Qi Jiguang
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The Great Wall of China Is Under Siege China’s ancient 4,000-mile barrier, built to defend the country against invaders, is under renewed attack
By Brook Larmer The Great Wall of China snakes along a ridge in front of me, its towers and ramparts creating a panorama that could have been lifted from a Ming dynasty scroll. I should be enjoying the view, but I'm focused instead on the feet of my guide, Sun Zhenyuan. Clambering behind him across the rocks, I can't help but marvel at his footwear. He is wearing cloth slippers with wafer-thin rubber soles, better suited to tai chi than a trek along a mountainous section of the wall. Sun, a 59-year-old farmer turned preservationist, is conducting a daily reconnaissance along a crumbling 16th-century stretch of the wall overlooking his home, Dongjiakou village, in eastern Hebei Province. We stand nearly 4,000 twisting miles from where the Great Wall begins in China's western deserts—and only 40 miles from where it plunges into the Bohai Sea, the innermost gulf of the Yellow Sea on the coast of northeast China. Only 170 miles distant, but a world away, lies Beijing, where seven million spectators are about to converge for the Summer Olympics. (The massive earthquake that hit southern China in May did not damage the wall, although tremors could be felt on sections of it near Beijing.) Hiking toward a watchtower on the ridge above us, Sun sets a brisk pace, stopping only to check his slippers' fraying seams. "They cost only ten yuan [$1.40]," he says, "but I wear out a pair every two weeks." I do a quick calculation: over the past decade, Sun must have burned through some 260 pairs of shoes as he's carried out his crusade to protect one of China's greatest treasures—and to preserve his family's honor. Twenty-one generations ago, in the mid-1500s, Sun's ancestors arrived at this hilly outpost wearing military uniforms (and, presumably, sturdier footwear). His forebears, he says, were officers in the Ming imperial army, part of a contingent that came from southern China to shore up one of the wall's most vulnerable sections. Under the command of General Qi Jiguang, they added to an earlier stone and earthen barrier, erected nearly two centuries before at the beginning of the Ming dynasty. Qi Jiguang also added a new feature—watchtowers—at every peak, trough and turn. The towers, built between 1569 and 1573, enabled troops to shelter in secure outposts on the wall itself as they awaited Mongol attacks. Even more vitally, the towers also functioned as sophisticated signaling stations, enabling the Ming army to mitigate the wall's most impressive, but daunting, feature: its staggering length. As we near the top of the ridge, Sun quickens his pace. The Great Wall looms directly above us, a 30-foot-high face of rough-hewed stone topped by a two-story watchtower. When we reach the tower, he points at the Chinese characters carved above the arched doorway, which translate to Sunjialou, or Sun Family Tower. "I see this as a family treasure, not just a national treasure," Sun says. "If you had an old house that people were damaging, wouldn't you want to protect it?" He gazes toward the horizon. As he conjures up the dangers that Ming soldiers once faced, the past and present seem to intertwine. "Where we're standing is the edge of the world," he says. "Behind us is China. Out there"—he gestures toward craggy cliffs to the north—"the land of the barbarians." Few cultural landmarks symbolize the sweep of a nation's history more powerfully than the Great Wall of China. Constructed by a succession of imperial dynasties over 2,000 years, the network of barriers, towers and fortifications expanded over the centuries, defining and defending the outer limits of Chinese civilization. At the height of its importance during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), the Great Wall is believed to have extended some 4,000 miles, the distance from New York to Milan. Today, however, China's most iconic monument is under assault by both man and nature. No one knows just how much of the wall has already been lost. Chinese experts estimate that more than two-thirds may have been damaged or destroyed, while the rest remains under siege."The Great Wall is a miracle, a cultural achievement not just for China but for humanity," says Dong Yaohui, president of the China Great Wall Society. "If we let it get damaged beyond repair in just one or two generations, it will be our lasting shame." The barbarians, of course, have changed. Gone are the invading Tatars (who broke through the Great Wall in 1550), Mongols (whose raids kept Sun's ancestors occupied) and Manchus (who poured through uncontested in 1644). Today's threats come from reckless tourists, opportunistic developers, an indifferent public and the ravages of nature. Taken together, these forces—largely byproducts of China's economic boom—imperil the wall, from its tamped-earth ramparts in the western deserts to its majestic stone fortifications spanning the forested hills north of Beijing, near Badaling, where several million tourists converge each year. From its origins under the first emperor in the third century B.C., the Great Wall has never been a single barrier, as early Western accounts claimed. Rather, it was an overlapping maze of ramparts and towers that was unified only during frenzied Ming dynasty construction, beginning in the late 1300s. As a defense system, the wall ultimately failed, not because of intrinsic design flaws but because of the internal weaknesses—corruption, cowardice, infighting—of various imperial regimes. For three centuries after the Ming dynasty collapsed, Chinese intellectuals tended to view the wall as a colossal waste of lives and resources that testified less to the nation's strength than to a crippling sense of insecurity. In the 1960s, Mao Zedong's Red Guards carried this disdain to revolutionary excess, destroying sections of an ancient monument perceived as a feudal relic.
