The repair of the endangered Great Wall and the weathering and water damage rush for time
During the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, the protection of the Great Wall in Beijing was fully upgraded, and a number of key repair projects were launched; more than 400 Great Wall protectors formed a great wall heritage protection network with full coverage and no blind spots
On September 18th, at the Badaling Ancient Great Wall, the maintenance master walked on steep steps.
Because of an old photo of the Great Wall of China, Zhang Baotian set foot on the Great Wall to search for it.
Over the past 20 years, the contrast between the old and new places where more than 1,000 groups of Great Wall photos were taken made him feel sad.
Over the past few decades, many of the city walls, enemy buildings, and crenellations in many old photos have collapsed.
Some have even been completely razed to the ground with no remains.
The Great Wall of China traverses 15 provinces, of which, 520.77 kilometers in Beijing, it passes through the six districts of Pinggu, Miyun, Huairou, Changping, Yanqing, and Mentougou. It is the most well-preserved, most prominent, most complex project, and most culturally rich section in the country.
However, like all parts of the country, after hundreds of thousands of years of destruction, such as wind and rain erosion, geological changes, and wars in the past, the preservation of the Great Wall in Beijing is not optimistic.
According to the statistics of the Beijing Great Wall Resources Survey, one-quarter of the Great Wall remains have disappeared, and the poorly preserved and poorly preserved Great Wall remains accounted for 40% of the total. This is consistent with the impression Zhang Baotian got from his search.
It is urgent to protect the Great Wall.
In order to rescue the Great Wall, Beijing has carried out nearly a hundred Great Wall protection projects since 2000, with a financial investment of about 470 million yuan.
Especially in recent years, the protection of the Great Wall has been fully upgraded, a number of key repair projects have been launched, and emergency rescue projects at endangered points have been launched quickly, competing with weathering and water damage.
At the same time, Beijing formally established a team of Great Wall protectors last year, and more than 400 protectors patrolled the "Wild Great Wall" between the mountains and the wild.
Beijing has also explored the cultural connotation of the Great Wall, and made the Great Wall a living context through the establishment of the Great Wall Cultural Research Institute and the holding of the Great Wall Cultural Festival.
Beijing News reporter Ni Wei
On September 18, at the Badaling Ancient Great Wall, the maintenance master took the bricks to prepare for flooding.
Changes in old photos
In the process of protecting the Great Wall, ordinary people appeared.
Zhang Baotian came together with “photographers” who love the Great Wall all over the country. Their job is to find locations for old photos.
The reason is that in 2001, Zhang Baotian saw an old photo of "Eighth Route Army Liberation of East Tuanbao" in Laiyuan County, Hebei. In the photo, the Eighth Route Army raised guns and cheered on a group of broken Great Wall enemy buildings to celebrate the victory of the East Tuanbu battle.
The photo shooter was Sha Fei, a famous anti-Japanese photographer.
While moved, Zhang Baotian, who knows the Great Wall quite well, was puzzled: Dongtuanpu is a township in Laiyuan County, but there is no Great Wall in Dongtuanpu. Where did Shafei take the photos?
He flipped through the information and studied the ins and outs of the battle in the East Mission Fort.
In late September 1940, a division of the Jinchaji Military Region launched the "Battle of Lai (Yuan) Ling (Qiu) in the Second Stage of the Hundred Regiments War". Among them, the East Tuanbao fought the most tragically, fighting for four days. The Japanese army even released poisonous gas. Eventually all were wiped out.
After the victory, Shafei took this photo at the enemy building of the Great Wall.
Zhang Baotian therefore referred to this enemy building as the "Huo Building."
The search for the old site lasted for 2 years. In August 2003, volunteers from the "Great Wall Station" finally confirmed that the "Huanhulou" was on the Great Wall of Jingpingan in Laiyuan County, 40 kilometers away from Dongtuanbao.
Only then did Zhang Baotian know that the front command post was located on the Ning An'an Great Wall.
With this as a starting point, Zhang Baotian's journey of searching for old photos of the Great Wall was out of control.
In the past 20 years, he and Great Wall volunteers have collected more than 1,500 old photos of the Great Wall, mostly before 1949.
