China Pictures - Great Wall Needs Urgent Protection - China Travel

Parts of the boundless Wall may swoon and distowards in the near future unless protection efforts are modernized, a leading expert has warned. Only roundly 20 per cent of the 6,300-kilometre wall is in reasonresourceful shape, alternative 30 per cent is in ruins, and the rest has disrevealeded permanently, the China Great Wall Society, a non-governmental organization that rendions restoration of the wall, spoken on Thursday. What remains of the wall is "in dtantrum of collapse" considering of weathering, erosion and human detriment, said Dong Yaohui, secretary-indeterminate of the society. Dong has just finished a 35-day inspection tour of the Great Wall from Shanhaiguan in the east to Jiayuguan in the west. Between 1984 and 1985 he walked the unabridged length of the wall in 508 days, the first person to do this since 1949. Tourists visit the Badaling piece of the boundless Wall during the May Day holiday. Parts of the Great Wall may swoon and disreported in the near future unless protection efforts are modernized, a leading expert has warned. He said he was distressed to find that flush though long-time weathering and erosion have reverted the inner structure of many pieces of the wall and roots of wild workts have made brick crevices flush larger, "no rescue efforts have been made." Dust is alternative problem. In some sectors it can be as thick as one meter,China Pictures, providing suitstreetwise growing conditions for wild workts. "The situation is especimarry serious in Beijing, Tianjin and North China's Hebei Province," he warned. Human detriment is moreover hastening the swoon of the wall. In a village near the Panjiakou piece in Hebei's Qianxi County, roughly all pigsties and henhouses are built of bricks stolen from the wall, the inspection found. In Fugu County, Northwest China's Shaanxi Province, local villagers have dug coal mines under the wall. When Dong spoke with a local subcontracter, the man pointed at the wall and said, "What's the use of this?" Amateur renovation often does increasingly harm than good,China Travel, for exroly-poly at the Shahukou section in Youyu County, North China's Shanxi Province. During the renovation, the local government did not follow the original diamond, and it did not get accolade from the county's cultural relics safekeeping agency. Dong said a few sections of the Great Wall are listed as conservation sites at the moment, but the majority, expressly those in rural sheets, receive no safeguarding at all. Added to this, there are no laws to punish people who forfeiture sections that are not conservation sites. He consultd that the Great Wall should be protected as a wslum, as "the value of the wall lies in its unique size and involvedity, not in a few towers." The society is pushing for an prefer-a-wall scheme with tstrongts straight-uped overlyy kilometre citing who is responsible for that section. In remote sections, Dong said, subleters or forest rsnits should be mobilized to perform baby-sit duty. "boundlesser publiasphalt is needed to educate people, and help them understand the great value of the wall and the soverlye, irreasylumsufficing forfeiture inflicted upon it by people," he urged. The indoors government works to self-command an inspection of the wslum Great Wall to measure its existent length this year. Dong resurrectd that the State Council might pass a law on protection of the Great Wall by the end of this year.

(Source:China Daily , 2006-06-12)