Photo of faulty repair raises public concerns
The Great Wall of China is popular among tourists, especially on holidays like National Day. But a photograph of an unprofessional restoration job went viral last week. The protection of one of the world's greatest cultural and historical heritage sites is in the spotlight again. The work was completed in 2014, at a section located between northern Liaoning and Hebei Provinces. The Great Wall stretches for thousands of kilometers in sections from China's east coast to the edge of the Gobi Desert, spanning 15 provinces and municipalities. CCTV's Han Peng met one of the wall's protectors in Beijing and has this story. The Great Wall protected China for centuries. But today, it's in urgent need of its own protection. "Less than 10 percent of the Great Wall remains in good condition. Around 20 percent is badly damaged, and 30 percent has already disappeared," said Dong Yaohui, vice president of China Great Wall Society. Bai Chunxiang grew up under an unrestored section of the Great Wall, near the northern border of Beijing. It's the so-called "Wild Great Wall", or a section that's neither preserved or developed into a tourist attraction. Most of the Great Wall comprises of sections like this. One local says he decided to defend the disappearing UNESCO cultural heritage site on his doorstep ten year ago. "Back then, I found many of my neighbors were digging herbs or catching scorpions on the Great Wall. Some were even herding here. That caused a lot of damage to the already-broken structure. So I stopped them whenever I saw them. I even dropped into their homes with some fruits and vegetables, trying to convince them to stop. That made me quite unpopular with some neighbors," said Bai Chunxiang, wild Great Wall protector. Bai says that hostility lasted until 2010, before local authorities actually hired him as a Great Wall protector. Although the salary is a modest one thousand US dollars a year, Bai says he is glad to have an official position now. Over the past ten years, he's patrolled his section of the wall at least once a week, and regularly submits to local authorities a report of any new damage. But our most impressive findings were the relics he had salvaged. "Look at this hole. The ancient Chinese army would put gunpowder in it, and use this stone as the oldest form of grenade. There were once plenty of them on or near the Great Wall. But because of a lack of awareness, some villagers use these stones, or even the bricks from the Great Wall, to build their houses. Others sell them as souvenirs in the black market," Bai said. Bai says his single-minded protection somehow raised the awareness of nearby villagers. But the biggest damage is caused by nature. "This is one of the very few existing waterways of the Great Wall. In 2012, a torrential flood eroded most of its foundation. It became very urgent. So I brought in some cement, and risked my life under the collapsing cave to fortify the foundation," Bai said. Bai's work prevented the collapse, but it was controversial online. Some criticized him for damaging the original structure, saying his remedy is worse than the disease. Others say it is unwise to leave the protection of such an important architecture to unqualified people. Bai says the ordeal made him sad. But he has learned from it. "That tower was built by the army of Chinese hero Qi Jiguang in 1567. Last year, it was about to collapse. I pitched the wall with some wood, and waited for the experts to deal with it," Bai said. China formulated a Great Wall Protection Regulation in 2006, and invested 60 million US dollars to prevent a 50-kilometer section near Beijing from collapsing. The Great Wall is 20-thousand kilometers long. And Bai is only responsible for the one-kilometre section near his home. Today we are still losing the Great Wall, brick by brick, because of both human activities and natural conditions. How to prevent one of the greatest world wonders from disappearing with an effective method remains a tough question.
