Max Pearson

speaker

1,342 appearances 10 recordings 1 series first heard Dec 2025 last heard 11 Apr

Max Pearson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 10 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 3.

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The History Hour · A papal visit and German reunification · 28 Mar 2026 podcast

So these differences between us did lead to quite a few arguments.

For decades, communist China had been developing a new way of living.

The focus had been on forging ahead and forgetting about the old ways and customs.

There wasn't much interest in history in the early 1980s, and large parts of the wall hadn't been walked on for years.

The three friends had to rely on local people in the remote villages that they came across for food and supplies.

But the biggest problem on a daily basis was water.

It was a real problem.

It wasn't possible to carry sufficient water every day, especially in summer when you sweat so much.

But the whole route is up across the highest ground, which isn't where you find water.

So we'd have to go down the mountains to collect water and then climb back up again, which took several hours and a lot of energy.

So we'd try to ration how much water we drank.

Back then, we didn't have the modern outdoor clothing and equipment that's available today.

We just had army uniforms donated to us by soldiers in a couple of army units we came across en route.

So when a rainstorm came over, we just get soaked.

And it rains a lot in the mountains.

Snow was also a problem.

We were walking in snow for months.

It's also pretty dangerous, especially when you are walking downhill.

Many of the little villages the team visited along the wall had developed because of the trading opportunities it had offered, and some of the locals were descendants of the people who actually built it.

The ancestors of one community we came across had been moved from the far south of China to help build the wall, and even now, 500 years on, they keep up their southern traditions, even though most of them have never ever been to the south.

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