China: Saving the Great Wall
August 2003 1220
Dance party at Great Wall
CAMPBELL: It was built to keep out invading Mongol hordes. But in modern China, the Great Wall has been facing a very different invasion. With hordes of the new middle class jumping in their cars to mount weekend assaults. Even these Beijing 20-somethings, more attuned to Western music then Chinese history, cant get enough of it.
00:00
Young man at dance
YOUNG MAN: I think the Great Wall is China. What you foreigners know most about China is the Great Wall. I think it has great meaning to have a party here.
00:41
2nd Young Man at dance
SECOND YOUNG MAN: The Wall has a long history in China and it is a symbol for Chinese history and culture.
00:57
Dance party at Great Wall
CAMPBELL: But some fear China is loving the wall to death. With mass tourism and mass development running out of control. The SARS epidemic has tempered this new invasion but only temporarily. The long-term threat could be greater than anything the wall has faced in centuries.
01:10
William Lindesay at wall
WILLIAM LINDESAY: I think its in very, very grave danger. Theres no doubt about that, but it is making Chinese people believe this that is going to be difficult.
01:32
Ruined sections of wall
CAMPBELL: Forget the tourist brochures. This is what the Great Wall is really like - abandoned, overgrown, ruined, but still utterly extraordinary. After so many centuries the wall is no longer something imposed on the landscape, its become part of it. But much of what makes it unique is disappearing, falling victim to nature, to people, to economics. After enduring so long as a barrier to keep out invaders, the Great Wall itself is in need of rescue.
01:50
The damage can already be seen on every section of the wall close to towns and villages, crass, unplanned developments encroaching on its edge, local farmers erecting toll booths to charge money from hikers and everywhere rubbish and graffiti.
02:22
William cleaning at Wall
British expatriate William Lindesay heads the preservation group International Friends of the Great Wall.
02:44
WILLIAM LINDESAY: You can always find bits hidden away here. We know these tricks.
CAMPBELL: He fears its greatest wonder, the wild wall near Beijing, is in danger of being lost.
02:55
Sections of wall
WILLIAM LINDESAY: If you were to come around to wilderness sections of wall, that are just two or three hours drive from Beijing, in ten years time, twenty years time, these will not be wilderness sections of wall. They will be rebuilt. Development will have encroached to very, very close distances to the wall itself and what we will have lost are cultural landscapes, the genuine, authentic history of China will be lost.
03:03
Photo of William walking along wall
CAMPBELL: William Lindesays obsession with the wall began sixteen years ago when he became the first foreigner since the Communist Revolution to try to walk it. He covered almost 5000 kilometres before officials decided he was a spy and expelled him.
03:31
Returning in the mid 90s to marry a Chinese woman he had me on his travels, he found the first signs of the emerging threat.
WILLIAM LINDESAY: I was returning to sections of wall Id seen in 87 and I sensed a difference, an aesthetic difference. I would see writing on bricks and I would see garbage, particularly lots of film boxes
03:57
William
Super: William Lindesay
International Friends of the Great Wall
and I was distressed because I had come to view the stones of the Great Wall as being sacred.
04:12
Music
Sections of wall
CAMPBELL: Much of whats called the Great Wall has already disappeared or been damaged beyond repair. Over 22 centuries, 16 different walls were built to defend the empire from nomadic invasion. Vast sections were made from rammed earth and soon fell victim to the elements but the jewel in the crown, the Ming Dynasty Wall was built to last. Most of it survived intact after it was abandoned 350 years ago, but Chinas opening economy exposed it to the commercial masses.
04:25
William
WILLIAM LINDESAY: Protection comes low down on the list of priorities. It is use but not protection. I would even go so far as to saying the majority of use is outright abuse.
05:02
Photographic panorama
CAMPBELL: This century-old panorama of his study shows a section near the village of Badaling outside Beijing, the wall deserted except for a passing camel train.
05:17
Tourists on wall
We visited the same section just before SARS hit and tens of thousands of tourists have beaten us to it, brought in by the coach load and disgorged at the restaurants and souvenir stalls. The only camel was for souvenir snaps.
05:36
The coach stops are now almost devoid of foreign tourists but the locals are already coming back. And with development marching at full pace toward the 2008 Olympics, it may not be long before the crowds are even bigger than before.