At most, he would go to the Great Wall thirty or forty times a year.
Cooperating with photographers and volunteers all over the country, they have searched the Great Wall across the country.
Many times, after finding the shooting location after all the hard work, they are disappointed by the images in front of them.
For example, the top of the enemy building on the Great Wall of Ning An Temple has now been completely destroyed, the observation hole no longer exists, the wall height is only half of the original height, and weeds grow between the bricks.
While searching in the village of Zhangjiakou, Hebei, after identifying the landmarks in the photo, the enemy platform was finally found, but no remains were seen on the ground.
The local 60-year-old villagers did not know that there were remnants of the Great Wall in the village.
This allowed Zhang Baotian to discover the meaning behind his interest: to leave a testimony for the protection of the Great Wall.
The characteristic of the old photos of the Great Wall is that there is almost no accurate location record. It is difficult to find the corresponding image data for a specific section of the Great Wall or a certain enemy building.
Zhang Baotian's work filled some gaps.
For example, a photo found last year showed that it was the tenth floor of Badaling North.
Similar photos can also be used as a basis for repairs.
After many years of field visits and difficult searches, Zhang Baotian and Great Wall volunteers have now found most of the shooting locations in the 1500 sets of photos, and have taken new photos at the same location. Only about 30 groups have not been confirmed.
According to the Beijing Great Wall resource survey, the current preservation status of the Great Wall wall can be divided into 5 states.
Among them, the sections of the Great Wall with good preservation status accounted for about 12.3% of the total, those with general preservation status accounted for about 18.1% of the total, those with poor preservation status accounted for about 18.4% of the total, and those with poor preservation status accounted for about 27.1% of the total. .
On September 18, the Badaling Ancient Great Wall, the restoration project of the enemy platform 67-69 of the Ancient Great Wall Scenic Area is underway.
A08-A09 edition photography/Beijing News reporter Wang Yuanzheng
Discourage the "allier"
From August to October this year, Beijing hosted the Great Wall Cultural Festival for the first time.
During this period, ten "most beautiful guardians of the Great Wall" were collected from the city, and Zhang Baotian became one of the ten as a volunteer.
Almost all of these ten people were protecting the Great Wall in ordinary positions, and three of them were Great Wall protectors.
Last year, more than 400 Great Wall protectors in Beijing took over and took charge of the Great Wall in the city.
It's already very difficult for "Asses" to climb the "Wild Great Wall".
Changyucheng Village, Liucun Township, Changping District, is surrounded by the Great Wall. Among them, No. 15 enemy building, the commanding height, was the place where the famous Nankou Battle in the Anti-Japanese War started. It was also the place where Chen Qingchun, the Great Wall protector, came to work every week.
Five days a week, he took a binoculars, dry food and three bottles of water, and walked 7.5 kilometers on the mountain road to the foot of the Great Wall for nearly two hours one way, and then began a day of patrol.
Lifting the telescope from here, you can always see the 9th enemy building, a few kilometers in the middle, you can see if anyone is climbing without authorization.
The popularity of the Battle of Nankou has made this section of the Great Wall a well-known attraction that has been passed down by fans.
On weekends and holidays, there are often three or four hundred people near the Great Wall, hoping to climb up the "high buildings" and get a glimpse of the beautiful scenery of Xiongguan Road.
In an unattended era, man-made damage to the Great Wall is difficult to effectively control.
Chen Qingchun still remembered that when he was a child, on the Great Wall of Yan in Hebei, not far from home, villagers removed bricks from the Great Wall and went home to build houses, leaving permanent "wounds" on the Great Wall.
In the first two years, some people “cut off” the Great Wall and opened a one-meter-wide passage for motorcycles to pass through.
Last year, after Chen Qingchun and six protectors from the village took up their posts, they stayed at the crossing of "Upper City" and persuaded them to return when they saw tourists.
However, they were considerate of their coming from afar, and the protector also allowed them to take pictures dozens of meters away.
Sometimes disputes arise.
"Some tourists asked us to prove that we were fake protectors." However, as the Great Wall protector team gradually became known, more and more tourists cooperated.