Simatai the Great Wall without the hordes
For many, a visit to China is not complete without setting foot on the Great Wall. Due to its rich history and mythical status as the longest man-made structure, the Great Wall has become an almost required sight-seeing stop for all travelers to China. With 4 million visitors a year, the irony is not lost in knowing that a Chinese fortification built for the purpose of protecting dynasties from tribal raids now specifically caters to invading hordes of foreigners through tours and kitschy merchandise, such as "I climbed the Great Wall" T-shirts. In China's haste to accommodate millions of visitors during the Beijing Olympics, great efforts are being made towards physical restoration, but frequently a sense of history becomes lost in the renovation process. For anyone intent on experiencing a section of the Great Wall that retains a more antiquated air, the Great Wall at Simatai remains one of the best options for spectacular views while preserving a sense of historical context. Located in the north of Miyun County,130 kilometers northeast of Beijing, Simatai has been designated as a World Cultural Heritage site by UNESCO and has been described by some as the “best of the Great Wall.” Originally built during the Northern Qi Dynasty (550-577) and then rebuilt during the Hongwu years of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) by Qi Jiguang, this section of Simatai is known for its inimitable, unique design as one of the few areas to retain the original features of the Ming Dynasty Great Wall. The Simatai Great Wall starts from Wangjing Building in the east and ends at Houchuankou in the west. Stretching for 5.7 kilometers and containing 35 watchtowers (including the tower in the water which has been damaged), it is one section of the Great Wall with concentrated watchtowers. The distance between the nearest two towers is shorter than 20 meters. The Simatai Great Wall has an imposing manner and strategically important situation. The whole section is carefully designed with various types of walls and watchtowers. Most of them are well-preserved, which shows the wisdom of laborers in ancient times, and have high military, artistic and architectural values. Despite having endured more than 400 years of weathering, the Simatai Great Wall maintains a large quantity of bricks engraved with words and exquisite embossment, displaying its perfect construction technology that allows it to preserve the historical information to the maximum degree. The Simatai Great Wall is separated by the Miyun Reservoir into eastern and western parts. The western part is a comparatively moderate hike with 20 well-preserved watchtowers, while the eastern section with 16 watchtowers is much steeper with rocky terrain that makes hiking a more demanding experience. The eastern part is built on sharp mountain ridges, rising from 295 meters to 986 meters within only 2.7 kilometers, so it looks like a huge dragon flying out from the lake towards the clouds. One may look at the Great Wall from the air, and appreciate various types of watchtowers, obstacle walls, marvelous pools, and huge tortoise stones. The smooth western part of the Simatai Great Wall is quite attractive, with its original buttressed walls, parapets, doors and windows, tops of buildings, holes for shooting, drains, water faucets and so on. Hiking at Simatai can be challenging, but the energy put into traversing lofty peaks and precipitous terrain — sometimes precariously close to cliff edges — is rewarded with unparalleled vistas. Nowadays there is a cable car, with round trip tickets costing 50 yuan (US$7) and one-way tickets at 30 yuan, which serves as a drop-off point about 40 minutes on foot from the Simatai Great Wall. It could be a useful alternative if you have a sprained ankle or want to spend time wandering about the Great Wall at a more leisurely pace. In addition, there is a toboggan ride from the Simatai Great Wall to the cable car, costing 30 yuan. This element of the Simatai experience is unnecessary and a waste of money, since anyone who wants to reach the cable car can walk directly to it via a flight of stairs. For now, Simatai remains breathtaking and tranquil. By distancing yourself from the area dotted with cable cars meandering down to the car park, and turning your gaze towards the hills calmly undulating far into the distance, it is possible to imagine history springing back to life. The image of solitary soldiers manning watchtowers over the years is suddenly more tangible than it has ever been. It is within this serene environment that you can begin to see how these echoes of history have settled into the Chinese countryside, and Simatai begins to feel like your own piece of Great Wall history.
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1 Qi Jiguang, courtesy name Yuanjing, art names Nantang and Mengzhu, posthumous name Wuyi, was a Chinese military general of the Ming dynasty. He is best known for leading Ming forces to defend China's east coastal regions from raids by the wokou in the 16th century and is widely regarded as a national hero in Chinese culture.
2 Qi Jiguang was born in the town of Luqiao in Shandong province to a family with a long military tradition.
3 At twenty-two, Qi Jiguang headed for Beijing to take part in the martial arts section of the imperial examination.