The Great Wall of China, in Chinese called the “long wall” is a set of military fortifications built, destroyed and rebuilt in several pieces and several periods between the third century BC and the 17th century AD to defend northern China.
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A wild part of the wall in Hebei province was slanting dangerously, and many bricks had fallen off, leaving large holes, the Beijing Times reported.
The Unesco World Heritage Site stretches for thousands of kilometres from Shanhaiguan on the east coast of the country to Jiayuguan on the edge of the Gobi desert.
A research conducted by the China Great Wall Society previous year shows that only around 8% of the Great Wall built in Ming dynasty, the most visible section of the Great Wall today, are well-preserved.
At least that’s according to a report in a Chinese newspaper, the Beijing Times.
In poorer parts of China – such as Lulong county – locals used to take bricks from the parts of the wall in their village, in order to build their homes.
These days, estimates of its length vary between 9,000km and 21,000km, depending on whether missing and dilapidated portions of the wall are included in the estimation.
“Many towers are becoming increasingly shaky and may collapse in a single rain storm in summer”.
Tourism and local residents’ activities are also damaging the longest human construction in the world, the paper added.
Dong Yaohui, vice chairman of the China Great Wall Society, says that the grandness and length of the Great Wall made the architecture a magnificent world cultural heritage, so the fix and protection work should be extended to encompass the entire Great Wall, rather than only a section of it.
Almost 4,000 kilometres were built under the Ming Dynasty of 1368-1644.
“But there is no specific organization to enforce the rules”. Damage can only be reported to higher authorities and is hard to keep on top of vandalism to the wall between the boarders of two provinces.
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It added that explorations of undeveloped parts of the Great Wall – an increasingly popular leisure activity in recent years – had brought those sections more tourists than they could bear, damaging them severely.
