CHINA: A British expatriate documents the crumbling of China's Great Wall in a photo exhibition.

British expatriate William Lindesay's photo exhibition documents how time, tourists, and economic development have taken their toll on the world's largest man made structure - China's 2000 year-old Great Wall. Mongol hordes, Japanese soldiers and Red Guards -- China's Great Wall has seen them all threaten its existence during its 2,000-year history. But today it is a different kind of threat -- tourists, ravers and newly rich Beijingers on weekend jaunts are pounding parts of the wall to dust. British campaigner William Lindesay wants to see an end to it. He has been on a campaign since 2004, documenting the wall's changes and comparing them with the first pictures of it taken 135 years ago. Armed with a 35 mm camera, tripod and an archive of 300 old photographs, he has rephotographed the Great Wall at about 140 locations stretching from the northwest Gobi Desert to the Yellow Sea coast in the east. His best 72 pairs of "then" and "now" shots opened to the public this month at a museum in Beijing. "I saw an old photograph of the Wall taken in 1907, and I had taken the same picture in 1987. It was the same location, but there was a bit tower in the middle of the photograph that had disappeared - it had gone. And it made me think how the Great Wall was slowly changing before our very eyes. I think this is a good summary. It reminds people that even the Great Wall of China - one of the world's greatest buildings - will not just stay there. It has to be protected in a positive way," said Lindesay, founder and director of International Friends of the Great Wall The pressures on the wall are enormous -- Lindesay says that some parts now receive more visitors a month than they saw in the past three centuries combined. Beijing's 2008 Olympic Games are the newest threat on the horizon. The Games will see the number of visitors at the tourist hotspot hit an all-time high. But Lindesay says the 2008 Olympic bid also inspired the first legal protective measures for the wall - including a new national protection law. "Just over a month ago state laws to protect the whole of the Great Wall were introduced. So now there is no Olympic threat to the Great Wall, whereas five or six years ago there was. It is now impossible for a developer to lease land beside the Wall and build an Olympic resort to give guests a room with a view. It is impossible now, and that's a good thing," said Lindesay. The wall, which the United Nations listed as a World Heritage Site in 1987, has been rebuilt many times through the centuries. Seasoned Great Wall expert Chen Dalin (pron: chehn dah-leen) says it is the key to the Chinese identity. "(The Great Wall) reflects and records China's history. It is a carrier (of history). So if we protect it and do a thorough research of it, people can understand China's past. If we understand China's past, then we will have a better understanding of the Chinese people. And this will help us to be more confident in the future," said Chen, who has also been photographing the Wall since 1978 when he worked for China's official Xinhua News Agency. But not all Chinese are aware of its value, says Guo Qiuyan (pron: gwoh chee-oh yehn) - one of Lindesay's local guides in remote Shaanxi province. "Because I live right at the foot of the Great Wall, sometimes I see villagers take the bricks from Great Wall and use them to build their houses and yard walls. I think this behaviour should be controlled by government officials," Guo said. The new law - which went into effect December 1 - means that now people taking earth or bricks from the Great Wall can be fined up to 500,000 yuan (63,950 U.S. dollars). Improper preservation is another problem. China has been renovating the wall since the 1950's. Initial efforts were crude - using new bricks and cement, and essentially "rebuilding" eroded sections. The government is now making more of an effort - original bricks and real mortar are used in renovation projects. And the long stretches open to tourists are kept rubbish-free. The results are already appreciated by visitors. Canadian visitor Cameron Hay squeezed sightseeing at the scenic Mutianyu (pron: moo tee-ehn yoo) section of the wall into his busy schedule. He was impressed with what he saw. "Actually I found it in better condition than I had expected it to be given the age of it and the number of people that have been here I would have expected it to be more run down. In particular the lack of trash was actually quite impressive, so it did exceed my expectations," said Hay. But just beyond the tourist-friendly stretch, crumbled bricks and eroded guard towers stretch for kilometres. This is still what most of the Wall looks like today. The Great Wall snakes its way across more than 6,400 km (4,000 miles) and receives an estimated 10 million visitors a year.

ITN Source | January 26, 2007

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