ABANDONED GREAT CHINA WALL
In the 1950s, for example, the Chinese leader Mao Zedong exhorted the masses to allow the past to serve the farmers present were mobilized to demolish part of the wall and use the bricks to build houses, pigsties, and walls.
While capitalism has begun to make inroads in the 1980s, many officials believed the tourist money would save the wall But today, the industry may represent the greatest threat to the survival of the wall.
poorly executed restoration efforts have sections left near the capital, Beijing, looking like a Hollywood set entrepreneurs have set up cable cars, souvenir shops, fast food restaurants, entertainment facilities, villas and crowded parking lots just two steps from here the structure.
In Gansu province part of the wall was rented to farmers, who have restored the wall by covering it over with cement, and installed a door, so they can pay the entrance.
A little further tourists pulled grass adobe walls among the oldest segments and most threatened and the Christmas lights were nailed to the towers of the 14th century Gansu Jiayuguan guarding the door Great Wall.
In perhaps the most egregious offense, road crews in China Inner Mongolia region smashed holes in the wall to make way for new roads.
In his new book, The Great revisited Wall, Lindesay, trained photographer, brought together hundreds of old photos of the Great Wall He then set out to re-photograph 150 locations in previous images, creating pairs sobering then and now scenes.
In some cases, he found that the items had disappeared.
Provide proof is very important, Lindesay said that you can really see the disappearance of the wall.
In 2002, the New York-based World Monuments Fund has the Great Wall on its list of 100 most endangered sites of Chinese government officials sitting world and noted.
It was a wake-up call, said Lindesay, who's spent over 1200 days on the wall in the last 20 years.
In 2003, Beijing announced its first regulations to protect the Great Wall in the capital region and last December, the central government announced a new national law to protect the wall.
It is now illegal to remove bricks or stones of the wall, carving names in the bricks, hold raves on the wall or build a house against the wall as important, the law states that all citizens, legal persons and organizations responsible for protecting the wall and reporting illegal activities to government agencies.
Dong Yaohui, vice president of the Great Wall Society of China, said that the new rules are important.
Now the government has clearly made the protection of the Great Wall a national effort, he said that the law stipulates what can and can t be done, and he said that is responsible and defines the company's responsibility to protect Great Wall.
Dong, who walked the entire length of the wall in 1984-1985, said that the drafting of the law is a sign of growing awareness of the problem of government.
Lindesay, international friends of the Great Wall, the Chinese agreed realize that much has been lost.
Already the new law shows its teeth, or at least his gums.
On December 3, a construction company became the first to be fined under the new rules for removing large pieces of the wall to make room for illegal highway, authorities fined the equivalent manufacturers US 6.500.
The biggest problem today Wall, Dong said, is the lack of understanding among the Chinese, he told don t realize the true meaning of the Great Wall.
The June survey team, for example, found a portion of the wall covered with graffiti and bricks Chinese farmers carting away from the wall, as they have for decades ve.
And in November three men in Inner Mongolia were detained to take the land of a former old section of 2,200 years of the wall to use as a landfill for a village factory.
It's just a bunch of land, village head Hao Zengjun told the official Xinhua News Agency.
Dong said, outside of Beijing and the neighboring Hebei Province, the Great Wall is in very poor areas and backward Trying to get the importance of the wall facing a restless people for survival is not easy.
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