Greatwall of China

As we all know that both the Rideau Canal and the Great Wall of China are labelled world heritage sites from United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

In a bid to increase cross-promotion between them, officials from Ottawa Tourism signed an agreement in the federal capital Thursday to provide more advertising for Beijing’s Great Wall of China.

The agreement on Thursday is a follow-on to another pact signed at the Great Wall in April, and extends the work on Chinese-Ottawa relations that Ottawa Tourism has been building on to take advantage of the growing Asian economy.

Representatives also have taken part in several trade trips to China since Ottawa Tourism decided tohook into the country in 2005.

“I have fond memories of the signing ceremony at the Great Wall,” stated Noel Buckley, the head of Ottawa Tourism.

“This is an important further step in the cooperation and friendship between Beijing and Ottawa, who have been sister cities for 10 years now.”

This event continues Ottawa Tourism’s outreach to the Chinese market, which has been ongoing since 2005.

David Spindler an American, 41, is an unlikely, almost accidental scholar of one of China’s most beloved landmarks, a Harvard Law School graduate who left his job as a consultant and lived off savings to pursue his grand obsession thousands of miles from his Massachusetts roots. Someday soon, he hopes to publish a book on all he has learned. He stands along a crenelated crown of the Great Wall and gestures toward a river valley that snakes away northward into the gloom. “Over there,” he says, his voice lilting in a sense of discovery. “That’s the direction from which the Mongols attacked.”

For two hours on Oct. 23, 1554, a bloody battle raged. The raiders used ropes to reach the Chinese defenders, climbing the wall “like ants,” Spindler explains. He talks of a Chinese soldier who hacked off the hand of an attacker only to be killed moments later, his head pierced by an enemy arrow.

Spindler has done his homework, much of it in the National Library of China, where he has pored over government reports and military archives detailing the clash along this isolated mountain ridge 75 miles northwest of Beijing, deciphering the ancient Chinese characters that hold clues to a past 454 years old.

Without academic affiliation or funding, Spindler has spent 14 years traveling across China. And he has spent more than 830 days clambering over the Greatwall’s far-flung ramparts around Beijing, enough to wear through several pairs of hiking boots.

Dressed in a wide-brimmed Tilley hat, red-checked hunting jacket, and arm-length work gloves, he has endured the humid 100-degree days of summer and shortened snow-blown days of December.

Spindler’s relationship with the Great Wall was not love at first sight. He initially visited there as a tourist in 1987 while on a summer study program in China.

Years later, after moving to Beijing to study premodern Chinese history, he still saw the wall less as its own destination than as a respite from the stress of a teeming foreign capital with 17 million residents.

In 1994, a friend suggested that they take an overnight hiking trip there. Always athletic – he was a collegiate rower and cross-country skier – Spindler was challenged by the physical exertion of tracing the structure’s roller-coaster rises and falls.

In the fall of 1997, he returned to the United States to attend Harvard Law School. But Spindler kept a map of his beloved barricade over his dorm room desk.

In 2000, he returned to Beijing and worked as a management consultant as he pursued his research. In early 2002, Spindler surprised even his closest friends: He left his consulting job and soon began to study the wall full time.

“He manages to communicate his love for this subject and the excitement he feels when he gets up on the stones and gazes out over the hills and the twists and turns of the wall.”

Spindler’s research has also separated myth from fact.

He has learned, for example, that the Great Wall is not one continuous structure but a series of fortifications, built with various materials, including packed earth, bricks and mortar, field stones and quarried rock. In some places, it isn’t a wall at all, but a string of unconnected signal towers. No one has determined exactly how long it runs, but estimates vary from thousands to tens of thousands of miles.

He plans to finish a book on the Great Wall by the end of 2010. But no one, least of all Spindler, thinks that will mark the closing chapter of his adventure.

He has hiked for days without seeing another soul, explored abandoned villages, gotten lost, and watched fellow hikers break arms and legs in falls – all while tracing the route and origins of the meandering wall.

“I always like sitting around here and looking around,” he says during a recent hike. “I see new things all the time. It’s also a great vista.” He paused, then spoke again. “This is a wonderful workplace.”

Today is Dec.11 2008. Beijing’s first snowfall this winter will be helpful to reduce its air pollution. As we are know that Beijing is surrounded by three mountain ranges and the coming rain, winds and snow could have a positive impact on the capital’s air quality.

