The wall debris and spectacular scenery did not surprise her as much as the locals. “It was like moving through the centuries, from the village street butcher of the middle ages, to witnessing the rise of modern China in the cities,” she said on her Sina blog, which she updated with the help of a Chinese friend during the walk.

In many villages, there were no toilets, electrical appliances were scarcely seen and people burned firewood and coal, she explained.

“China is often stereotyped in foreign countries. They venture to metropolises like Beijing, Shanghai and Xi’an. And some are even more advanced than Australia’s,” she said. “But they miss out the other side of China, the real China.”

She was shocked that some villagers along the Great Wall had never heard of the Great Wall. Some firmly stated that she came to the wrong place as the Great Wall in their mind was in Beijing, not the scattered remnants behind their villages.

Sylvia folds up her camp at the Great Wall in the north of Beijing in June 2008.

Photo: Courtesy of Sylvia Berjias-Morales

Due to tightened visa controls ahead of the Beijing Olympics, she had to leave China in July 2008 after walking for 1,500 kilometers.

In 2012, she restarted the walk from the Yumenguan, but suspended it again after walking 1,670 kilometers in September, due to a serious knee injury.

Universal Languages

The food she ate during the trek mostly consisted of nuts, dried sausages and fish. The storms in the Gobi Desert and temperature differences by night and day made the walk harder.

Sometimes she got lost. She advanced slowly.

With her yellow hair, high nose, a big bag on her back, and sometimes wearing a mask, her arrival at some villages always caused a stir or even a panic.

In one village, a man who was fixing a roof saw her and shouted. Then others screamed and quickly pulled their kids inside and shut their doors. “But one house was let open to provide me with water,” Sylvia recalled.

In one case, a cyclist who she came across on the road returned with a bag of food half an hour later. In another, villagers insisted on moving her tent and bags inside a farmer’s courtyard to avoid storms.

In another example of kindness, a clinic doctor paid a taxi driver to send her to a hospital in an urban area when she had serious knee injuries. While recalling those helpful people, tears filled Sylvia’s eyes.

During the 2012 walk, she found some things had changed from four years earlier.

"Some places had greatly deteriorated, such as the Great Wall. Some people had dug steps or holes on the ruins,” she said.

Although she only understands a few basic words, she doesn’t think language is a barrier. She often used body language and smiles. “Smiles are a language for all. It always works,” she said.

The major problem was the wasted time setting up and collecting tents, seeking food, water and visa renewals.

At one point she purchased a donkey to carry her bag, but she sold it after walking for 80 kilometers and finding she spent more time fighting with it than moving in the right direction.

She also realized that she couldn’t finish a straight walk from west to east on her own. So, she hopes she will find people to join her, or is considering finding sponsors so she can take a camel and pay helpers.

(selected from Unusual Lives: 28 People’s Extraordinary Journey off the Beaten Path by Global Times, published by New World Press in 2017)