Saving the World Wonder

By Yin Pumin

As always, the Great Wall, the longest structure built in human history, is seen as a classic symbol of China by the Chinese themselves and others around the world. But just how long is it, exactly?

For a long time, no one could answer that question precisely because of the complexity of the historical project—different parts of the Great Wall were built by different regimes and dynasties over more than 2,000 years and were never quite connected as a seamless whole.

However on June 5, a definitive answer was given by a report released by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH). It fixed the official length of the Great Wall with all of its branches at a whopping 21,196.18 km, almost 2.4 times the widely believed 8,851.8-km preliminary estimate of 2008.

“The previous estimate referred specifically to Great Walls built in the Ming Dynasty(1368-1644), but this new measure includes the walls built in all dynasties,” said Yan Jianmin, an official with the China Great Wall Society, an NGO founded by specialists and scholars to protect the ancient structure.

The latest report was based on an archeological survey that began in 2007, jointly conducted by the SACH and the former State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping. It found that the Great Wall structures span the countrys 15 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, including Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Shandong, Henan, Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia and Xinjiang.

A total of 43,721 heritage sites were identified nationwide during the survey, including stretches of the wall, defense works and passes, as well as other related Great Wall facilities and ruins, according to Tong Mingkang, Deputy Director of the SACH.

A great legacy

As the largest human-made structure in the world, the Great Wall is a complex project.

Construction of the Great Wall was initiated by the southern State of Chu in the seventh century B.C. during the Spring and Autumn Period(770-476 B.C.), when China was in a state of anarchy as numerous independently ruled vassal states vied for power. According to Yan, the oldest sections of the Great Wall that have been found are in east Chinas Shandong Province and central Henan Province. The purpose of the walls was to strengthen defense of local regimes.

In the following years, other states in the north took similar defensive action throughout the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period (475-221 B.C.). In 221 B.C., Qin Shihuang (259-210 B.C.), the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty (221-206 B.C.), united the whole country and linked those defensive walls built by former northern vassal states together, forming the famous Qin Great Wall, which extended more than 5,000 km from todays Liaoning Province in the northeast to Gansu Province in the northwest.

Today, just a few sections of the Qin Great Wall remain standing in Datong in north Chinas Shanxi Province and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, as well as Minxian County in Gansu.

Construction of the Great Wall continued during the 10 dynasties succeeding the Qin Dynasty. Those walls were built in scattered, but strategic areas to fend off northern nomadic tribes. The two largest-scale constructions took place during the Han (260 B.C.-220) and Ming dynasties. The total length of the Han Great Wall exceeded 10,000 km, and that of the Ming Dynasty was around 6,000 km, according to a research.

Most of the Great Wall still standing today was built more than 600 years ago in the Ming Dynasty. For example, there are 629- km-long Ming Great Walls within the Beijing boundary, including the well-preserved sections in Badaling, Simatai and Mutianyu.

In 1987, the Great Wall was listed as a World Heritage site by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. It was also declared one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in July 2007 after a global poll initiated the New 7 Wonders Foundation, a private organization.

“The Great Wall is a priceless treasure the ancient Chinese left to the world. Its value exceeds a simple military project and is regarded as an artwork with high cultural value. It represents the highest-level wisdom of human beings,” said Dong Yaohui, Vice President of the China Great Wall Society.

Threatened survival

However, despite its fame and glory, more sections of the Great Wall are disappearing and the conservation situation is becoming worse.

“Natural forces as well as human activities pose serious threats to existing Great Walls,” Dong warned, adding that the rate ofrestoration has been outpaced by organic erosion and human destruction.

According to the SACH survey report, only 8.2 percent of the wall built during the Ming Dynasty remains intact so far, 74.1 percent is in poor condition, and in some sections, only its foundation can be spotted.

“The preservation of the Great Walls relics should not be delayed,” the report said.

Dong suggested that different measures, including legal ones, should be considered to further promote the preservation of the Great Wall.

On July 6-12, a group of historians and cultural relics experts, investigated the condition of the Great Wall in Gansu that holds an estimated 3,600-km-long Great Wall built in different dynasties. They visited 10 major sites in five cities, including Dingxi, Wuwei, Zhangye, Jiayuguan and Jiuquan, and were shocked by the condition of the Great Wall, built in Qin, Han and Ming dynasties.

Unlike eastern parts of the Great Wall in Beijing, Hebei and Liaoning, which were mostly constructed with stones and bricks, the sections in Gansu were built with tamped earth. After centuries of erosion from fierce wind and frequent sandstorms, they have become extremely fragile.

In Weiyuan County, some parts built in the Warring States Period have been merged with surrounding cropland, while another 200-kmlong section built in the Ming Dynasty in Dingxi has suffered weather damage, collapse and biological damage over a long period.

According to Zhou Youma, Deputy Secretary General of the China Great Wall Society, the Great Wall, no matter how solidly it may have been built, also had a finite lifespan.

“In line with Ming Dynasty standards, the‘quality guarantee period of the Great Wall was 50 years. Today, even the most recently constructed sections of the Great Wall, not to mention those built in the Warring States Period, have a history of 300 to 400 years, which is why their condition is fragile,” Zhou said, adding that the Great Wall is extremely vulnerable to natural erosion, the pace of which far outstrips that of restoration.