On Tuesday, Beijing experienced one of its most polluted days, with the air pollution index (API) hitting 247 citywide and 399 in the southern outskirts. Meteorological authorities said that the index dropped from a high of 247 on Tuesday to 162 Wednesday. But it is sitll high. An API of 51 to 100 indicates fairly good air quality, the China Environmental Monitoring Center said. An index of 101 to 150 means slight pollution, while an API in excess of 200 means severe air pollution.

People walk along a snow-covered section of the Great Wall in Beijing Wednesday. A cold front is forecast for the capital in the coming week and will further reduce the API to about 100, barring a big change in emissions, Li Xin, chief engineer of the Beijing municipal environment protection bureau, said.

The coming snowfalls and winds could also help Great Wall.

This is a tale of two Williams, their lives separated by more than a century but whose destinies are intertwined through their abiding fascination with one of the pinnacles of human achievement, the Great Wall of China.

William Lindesay, “Young William”, is British, and one of the world’s leading authorities on the Wall, while William Geil, “Old William”, was an American and the first man to explore the Great Wall from one end to the other.

Young William has just launched an exhibition in Beijing’s elegant Imperial College & Temple of Confucius Museum, which features the newly discovered diaries, photographs and other artefacts belonging to Old William, a missionary and explorer.

Lindesay was inspired by images of the Great Wall as an 11-year-old boy in Wallasey, Wirral, and he ran the length of Hadrian’s Wall a few years later, a sign of things to come. While studying at Manchester he decided to take things further. He first explored the Wall in 1987, was arrested nine times and deported once. It was a different China to the one that is today allowing, and indeed encouraging, his exhibition to go ahead.

He came across a copy of Geil’s book on the Great Wall in 1990, and believes that the American was the first individual to have explored the entire Wall, at the turn of the last century. Lindesay is the founder and director of a non-governmental organisation called International Friends of the Great Wall, and the exhibition focuses on his “re-photography” work, a process where he retakes photographs of the precise location where an original photograph was shot. It’s a stunning exercise in documenting change.

Lindesay had already written Alone on the Great Wall, an account of his own 1,500-mile excursion in 1987, when he set out four years ago to locate and rephotograph the same sites that Geil had photographed. “It’s a great way to try to influence the future of the Great Wall, to show how it has changed in the last 100 years,” said Lindesay as we walked through the exhibition, which also includes Jesuit maps of the Wall from the 16th century and other early depictions by British soldiers. His work to maintain the Wall has made him a celebrity in China, and he is stopped several times and asked to sign the programme or pose for photographs.

“Rephotographing locations is a kind of advocacy project to make Chinese people, and officials, aware of how the Wall has changed because of nature, because of man’s influence or because of neglect,” he says.

Establishing the length of the Great Wall is a matter of fierce debate, but Lindesay said it is unknown, as it has never been measured. “More than a Great Wall, it’s a collection of different elements – walls, forts, gates and engraved tablets,” he says. If all the pieces which make up the structure that is commonly referred to as the Great Wall were added up, the result would be more than 50,000km (31,000 miles) long. The parts bend and weave, incorporating parts of nature, dipping into water, meandering off into other sections, and disappearing only to reappear further off in a remoter part of the country.

It spans nearly 2,000 years of construction, from 300 BC to AD 1644. For many years, the Great Wall was believed to be the only man-made structure visible from space, but China’s first astronaut conceded that he couldn’t spot it.

“But all parts of the Great Wall have the same function in common. They were built as part of a strategy to defend Chinese land from nomadic invasion,” Lindesay said.

The Wall has taken a battering, with only 2,500km left standing today. Ironically, it was never used to withstand an attack – weakness and corruption within the imperial government, rather than the ramparts themselves, led to invaders being able to cross it to reach Beijing. Legend has it that Genghis Khan bribed his way past the guards.

Sections have been knocked down to make way for motorways and housing developments while, over the years, farmers and villagers living in its shadow have plundered its stones for pigsties and henhouses.

Lindesay wanted to learn more about Geil, born in 1865, who had also written about the Yangtze river. He died from influenza in Italy in 1925, but faded from view. However, Lindesay managed to track down one of the American’s adoptive grandsons, John Laycock, who had hoarded material about his intrepid ancestor, and later was contacted by Tim Adamsky, an amateur historian in Geil’s native Doylestown in Philadelphia, who had recently obtained a trove of Geil material from a local collector’s estate, including manuscripts, his compass, his glasses and pocket watch and the Bible which he took everywhere with him.