05:56
Badaling is where most people get their first and only glimpse of the Great Wall. Its not to everyones taste and on a bad day it can feel more like Disneyland than an ancient icon, but at least it can accommodate millions of visitors without doing any more damage. The real problem is in the unspoilt sections near Beijing because the message you can make money from the wall is spreading as far and wide as the wall itself.
06:18
Wall at Huanghuacheng
At Huanghuacheng near Beijing, local farmers have effectively taken over the wall, erecting toll gates to charge visitors for access. Its an entrepreneurial free-for-all and our camera is not welcome. Crude graffiti painted on the towers tells visitors where they can and cant go. Makeshift ladders to lookouts are another source of revenue for poor villages. While the exploitation is still small scale, a hotel built alongside the wall is a sign of things to come.
06:52
Section of Ming Dynasty Wall
The Beijing municipality is more than 600 kilometres of Ming Dynasty Wall just waiting to be developed.
WILLIAM LINDESAY: Im sure they would resort to introducing unsuitable attractions beside the wall or in the valley below the wall and that would further damage
07:27
William at wall
the cultural landscape of the Great Wall. The scenarios very simple. I have pictures of wild wall from 100 years ago, from 8 years ago. I go back to those sites now and I see a wall transformed. From the tourist angle those sites are necessary, but to have these places right along the wall would be an absolute disaster.
07:46
William and Friends of Wall having photo taken
CAMPBELL: William Lindesay and his wife formed International Friends of the Great Wall to lobby for its protection. While hes provided a Western sense of environmental campaigning, most of the lobbying comes from like-minded Chinese. Their aim is to press the authorities to stop vandalism and over development, to protect not just the wall but the land around it too.
08:11
William at wall
WILLIAM LINDESAY: These stones here, these stones came from the valleys here below. If we brought archaeologists in and we spent enough time investigating, we could find the quarries. We could find the places where the bricks in the tower behind me were baked, so that was the construction base of the wall down there, so its a blood relationship between the wall and its surroundings and we want to promote protection of the wall as a landscape.
08:34
Villagers working
CAMPBELL: For centuries, peasants along the length of the wall have relied on it for daily survival. Villages like this one were built from its bricks.
09:02
As a young man, Lao Chang would make daily treks to cart back stones in a home made backpack to build his house.
Lao Chang
LAO CHANG: I was about 30 when I carried the bricks. I carried the bricks from the wall which is on the west side of the village. I didnt know better back then otherwise I wouldnt have done it.
09:24
Lao Chang on wall picking up rubbish
CAMPBELL: But these days Lao Chang has a different reason to climb the mountain. The group, Friends of the Great Wall, employs him as a ranger. His job is to clean the wall near his village and to encourage others to respect it.
09:39
LAO CHANG: I do my best to pick up rubbish from the Great Wall and make a contribution to my country. A small number of people throw rubbish right after I pick it up. They walk all over the wall so I have to walk over it quite a few times a day. Some people have promised not to throw anything but they still do it -- so I have to go all the way down again and pick it up.
09:54
Hikers on wall
CAMPBELL: As we talked some young hikers appeared on the hillside. Lao Chang was quick to acquaint them with his countryside code.
10:34
LAO CHANG: Dont throw rubbish on the way -- or youll have to pick it up later. Go slowly, there are some steep places.
CAMPBELL: The reaction isnt always polite.
10:52
LAO CHANG: Several people argued with me and said Ive got no power to do anything like fine them. They said they could crap where they wanted and there was nothing I could do.
Friends of the Great Wall expedition
CAMPBELL: Once a month or so the group Friends of the Great Wall mounts small, symbolic expeditions. Today its a three hour hike through the forest to a Ming Dynasty tower, accompanied by Chinese media and sympathetic officials.
11:13
William
WILLIAM LINDESAY: We aim to identify problems, record them and report these problems to high officials and we want to really tell the state of the wall as it truly is.
11:29
Friends of the Great Wall expedition
CAMPBELL: It takes just an hours foraging to collect about 30 kilograms of rubbish.
11:44
Shots of wall
Music
CAMPBELL: Clean-ups like this are a band-aid solution to the problems of the Wall but its the start of a slow process to change attitudes as old as the Wall itself and to protect an icon that has stood for two millennia from the peril of a modern world.