In May 2019, Beijing's first Great Wall protector team with a total of 463 people was established, including 289 full-time and 174 part-time.
The duties of the protector include inspections, danger monitoring, environmental cleanup, and discourage visitors from climbing.
They upload photos taken during the patrol to the APP every day, with text descriptions.
After the pictures are summarized in the background system, the system will observe the changes in the same photo spot over different periods and judge the health of the Great Wall.
They have achieved full-day inspections of key points of the Great Wall, regular inspections of general points, rapid disposal of dangerous points, and scientific management and control of Great Wall wild travel, forming a full-coverage, no blind spot, Great Wall heritage protection network.
They are also assisted by many new "sky-eye" technologies, such as satellite remote sensing and drones.
Liu Hongyan, a protector of the Great Wall in Yanqing District, was born and raised at the foot of the Great Wall in Shixia Village.
She grew up listening to the story of the Great Wall, and now protects the Great Wall "just like protecting a home."
The Great Wall of Nantianmen, which Liu Hongyan inspected, is located at the junction of Hebei and Beijing and is often climbed by tourists.
A tourist once put an iron ladder on the city wall, grinding two permanent grooves in the city brick.
When the protectors found out, they removed it in time.
Seeing tourists go to the Great Wall, she will step forward to discourage them, and if she doesn't listen, she will follow.
For the longest time, she followed for more than two hours until it got dark at eight o'clock in the evening, and went down the mountain with tourists.
She carried a notebook in her bag and a pen in her breast pocket. When she saw tourists going to the Great Wall, she asked them to register their names and mobile phone numbers.
In Changyucheng, the truncated "lane" on the Great Wall was later restored.
Nowadays, every time Chen Qingchun sees a dangerous situation caused by rain, weathering, man-made, etc., he reports it in time, and the repair personnel can quickly rescue it in time.
On September 18, at the Badaling Ancient Great Wall, the repairer carried the building materials on his back and carried it to the construction site of the restoration project.
Repair "textbooks"
"I've been to Jiankou, and other Great Walls have no taste." said a Great Wall enthusiast who has been fascinated by the Great Wall for 20 years.
Jiankou is one of the most famous dangerous sections of the Great Wall in Ming Dynasty.
Among them, the 744 meters from "Eagle Flying Upside Down" to "Beijing Junction" is the most dangerous section of the Jiankou Great Wall, with a slope of 80 degrees at the steepest point.
The steep terrain not only brings beautiful scenery, but also various intractable "diseases" and extremely difficult repairs.
Dong Yaohui, vice president of the Great Wall Society of China, has visited Jiankou many times. In his impression, the Great Wall of Jiankou was very dilapidated. Many walls and bricks were loose, and many places were on the verge of collapse.
On September 19 this year, the Great Wall Protection and Restoration Practice Base was formally established in Xizhazi Village, Yanqi Town, Huairou District, at the foot of the Jiankou Great Wall.
This is the first listed restoration base along the Great Wall in my country. It is intended to summarize and improve the protection concepts and experience methods of the Jiankou Great Wall and play a demonstrative effect on the protection of the Great Wall across the country.
The repairs of the Great Brick Wall across the country will all look towards the Jiankou Great Wall.
The Beijing Municipal Bureau of Cultural Relics has continued to carry out the restoration of the Jiankou Great Wall since 2016. This autumn, the third phase will be completed, with a total restoration of nearly 3,000 meters.
The Jiankou Great Wall repair plan will continue until 2023.
After 7 years, Jiankou repairs seem to be slow, but the frontline workers have been non-stop.
It is extremely difficult to repair the Great Wall, and engineering equipment is powerless, and it still relies on mules, horses and people to transport bricks and accessories.
In addition, the restoration standards of the Great Wall have now increased, and engineers must "pull" one meter by one meter to carry out "embroidery"-like repairs on the Great Wall.
"Now you have to think about how to restore the style and appearance, and you have to think about it." said the 64-year-old master Cheng Yongmao, the 16th generation heir to the Xinglongmen of Xinglongmen and "the most beautiful guardian of the Great Wall". Now he follows the principle of not changing the original state and minimum intervention. Whether a tree on the Great Wall should be kept or not must be demonstrated.