He ended up with a full picture of the explorer. Both Williams stood out on their travels – Geil was 6ft 4in and attracted a lot of attention on his way through China, especially as foreigners were largely unknown then. Lindesay measures 6ft 2in and in his size-14 boots also attracts stares during his travels.

Lindesay has included stark images of the Wall in the far west of China near Dunhuang, Gansu province, where the Anglo-Hungarian explorer Sir Aurel Stein discovered the Jade Gate, one of the more substantial surviving sections of Wall. Among the photographs taken by this legendary explorer were the granaries that fed garrisons manning remote outposts, and piles of reeds kept ready to be lit if enemy invaders were sighted.

The Great Wall’s propaganda value has always been strong, and the legacy is prominent in the show. One picture by Sha Fei, a photojournalist who took many iconic photographs of Communists fighting the Japanese in the 1930s, has some superlative images of troops lined up at Chajianling Ridge with the watchtowers above, facing the invaders. The Japanese later took photographs of their own troops placing flags atop the same watchtowers.

Other images show a French motor enthusiast being carried along the dry banks of a river in the early part of the last century as the tourists began to arrive. The trip to Badaling, traditionally the most accessible part of the Wall from Beijing, used to take a week but it became a day trip when the railway was pushed through.

Today, Badaling is a mass tourist operation, overrun with tour buses and excited visitors. To rephotograph the Wall at Badaling, Lindesay had a difficult job finding a way around the obstacles in place for the needs of modern tourism. Some 10 million people visit the Wall every year, and the government has moved to protect it.

Lindesay believes it has a positive future. “This exhibition shows how China is changing. People know there are fancy new cities in China, but this shows that official thinking is changing. This exhibition wouldn’t have been possible 20 years ago because it shows negative images as well as positive,” he said.

Some of the photographs show the extent of the challenge facing those trying to preserve the Wall. One, older, picture shows a carved entrance to a watchtower near Tangzigou, a granite keystone depicting a monster’s face meant to deter evil spirits. The newer picture shows the same entrance, but the keystone has been stolen. This picture dates from 2005. The older picture is from 2004.

One of the highlights of the show is a large, battered tin box, with the words “North China” inscribed in a flourish on the side in white paint. This contained Geil’s diaries, bills for mules and muleteers and other artefacts of the explorer’s craft from 100 years ago.

In June this year, a group of 20 people, including family members and friends, joined Lindesay in Doylestown cemetery to commemorate the centenary of William Edgar Geil’s journey from one end of the Great Wall to the other. Young William placed a plaque dedicated to Old William.

I have been anticipating this day for along time. Actually getting to walk the Great Wall of China has always been a dream. I started the morning off with a big breakfast and I loaded up on some granola knowing that this would be a large task. I think it took close to 1hour to reach the section of the wall I was going to hike. I was hiking the Badaling section in north west Beijing. I knew today would be a day that I would never forget.

As we approached the wall, all I could think about was the millions of people who have spent their lives building this great wall. The wall in itself extends for over 4,000 miles across China and was built to keep hoarding nomadic tribes, huns, and other invaders from encroaching on the people of China.

The magnitude of the wall winding its way up and down the mountain side is overwhelming. Without pause, I started my climb and the first portion was rather daunting. Every 500 yards or so there would be a tower that you could stop and look out over your accomplishments. The difficult thing in hiking the wall is that the steps are not uniform. There are steps that are a few inches high all the way up to 2 ft high so you really have to pay attention to where you place your feet. I would have to say just after the first 1,000 yards I was rethinking how far I was going to hike. I had to remind myself that here I was getting the chance of lifetime. Its all mind over matter. As I was thinking this I could feel a surge of energy and I would get up and begin walking again. During my walk you could hear a steady beat off in the distance and I had thought it was probably cars and trucks travelling over a bridge but when I looked down into the village below, there were huge red drums being beat my men. It was motivating and the rest of the walk I used the beat of the drums to push me along.

During my time on the wall I felt a since of pride because if you have ever seen pictures you will know that it is very intimidating. I had anticipated the hikes up the mountains as being the hardest but to my surprise the hikes down were even more difficult. My hamstrings burned on the way up but my knees buckled on the way down. I knew that sometime the next day I would feel the pain of both but I knew the pain was well worth the effort.

