High-tech Wall survey to start
China Daily, armed with a range of high-tech devices, a group of heritage guardians are set to start an epic field survey along China’s 6,300-kilometre-long Great Wall. The team will use laser range finders, global positioning system (GPS) devices and digital cameras to make detailed records, brick by brick, of the mammoth structure. It will be the first complete document for the ancient structure dubbed the symbol of the nation’s spirit, but disfigured by weathering and man-made damage.
The field survey is part of the 10-year Great Wall Protection Project that kicked off last month, said Chai Xiaoming, deputy director of the Heritage Protection Department of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage. The survey will take at least two years and involve hundreds of specialists, Chai said, adding that an overall protection plan for the structure is expected to be completed by 2009. A massive repair programme on the Wall, only one-fifth of which is considered well preserved, will follow the survey. Special patrol teams will also guard against further man-made damage of the Wall, Chai said at a training course for the survey workers yesterday in Beijing.
He added: “By 2014, when the overall project is scheduled to be finished, we will not only have a clear and complete picture of the current conditions of the Great Wall and its landscape, but also have a basic legal framework for its protection, such as marking out its preservation areas and buffer zones.”
At present, all the State-level heritage sites, except the Great Wall, have clearly defined preservation areas and buffer zones, according to Chai.
“The survey will help us control construction projects near the Wall,” Chai said.
Luo Zhewen, a renowned heritage expert, said the field survey will be “extremely arduous.” He said the central government had tried many times since the 1950s to find out the real conditions of the Great Wall, but attempts were never completed because of various reasons. “Setting up a full and accurate document for the Great Wall is extremely important as it is the fundamental step towards preserving it,” Luo said, encouraging workers engaged in the survey to do their best to complete the unprecedented research. Luo said that a number of non-government organizations and individuals from home and abroad carried out small-scale surveys in the past, but failed to make detailed and scientific records.
Zhou Huanyu, 24, who will participate in the new survey, told China Daily that he had never visited the Great Wall before. “But I will soon have a close bond with the Wall and record every brick with my digital camera,” Zhou said, who works at an ancient structure design and research institute in Beijing.