The Great Wall is a huge and complex structure and cuts across a diverse range of landscapes and climatic conditions as well. Therefore various challenges face the preservation of this famous landmark.

“The protection issues throughout different regions in China vary. For instance, natural forces, like wind, rain, frost and thawing, are the main problems for those parts of the wall built in mountains and along hills. For those parts that are close to cities and towns, human activities, such as mining, infrastructure development and profitdriven tourism, are the main causes for damage,”said Wu Jiaan, a professor of archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Cultural Heritage. He added that some local residents had even taken soil or bricks from the Great Wall, and have planted crops over ruins of it.

In May, a post on Weibo.com, Chinas biggest micro-blogging site, revealed that a section of the Great Wall in Yulin in northwestern Shaanxi Province had been demolished for the purpose of constructing a factory on the site.

In Hebei, about 20 percent of the walls and towers can be rated “well or fairly preserved,”while more than 70 percent have cracks, stand on shaky ground, or are about to collapse, provincial cultural protection officials said.

A part of the Great Wall in the provinces Chongli County was even demolished by a mining company to make way for road construction.

Zhou Jinjun, Deputy Director of the Land Resources Bureau of Laiyuan County in Hebei, said that the area where the ancient walls stand in the county has rich reserves of copper, iron, and nickel. Driven by profits, small mines proliferated despite the government ban.

Last October, a section of the Great Wall in a remote area in Laiyuan collapsed because of unregulated mining activities. The area was home to a dozen small mines, with some operating as close as 100 meters to the centuries-old wall.

Villagers and local cultural relics officials said that about 700 meters of the wall built during the reign of Emperor Wanli (1573-1620) of the Ming Dynasty had already collapsed, and more walls and even towers were likely to collapse if mining continues unchecked.

“This section of the wall is considered‘the cream of the crop of the Ming Great Wall. It is really a pity,” said Guo Jianyong, a senior engineer with the Ancient Architecture Studies Institute of Hebei.

Damages to the Great Wall by mining have also been reported in recent years in Inner Mongolia, Chinas main coal reserve region.

Experts warn that these cases suggest the problem might be common across all regions along the Great Wall.

GREAT POPULARITY: Extremely dense crowds stroll the Badaling section of the Great Wall, a major tourist destination in Beijing, on October 3, 2011, during a weeklong public holiday around Chinas National Day

Preservation efforts

To prevent the Great Wall from further damage, the Central Government rolled out a regulation in 2006, establishing funding for protection, restoration and maintenance for the Great Wall. It also bans people from taking soil or bricks from the wall, planting trees, carving on the wall, holding commercial activities or building anything that does not protect it.

Anyone violating the regulation faces fines of up to 50,000 yuan ($7,854), while institutions can be fined as much as 500,000 yuan ($78,540).

The regulation also spells out that those who cause serious damages to the Great Wall are subject to criminal prosecution. According to the Criminal Law, anyone who deliberately destroys state- or provincial-level cultural relics can be jailed for up to 10 years.

In November 2008, new rules specifically protecting the Great Wall went into effect, imposing fines of up to 500,000 yuan for those who take soil or bricks from it.

However, experts and cultural relics officials admit that the bans are poorly enforced in remote regions.

Guo said that cultural relics authorities tasked to enforce the protection rules are understaffed and short of funds and equipment to conduct effective monitoring of irregularities on and around the Great Wall.

In Laiyuan, for example, the Great Wall stretches 123 km, but the county only has 10 full-time workers engaged in its preservation.

“Most of the 40 counties where the Great Wall stands in Hebei face the same problem,”Guo said, adding that patrollers in some counties in Hebei are only able to conduct an inspection tour once a year.

In Gansu, the lack of research personnel and protective technology also torments local cultural relics authorities.

“The preservation of ancient Great Wall sections in west China is very challenging,”said Duan Qingbo, a researcher with Shaanxi Northwest University in Xian, the provincial capital. “For example, the dozen researchers from the Dunhuang Academy in Gansu assigned with taking care of the remaining sections scattered in the province are insufficient. New systems and all-around efforts from society are needed if the task is to be successful.”

He suggested that awareness must be raised among local residents, as well as tourism operators, of the need to protect cultural relics.

“We are not only aiming to protect the Great Wall itself, but also the culture of the Great Wall,” Duan said.

Nevertheless, the five-year SACH survey finally gave cultural relics authorities and local governments a comprehensive and accurate picture of the status quo of the Great Wall, which could serve as a solid foundation for future protection projects, experts say.

In Shaanxi, small parts of the Great Wall that had long been forgotten by people were discovered by Li Gong, a researcher in charge of the Great Wall survey at the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology, and his colleagues, using historical records, artifacts and information from locals. Before the survey, Li revealed, they knew only 20 percent of the walls built before the Ming Dynasty.

“With the survey, we are clear about the location of the Great Wall, so the government can take steps to protect the walls, and local governments are clear about their responsibility to protect them,” said Yan with the China Great Wall Society.

According to Tong, the SACH will work out a general preservation guideline by 2015 and set up a monitoring and warning system to eradicate major risks so as to ensure effective preservation of the Great Wall.