As I approached the end of my trek, there were local villagers selling items of great interest. You could by local fox furs, drums, charms, silk, and wind chimes. These people were very impressive. There skills did not go unnoticed. I did manage to buy some wind chimes with a happy Buddha that I will place at my cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

To sum it all up, I would have to place this near the top of all the adventures I have taken so far in my life time. This experience I will carry with me to the day I die and hopefully it will be past on to my daughter and her children. I must say that it was an adventure that I thought I would never reach but now I can pack it in the box of memories that I have of this great world of ours. The Great Wall of China lives up to its name.

I am leading a delegation of parliamentarians to China at the gracious invitation of the Chinese Communist Party in its 30th year of reforms celebrations. It’s my first visit out of the country as an MNA and I am proud that it is to China. I have with me a PPP and ANP MNA and a Northern Areas minister. Here is part 1 of the three-part city wise account of the trip…

Beijing is modern, fast-moving, with lots of modern infrastructure. Our first visit was to the Great Wall of China. It was freezing. The walk up and down a portion of the wall made me think of Chairman Mao’s saying that till you have not climbed the Wall you are not a real man! As I walked through the wall I thought of the tremendous history of China. Their first recorded dynasty was the 2200-1700 BC Xia Dynasty. And their latest was Qing from 1644 to 1911. After which came the republic of China till 1949 and finally the modern day China as we all know it the People’s Republic of China. I saw the Great Wall of China as a physical demonstration of this chain of history through their different periods.

Later the same evening we were taken to an acrobatic show which went beyond acrobatics. It was a demonstration of their nationhood which they were so proudly showcasing to their foreign guests. Precision, timing, practice, discipline, teamwork. This is exactly what China’s success was all about. What a feast for the eyes.

The next day was official meetings with senior officials. It was my first delegation that I was not just part of but one that I was leading so I was conscious to meet all diplomatic norms and put across the strategic messages efficiently. Our first meeting was with the vice minister of the Communist Party’s International department. It was a banquet breakfast meeting which was to be the most important message delivery made by the Chinese as per Ambassador Masood Khan, who attended the meeting with us.

The CPC’s message was loud and clear. Firstly, that the bilateral relationship was all-weather and a strategic “partnership.” That the responsibility of taking bilateral through to greater heights was being passed on to the next cadre of young leaders consciously. They explained in detail how the “China model” was successful but had to be localised to suit each country’s needs. They were certain that Pakistan could weather the current challenges; they assured us that they would stand by us at all costs despite the disruptions being caused to regional stability by dark forces. They considered cross-party discussions critical for unity of purpose on China and their department’s main objective to engage with all ideological parties. Their basis for engagement was based on independence, equality, mutual respect and non-interference. This was their secret ingredient that fitted all sizes of societies.

My message was a pro-Pakistan state and devoid of all political party colours. In between the breakfast delicacies and the translations I spoke for Pak-China strengthening of ties. We were honoured to be here. We appreciated their special hospitality. We brought with us good wishes of the people of Pakistan and each political leadership of Pakistan for the people of China and their leadership. We felt at home in our second home. China’s success was fascinating and was a great study subject for us. Our main objective was to exercise legislative oversight over executive on economic, social, defence bilateral relationship and fast track cooperation. We would continue to support each other on multilateral forums on issues like Tibet and Kashmir. In midst of WTO and financial world crisis this cooperation was even more critical. I assured them that our government was doing its utmost to secure their nationals. I laid special emphasis on power projects and special economic zones to strengthen our bilaterals. I appreciated their quake assistance efforts. I complemented them on their Olympics and space mission feats. I talked of need for university to university youth partnerships.

Next was a working meeting with the DG of the International department of the CPC. I presented the WAPDA projects and asked for investments in this area. The other delegates added their wish lists, including smaller dams and Thar coal and Bhasha-Diamir assistance. Later in the afternoon we had the great privilege of being received in the Great Hall of the People by the Vice Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of their National Congress. Again it was one of the historic places one had read about. It was one more great meeting with thoughts of institutionalising a Pak China parliamentary caucus which would track through legislative committee system the progress on trade, social indicators. This was the only way of making things China-centric back in parliament. I committed to put a strategic legislative tracking plan together and on my return present it to the Speaker for her approval. It is a new idea to the extent that the legislative branch has never executed tracking of country specific bilaterals. I think it is not only possible but also time-critical. The host was an older senior chairman of the foreign relations committee who seemed pleased with my narrative on the mechanics of the parliamentary caucus. He even asked me for my advice on how to improve China. I was humbled. His message was that Pakistan was not just a brotherly country but a partner country. All his words were very important signals, as I learnt later from our ambassador.

