Following up on my recent blog regarding construction crews taking a bite out of the Great Wall of China, here’s an interesting piece from the NY Times about folks who are trying to preserve the Wall.
An official at the Great Wall Society thinks that most of the damage to the Wall was probably done in the 1950s and 1960s, since Mao encouraged farmers to use bricks from the Wall to build homes. A reservoir outside Beijing was built with bricks from the Wall.
Now, however, visits by millions of tourists are taking a toll too. One site near Beijing alone counted 4.5 million visitors last year.
New national regulations, effective December 1, will, hopefully, help to protect what remains.