11:58
GREAT WALL
Reporter: Eric Campbell
Camera: Terry McDonald/Matt Jasper
Editor: Stuart Miller
Producer: Inka Kretschmer
August 2003 1220
Dance party at Great Wall
CAMPBELL: It was built to keep out invading Mongol hordes. But in modern China, the Great Wall has been facing a very different invasion. With hordes of the new middle class jumping in their cars to mount weekend assaults. Even these Beijing 20-somethings, more attuned to Western music then Chinese history, cant get enough of it.
00:00
Young man at dance
YOUNG MAN: I think the Great Wall is China. What you foreigners know most about China is the Great Wall. I think it has great meaning to have a party here.
00:41
2nd Young Man at dance
SECOND YOUNG MAN: The Wall has a long history in China and it is a symbol for Chinese history and culture.
00:57
Dance party at Great Wall
CAMPBELL: But some fear China is loving the wall to death. With mass tourism and mass development running out of control. The SARS epidemic has tempered this new invasion but only temporarily. The long-term threat could be greater than anything the wall has faced in centuries.
01:10
William Lindesay at wall
WILLIAM LINDESAY: I think its in very, very grave danger. Theres no doubt about that, but it is making Chinese people believe this that is going to be difficult.
01:32
Ruined sections of wall
CAMPBELL: Forget the tourist brochures. This is what the Great Wall is really like - abandoned, overgrown, ruined, but still utterly extraordinary. After so many centuries the wall is no longer something imposed on the landscape, its become part of it. But much of what makes it unique is disappearing, falling victim to nature, to people, to economics. After enduring so long as a barrier to keep out invaders, the Great Wall itself is in need of rescue.
01:50
The damage can already be seen on every section of the wall close to towns and villages, crass, unplanned developments encroaching on its edge, local farmers erecting toll booths to charge money from hikers and everywhere rubbish and graffiti.
02:22
William cleaning at Wall
British expatriate William Lindesay heads the preservation group International Friends of the Great Wall.
02:44
WILLIAM LINDESAY: You can always find bits hidden away here. We know these tricks.
CAMPBELL: He fears its greatest wonder, the wild wall near Beijing, is in danger of being lost.
02:55
Sections of wall
WILLIAM LINDESAY: If you were to come around to wilderness sections of wall, that are just two or three hours drive from Beijing, in ten years time, twenty years time, these will not be wilderness sections of wall. They will be rebuilt. Development will have encroached to very, very close distances to the wall itself and what we will have lost are cultural landscapes, the genuine, authentic history of China will be lost.
03:03
Photo of William walking along wall
CAMPBELL: William Lindesays obsession with the wall began sixteen years ago when he became the first foreigner since the Communist Revolution to try to walk it. He covered almost 5000 kilometres before officials decided he was a spy and expelled him.
03:31
Returning in the mid 90s to marry a Chinese woman he had me on his travels, he found the first signs of the emerging threat.
WILLIAM LINDESAY: I was returning to sections of wall Id seen in 87 and I sensed a difference, an aesthetic difference. I would see writing on bricks and I would see garbage, particularly lots of film boxes
03:57
William
Super: William Lindesay
International Friends of the Great Wall
and I was distressed because I had come to view the stones of the Great Wall as being sacred.
04:12
Music
Sections of wall
CAMPBELL: Much of whats called the Great Wall has already disappeared or been damaged beyond repair. Over 22 centuries, 16 different walls were built to defend the empire from nomadic invasion. Vast sections were made from rammed earth and soon fell victim to the elements but the jewel in the crown, the Ming Dynasty Wall was built to last. Most of it survived intact after it was abandoned 350 years ago, but Chinas opening economy exposed it to the commercial masses.
04:25
William
WILLIAM LINDESAY: Protection comes low down on the list of priorities. It is use but not protection. I would even go so far as to saying the majority of use is outright abuse.
05:02
Photographic panorama
CAMPBELL: This century-old panorama of his study shows a section near the village of Badaling outside Beijing, the wall deserted except for a passing camel train.
05:17
Tourists on wall
We visited the same section just before SARS hit and tens of thousands of tourists have beaten us to it, brought in by the coach load and disgorged at the restaurants and souvenir stalls. The only camel was for souvenir snaps.
05:36
The coach stops are now almost devoid of foreign tourists but the locals are already coming back. And with development marching at full pace toward the 2008 Olympics, it may not be long before the crowds are even bigger than before.