Day 3 started with a visit to the Forbidden City. We walked through the imperial Palace in piercing cold and I thought of Chairman Mao declaring this nation as a People’s Republic close to 60 years back on the second floor of the front building. The architecture of the Forbidden City was incredibly well preserved and it was a treat to soak the history all in. Lunch was at a very special historic restaurant where leaders like Nixon had eaten Peking duck. We had the privilege of being served the 1.15 millionth duck and its every possible cut and organ only to be followed by a grand main course; it was a culinary experience I will never forget. But this was not to be just a duck meal. I proposed and got excellent response on a local government proposal to contribute to people-to-people grassroots partnership. The Nazim-Mayor sister town 5 point partnership plan that I unveiled included the following technical and capacity building elements: equipment for clean drinking water, hospital, school, garbage turned energy project, and horticulture trade increase. This coupled with voluntary youth delegations teaching language, history and culture would ensure superb people to people contact.

We visited the Olympics stadium Bird’s Nest and Water Cube that day. Again here was modern China in full swing. With their financing of this spectacular sports bonanza through private-public partnership namely corporate and overseas Chinese assistance it was infrastructure that would live beyond the 2008 Olympics. Business ventures for future generations with their multipurpose usage plans. The guided tour was a true demonstration of the Chinese’ long-term spirit and the competitive element of making the best through sheer hardwork and ingenuity. I could well imagine how records of excellence had been made and broken at this great high-tech venue some months back.

The day ended with a superb banquet dinner in our honour by our most able ambassador. His briefing later on made me even more conscious of my new role as speaking on behalf of the state of Pakistan whilst on foreign soil. I learnt through him of the efforts and achievements of the last presidential visit. And I decided for the sake of the bilateral to delete party politics on this issue.

More in the next diary blog from Shanghai.

A SEATON firefighter is trekking the Great Wall of China to raise money for the service.

Andy Mackie, 31, of Buttercup Close, will take part in the 10 day challenge to raise money for injured firefighters and their families.

The assistant manager at Sidmouth Sports Centre and Swimming Pool and retained firefighter said the charity was close to his heart.

He said: “This is something I wanted to do and I received an e-mail invited me to do it for the service and I thought what better time?

“Few people have done it and those who have said it’s really hard work – with between six and eight hours trekking a day. There is a lot of loose terrain and unstable parts. But it’s for a worthy cause and I may need use of them one day.”

The registered charity assists over 11,000 individuals every year by providing treatment and support services. It costs over £9 million every year to keep the charity running, and with no government funding they are reliant on donations from the public. For more information visit www.firefighterscharity.org.uk .

Andy needs to raise £2,500. He has already paid £300 towards costs himself. To sponsor Andy, visit www.justgiving.com/andymackie.

*A sponsored slim is being held at Sidmouth Sports Centre and Swimming Pool to raise money for the charity. People are invited to take part with instruction offered free of charge. Participants will meet once a week for an informal chat about nutrition, diet and exercise and will be prescribed exercises to help them achieve their goal and keep motivated.

Tourists with knives are fast becoming the great threat to the GreatWall. It has been a trend for years to carve one’s name into the wall in the name of graffiti. Taking a knife to this World Heritage site should not be acceptable. You do not see (modern day) graffiti on other World Heritage sites such as StoneHenge in England.

Deputy Chairman of the Great Wall Association, Mr Dong Yaohui is clearly upset about the latest attacks from tourists and the fact that barely a stone has escaped the graffiti. Dong Yaohui went on to say that he felt terribly ashamed of his fellow Chinese who had carved on the bricks with knives.

There has even been reports of tourists with paint brushes ruining sections of the wall with mindless graffiti.
In Beijing, the municipal government in August 2003 introduced a local law to help protect the wall.

The law states that all local government bodies along the Great Wall, as well as all tourists, are obliged to look after the wall for the generations of visitors to come.

Old age is hitting the Great Wall bad these days. If its not tourists attacking the wall and stealing parts for treasure then it is locals stealing parts of the wall for building materials.

The Great Wall not only has to deal with humans but also from years of bad weather, wind and ravaging rain.

There has been reports in the mmedia that about 1/3 of the 100 mile stretch in Northwest China’s Ningxia Hui Region, also known to many as China’s Museum of the Great Wall, has disappeared.

This section of the wall dates back to the Warring States Period (that is 475-221 BC) and the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).

There is a big effort being made now to keep and eye on the wall and to stop local residents taking away the clay stones.