The Rebuilding of the ‘Great Wall of China’ Resumes

Time, neglect, nature and millions of footsteps have taken a toll on the gigantic, Great Wall of China, a section of which is now crumbling and thus the painstaking repairing work begins to maintain its dignity. 

A few years back after much public outcry, a segment of the large 700-year-old national monument of China was fixed using cement and modern methods. Later many experts insisted on more authentic restoration methods using traditional methods and therefore this time the laborers who are aided by mules, use reclaimed stones and mortar to mend the wall.

Li Jingdong who is working on the restoration project in the Jiankou section said, “They are all the bricks that collapsed from the original wall. The same bricks are used to mend these places”.

Other laborers are using an electric hoist to put a large stone back in the place that had fallen from the wall, while mules are helping the laborers by traversing the steep mountainside bringing water and lime mortar for the workers to mix and bind the stones with.

This is no doubt a physically painstaking work, in which placing a rock can take around 45 minutes to 1 hour time and for their efforts the laborers are paid 150 Yuan ($22) per day.

The plan to use traditional methods in mending the wall was implemented earlier this year in a bid to maintain the original look of China’s most famous landmark, that stretches from China’s east coast to the Gobi desert.

Cheng Yongmao, Engineer, who is leading the operations in Jiankou region of the wall for 15 years, said the latest restoration plan is meant to make “people feel that it has not been repaired”.

In the year 2016, a section of the Great Wall in northeast Liaoning province was covered with cement in a bid to protect the section of the monument built in the year 1381, from breaking. Images of the restoration work then went viral which caused widespread social media uproar.

The Ministry of Culture and Tourism, therefore released a new conservation plan earlier this year based on the principle of minimum intervention to restore the wall.

Song Xinchao, who is the deputy director of the National Cultural Heritage Administration, says some of those tasked with preserving the wall have the weird idea that every portion of the wall should look like Beijing’s Badaling section. Badaling section is a heavily visited tourist site that also has cable cars. Xiachiao says, “They confuse restoration of the wall with the development of a tourist attraction”.

The construction of the Great Wall of China first began in the third century BC and continued for centuries. Nearly 6,300 kilometres, including the Jiankou section, were built in the Ming Dynasty that ruled China between 1368-1644. Today it attracts around 10 million tourists per year across the world.

In many places, the wall is so dilapidated that is beyond repair and an estimated total length of such wall, vary from 9,000 to 21,000 kilometres. To protect the monument, authorities in the heavily visited Badaling section of the wall have limited the visits to 65,000 people per day from 1st of June.