Destruction through "restoration": the Great Wall

In Zhangjiakou, about 100 miles northwest of Beijing, a long stretch of Wall has been dismantled stone by stone in the last two years at the hands of entrepreneurial local peasants. A construction company was building a road nearby and offered to pay 15 yuan, about $2, for each tractor load of stones or bricks delivered. But in this eroded part of northern China, the Wall provided virtually the only source for this raw material. A 1,000-yard section of Wall slowly disappeared. . .

Likewise, outside Baotou in Inner Mongolia a developer recently demolished a 2,000-year-old section of the Wall to make way for a $12 million road building project. The fine? Only $10,000, for a piece of history irretrievably lost.

But to preservationists, perhaps most disturbing have been the many misguided attempts to develop the Wall for tourism, often with little respect for its original form. In a country where ancients relics are plentiful, local officials often show little devotion to crumbling treasures and instead are inclined to "improve" them. Several years back, the world's largest Buddha, at Leshan in Sichuan Province, was given a garish coat of paint to make it look fresher and newer.

Local governments at various points along the Wall have decorated and refashioned it, sometimes resulting in Disney-like creations that evoke Mickey more than Ming.

At Shanhaiguan, where the Great Wall meets the Bohai Sea, the Wall was so weathered that developers essentially started afresh, creating an ersatz Great Wall of shiny gray bricks. Crowded with tourists, it has more of the feel of a and Enchanted Castle, with bright banners fluttering in the sea breeze and a huge brick maze for those who are bored.

It isn't just China where restoration is equated with rebuilding. Istanbul's ancient city walls have been extensively rebuilt, and in many places now look, and for all intents are, brand-new. Some ten years back I saw similarly barbaric treatment of the Roman theater in Sagunto in Spain (workmen were using pneumatic hammers to strip away the rusticated surface of the original masonry, which has since been replaced by nice, smooth modern work), and it seemed every medieval building in Madrid had been similarly "restored". From the NY Times (and reprinted in the International Herald Tribune).

Posted by David on June 13, 2003 11:22 AM