benefits of local community protection of the Great Wall
John F Burns; JOHN F BURNS is head of the Beijing office of the New York Times.
Most travelers to the outposts of the ancient world knows what it is to feel time balding on the steps of the Senate in Rome, around dusk when the crowds fled the Forum, the visitor does to filter out the noise of traffic to imagine how it was in Jules César time in Leningrad before the Hermitage museum on the night snowy winter, the last days of the Romanovs in their winter palace can suddenly come alive.
In China, the more it is the oldest continuous civilization of everything, not always easy for the mind to follow back in time their haste to welcome hundreds of thousands of visitors arrive each year, the largest remnants Guards are significant efforts of the country to the physical restoration, but often the sense of history is lost for lack of attention in the middle too often there is too much noise, too much marketing, too much of this intrusion in enclosure of the past.
Nowhere is this more visible than on the Great Wall since Richard Nixon made his pilgrimage in 1972, almost all Americans to reach Beijing made the trip 50 mile north of Badaling, the site chosen by the government Communist in 1956 when he ordered the first major restoration of the wall in the centuries that happen, as Mr. Nixon, almost everyone was struck by the volume of masonry and scope of the job, but the spirit the place was sadly elusive.
There is a big wall, Nixon said, in what the press corps at the time took for one of his famous tautologies In fact, the former president captured - perhaps inadvertently - the blandness the stage There is no museum; the hills are mostly devoid of vegetation, and in winter, it is bitterly cold with the encouragement of tourism and small scale private enterprise in recent years, things have deteriorated Those who join the press of humanity above the wall are instantly set upon by hawkers I climbed the Great Wall T-shirts, fake coins of the Ming dynasty and many other knick-knacks.
Much of this is about to change on Oct 1, the Bureau of Relics in Beijing will officially open a new site for visitors to the wall, it is Mutianyu, a village nestled in the mountains Yan northeast of Beijing is the first major restoration of the wall in the Beijing Badaling area since the 1950s and the largest of at least five similar projects underway along a stretch of 1,000 miles Liaoning province in wall Shanxi province overall, the projects are to the largest upgrade of the wall because it has ceased to be a defense battery with the collapse of the Ming dynasty in 1644.
As Beijing officials are considering it, Mutianyu will take at least two million visitors per year Badaling, where four million tourists are expected by the end of this year At each site, approximately one third of foreign visitors will , other Chinese for the majority of Americans visiting China as members of groups with pre-established routes, it can be difficult to change, but the benefits of the new site justifies the effort with visitor numbers up rapidly every year, Badaling continue to be the busier of the two sites, and other factors are even more compelling.
Mutianyu is closer to Beijing, about 45 miles from most hotels in the center of the city The road is also better, a modern highway for the first 30 miles or so to give way to a more narrow road that winds gently through lush countyside for the last 15 miles instead rugged brown hills that are the prelude to Badaling, Mutianyu approaches are views of rice fields, wheat fields and beekeepers hives, with a glimpse here and there of peasants bathing and washing their clothes in a wide river.
The workers will be busy until the opening day with the last mile and the road, a dusty track once was widened and surfaced to carry traffic two parking lots a few hundred yards apart in the base of the mountains We are in the village of Mutianyu, a hollow sleep which is China's rural image with donkey carts and whispy bearded old men sunbathing on their front steps away, a 1,060 rise winds granite steps freshly cut white steeply up on the wall through the orchards and groves, which are absent in Badaling.
When I made the climb with my family one morning weekend heatwave last month, it was an endurance test with temperature in the mid 90s, our 10 year old son bounded forward with its old brother 4 years, leaving their mother and an English nanny escaped with their infant sister that I decided to bring our picnic on the wall, about 1400 feet above sea level, but gave in to impulse along the road and persuaded a friendly woman village rent his ass with the impedimenta in complete safety rope back of the animal, it disappeared a nearby trail and was up, waiting, when we arrived.
For some Americans, the steps of the challenge can be overwhelming for others it will be a relief to learn that a company jointly established by Chinese and Hong Kong concern will build a cable car route this winter from the second parking lot from the top, carrying up to 1,500 passengers an hour of the workers are already preparing the lower bound and Restau-rant can accommodate 1000 people officials hope to have the car cable service by 1 May
RECOVERY OF THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA, Great Wall, China.