05:56
Badaling is where most people get their first and only glimpse of the Great Wall. Its not to everyones taste and on a bad day it can feel more like Disneyland than an ancient icon, but at least it can accommodate millions of visitors without doing any more damage. The real problem is in the unspoilt sections near Beijing because the message you can make money from the wall is spreading as far and wide as the wall itself.
06:18
Wall at Huanghuacheng
At Huanghuacheng near Beijing, local farmers have effectively taken over the wall, erecting toll gates to charge visitors for access. Its an entrepreneurial free-for-all and our camera is not welcome. Crude graffiti painted on the towers tells visitors where they can and cant go. Makeshift ladders to lookouts are another source of revenue for poor villages. While the exploitation is still small scale, a hotel built alongside the wall is a sign of things to come.
06:52
Section of Ming Dynasty Wall
The Beijing municipality is more than 600 kilometres of Ming Dynasty Wall just waiting to be developed.
WILLIAM LINDESAY: Im sure they would resort to introducing unsuitable attractions beside the wall or in the valley below the wall and that would further damage
07:27
William at wall
the cultural landscape of the Great Wall. The scenarios very simple. I have pictures of wild wall from 100 years ago, from 8 years ago. I go back to those sites now and I see a wall transformed. From the tourist angle those sites are necessary, but to have these places right along the wall would be an absolute disaster.
07:46
William and Friends of Wall having photo taken
CAMPBELL: William Lindesay and his wife formed International Friends of the Great Wall to lobby for its protection. While hes provided a Western sense of environmental campaigning, most of the lobbying comes from like-minded Chinese. Their aim is to press the authorities to stop vandalism and over development, to protect not just the wall but the land around it too.
08:11
William at wall
WILLIAM LINDESAY: These stones here, these stones came from the valleys here below. If we brought archaeologists in and we spent enough time investigating, we could find the quarries. We could find the places where the bricks in the tower behind me were baked, so that was the construction base of the wall down there, so its a blood relationship between the wall and its surroundings and we want to promote protection of the wall as a landscape.
08:34
Villagers working
CAMPBELL: For centuries, peasants along the length of the wall have relied on it for daily survival. Villages like this one were built from its bricks.
09:02
As a young man, Lao Chang would make daily treks to cart back stones in a home made backpack to build his house.
Lao Chang
LAO CHANG: I was about 30 when I carried the bricks. I carried the bricks from the wall which is on the west side of the village. I didnt know better back then otherwise I wouldnt have done it.
09:24
Lao Chang on wall picking up rubbish
CAMPBELL: But these days Lao Chang has a different reason to climb the mountain. The group, Friends of the Great Wall, employs him as a ranger. His job is to clean the wall near his village and to encourage others to respect it.
09:39
LAO CHANG: I do my best to pick up rubbish from the Great Wall and make a contribution to my country. A small number of people throw rubbish right after I pick it up. They walk all over the wall so I have to walk over it quite a few times a day. Some people have promised not to throw anything but they still do it -- so I have to go all the way down again and pick it up.
09:54
Hikers on wall
CAMPBELL: As we talked some young hikers appeared on the hillside. Lao Chang was quick to acquaint them with his countryside code.
10:34
LAO CHANG: Dont throw rubbish on the way -- or youll have to pick it up later. Go slowly, there are some steep places.
CAMPBELL: The reaction isnt always polite.
10:52
LAO CHANG: Several people argued with me and said Ive got no power to do anything like fine them. They said they could crap where they wanted and there was nothing I could do.
Friends of the Great Wall expedition
CAMPBELL: Once a month or so the group Friends of the Great Wall mounts small, symbolic expeditions. Today its a three hour hike through the forest to a Ming Dynasty tower, accompanied by Chinese media and sympathetic officials.
11:13
William
WILLIAM LINDESAY: We aim to identify problems, record them and report these problems to high officials and we want to really tell the state of the wall as it truly is.
11:29
Friends of the Great Wall expedition
CAMPBELL: It takes just an hours foraging to collect about 30 kilograms of rubbish.
11:44
Shots of wall
Music
CAMPBELL: Clean-ups like this are a band-aid solution to the problems of the Wall but its the start of a slow process to change attitudes as old as the Wall itself and to protect an icon that has stood for two millennia from the peril of a modern world.
11:58
GREAT WALL
Reporter: Eric Campbell
Camera: Terry McDonald/Matt Jasper
Editor: Stuart Miller
Producer: Inka Kretschmer