China has made continuous efforts to restore and protect the Great Wall, a UNESCO World Heritage Site shared.

In 2006, the country issued a regulation on the protection of the Great Wall, enshrining the employment of the guardians in the regulation.

(Photo/Wei Yuezhong)

In January 2019, China released a comprehensive conservation plan to protect the Great Wall, stressing both the government’s guiding role and individuals’ and social organizations’ participation in the protection of the ancient wonder. According to the plan, the protection and restoration work should ensure that the Great Wall relics remain where they originally existed, maintaining their original look.

In recent years, China’s National Cultural Heritage Administration (NCHA) has allocated funds to provide devices and equipment for guardians to patrol and protect the Great Wall.

Meanwhile, the China Foundation for Cultural Heritage Conservation has launched a crowdfunding campaign to pay for the restoration work on the Great Wall.

Thousands of guardians have made great contributions to the protection of these relics, with currently more than 43,000 work sites on the Great Wall, including wall sections, trench sections and fortresses.

Li Yong, a skinny, 43-year-old suntanned resident from Tangzigou village of Laiyuan county in north China’s Hebei province is one member of the team. The county is home to a total length of more than 100 kilometers of the Great Wall built during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).

Li has been protecting the 15km Wulonggou section of the Great Wall near the village, one of the most beautiful sections in Laiyuan.

In 2015, he followed his father Li Fengming’s footsteps, who volunteered to patrol the section for roughly 30 years.

Workers repair the Jiankou section in the northern Huairou district of Beijing during the third phase of the restoration project.

It’s usually not easy to patrol the Great Wall, during which guardians may hurt their hands and feet or encounter howling wind and pelting rain, as many sections are tucked away in remote mountains.

“Fortunately, I got myself out of trouble without injury every time, so did my section of the Wall,” Li said.

When other residents in the village moved to their new homes in the downtown of the county in 2017 thanks to the poverty-alleviation relocation program, Li chose to stay for the protection of the Wall.

To honor his contribution, Li was listed as one of the national guardians of cultural relics announced at this year’s Cultural and Natural Heritage Day, on June 13.

In Hebei, there are more than 800 guardians dedicated to the protection of the Great Wall, and 55 counties (cities or districts) out of the 59 in the province have established teams of guardians.

Statistics show that China has more than 3,000 guardians for the protection of the Great Wall.

In light of the restoration of the Great Wall, workers should be meticulous, as if they are doing embroidery work, according to Cheng Yongmao, the 64-year-old technical adviser for the restoration project of the Jiankou section in the northern Huairou district of Beijing.

With the third phase of the restoration project underway, the Jiankou section, roughly 8,000 meters in total length, was built on steep mountains and was left with incomplete walls and ruins after floods and earthquakes over the past years.

Cheng participated in the restoration of the Great Wall in 2014. Over the past 16 years, he has advocated the use of traditional bricks to maintain the original design of the cultural relics.

Cheng has also trained more than 20 experienced disciples, telling them to well restore and protect the cultural relics left by Chinese ancestors.