Cheng Yongmao led the team to explore a large number of methods to "repair the old as the old" in the long-term repair.
For example, the "five follow" approach of "following layers, slopes, bends, old and broken", as long as more than two-thirds of the remaining bricks remain, they will continue to be kept for use and placed in place.
At the Badaling Ancient Great Wall in Yanqing District, Jin Hailong from Hebei is also repairing the Great Wall at his feet.
Two city bricks of 30 kilograms each were stacked in a simple steel frame welded with steel pipes. With his back behind him, he climbed up the enemy building step by step.
Some steps of the ancient Great Wall were very narrow, with only one punch wide. He could only lean sideways, stare at his feet, and climb along the zigzag route.
Earlier, the wall and pavement under the No. 69 enemy platform collapsed and overgrown with bushes.
Rainwater seeps into the gaps opened by the roots, forming frost heave in winter.
Flooding and the destruction of plant roots are the most important reasons for the dangers of the Great Wall, of which flooding is the most serious.
During the entire repair process, information including raw materials, construction techniques and other information are recorded throughout.
In the future, Yanqing District will form a method for the protection and repair of the Great Wall in this district.
The total length of the Yanqing Great Wall is about 180 kilometers, which is the longest among the six districts in Beijing.
At present, the Jiankou Phase III project and the emergency repair project of the enemy building No. 1-9 of the Great Wall in Liucun Section of Changping District are progressing in an orderly manner.
In August of this year, the Great Wall rescue work was launched ahead of schedule in 2021, and the focus of work was shifted from general rescue reinforcement to research repair.
Great Wall "New Play"
The "Wild Great Wall" is forbidden to visit, and they are unwilling to go to the scenic spot to "count the heads". Regarding the distress of Great Wall enthusiasts, the official has also considered.
Last year, the national level issued the "Great Wall, Grand Canal, and Long March National Cultural Park Construction Plan", and it is planned to basically complete the construction tasks by the end of 2023.
Among them, the Great Wall National Cultural Park includes the Warring States, Qin, and Han Great Walls, the Northern Wei, Northern Qi, Sui, Tang, Five Dynasties, Song, Xixia, and Liao dynasties with the characteristics of the Great Wall’s defense system, the Jinjie trench and the Ming Great Wall, involving Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, 15 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities including Shanxi.
The Great Wall National Cultural Park will not only explore the cultural relics and cultural spirit of the Great Wall, but also provide more ways to visit the Great Wall.
Chen Mingjie, director of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Cultural Relics, told reporters from the Beijing News that the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Cultural Relics has completed the outline of the "Great Wall National Cultural Park (Beijing Section) Construction and Protection Plan".
In April, based on the preliminary review opinions of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the content of the planning outline and key projects were determined, and the scope and area of the Great Wall Control and Protection Area, as well as 5 theme exhibition areas, 20 cultural and tourism integration areas, and 90 traditional utilization areas were determined.
The Great Wall National Cultural Park (Beijing Section) will clarify the spatial layout of "one line, five districts, and multiple points". The key areas include Malan Road (Pinggu District), Gubeikou Road (Miyun District), and Huanghua Road (Huairou District-Yanqing District) , Juyong Road (Changping District-Yanqing District), Yanhe City (Mentougou District), the length of the wall involved in the Great Wall accounts for about 10% of the total length of the Great Wall in Beijing.
In the future, you will not only be able to climb the Great Wall but also have more "new ways to play".
Part of the Great Wall has shown a new image after renovation.
For example, after nearly three years of rushing to repair cultural relics and upgrading infrastructure, in September, Yanqing District completed the infrastructure and environmental improvement of the Jiuyanlou Ecological Great Wall.
"Shuiguan Great Wall-Qinglong Bridge-Badaling Guancheng-Ancient Great Wall" will open up a tourist trail, upgrade "Guangou 72 Scenic Spots" related attractions, and form a demonstration section of the Great Wall opening.
A series of brand activities will also be held in the Great Wall National Cultural Park, such as Great Wall cycling, walking, and Great Wall Design Week.