Trans-Siberian Railway 2013: Badaling, Great Wall of China Report

November 19, 2013
Matt Gasnier

VW Touran

* See the Full Photo Report by clicking on the title! *

This is Part 25 of my Trans-Siberian Photo Report. You can see all other Parts of this long-term Report here. After taking you through Beijing streets, on a visit of the Chaoyang car market in Beijing-East, and through a selection of Chinese car brochures picked up in Chaoyang, let me finish the Chinese section of this Trans-Siberian series by a trip to the Great Wall of China in Badaling, 80 km North-East of Beijing. The first thing I was expecting by leaving central Beijing is to see more of the ultra-popular Wuling and co. LCV that I could hardly spot in the city…

FAW Xiali N5

…and I was not disappointed. As soon as our bus left the Beijing gate, I could distinctly see a definite Chinese minivan flavour, but the most frequent was a surprise: the ChangAn Honor! Lots of Wuling everywhere of course (Sunshine and HongTu notably), but I also spotted a few Chana Star, Hafei and ChangAn minivans and Karry Q21…

ChangAn Honor

The second thing I was expecting was to see less foreign brands and more local ones. Well it was still a flood of Volkswagens, albeit with older ones added like the previous generation Jetta and the Santana Vista, and a few Lavida, Tiguan and Touran, there was indeed more Chinese models around.

BYD S6 and F3

The Beijing E-Series pointed its bonnet, as well as many BYD, ChangAn and the odd Landwind X8.

Buick GL8

Overly popular in Beijing, the new generation Buick GL8 was also very frequent around the Great Wall of China, but I’m assuming these are official vehicle coming straight from Beijing anyway.

Wuling HongTu

On the way back to Beijing, I was surprised by the amount of ChangAn Benben Mini and Gleagle Panda we passed. The aptly named Great Wall Haval H5 was also everywhere and has definitely marked the Chinese car landscape of its imprint before the H6 took the relay around one year ago. This concludes the Chinese section of my Trans-Siberian long-term Photo Report and with it the Report itself, hope you enjoyed it, I know it took a long time to go through all the different cities I visited but I tried to write commentary as close as my observations on the ground.

Toyota Highlander and VW Santana Vista

I will endeavour to write a conclusion post to the entire trip in the next few days, but in any case if you want to check out any of the previous 24 Photo Report posts the portal to all of them is here.