View of China's Great Wall not so Great

April 3, 2003
By GREGORY J. RUMMO

BEIJING -- Our bus driver grinds a gear as he downshifts to pass one of the many large trucks struggling to haul trees or diesel fuel or impossible loads of burlap bags piled high in the beds behind their cabs.

We're winding our way along the Badaling Great Wall Highway on the outskirts of Beijing into the Mountains where millions of tourists flock every year to see what remains of China's Great Wall.

For centuries, the Chinese have built walls to keep invaders out. The oldest, the Wall of Shihuangdi, or simply the Qin Wall, was built in the third century, B.C. by pounding layers of dirt, stone and rock together.

But the wall that has become emblematic of the People's Republic of China was built during the Ming Dynasty, beginning in the late 15th century.

Myths surrounding the Great Wall abound. I had always heard it is the only man-made structure visible from the surface of the moon--an urban legend disproved by the astronauts themselves. I also thought the wall is one continuous fortification. It is actually an incomplete and uneven network of walls that extends for 1500 miles.
In fact the "greatness" of the wall itself is more a myth of 17th and 18th-century Europeans who first began calling it the Great Wall-a label never originally ascribed to it by the Chinese.

The historian Arthur Waldron writes, "West. Europeans who visited China in the 17th and 18th centuries confused the Ming fortifications with the Qin wall or walls mentioned in dynastic histories. They also assumed incorrectly that impressive masonry walls like those surrounding Beijing at the time also extended far to the west. As a result, a description developed in the West of a vast wall that had secured peace for the civilized Chinese for thousands of years by excluding the nomads. This idea captured the imagination of Westerners, and by the late 19th century a visit to the 'Great Wall of China' had become a staple of the Western tourist's itinerary."

But there may be another reason why the Great Wall has lost its reputation for greatness. On some days, you can't even see it--and I don't mean from the surface of the moon.

We visited the portion that lies about a 90-minute bus ride outside of downtown Beijing. One minute you're passing farms and villages along the highway and then suddenly, from out of the thick haze looms a series of jagged mountains in the distance. They are weather beaten, drab yellow-ochre in coloration and bearing a multitude of scars from the strong winds that have shaped them for millennia.

Pulling off the road and looking up at the summits, we could barely make out the Great Wall's stonework hugging the contour of the land along the steep ridges and sheer summits.

Fang Qin, our guide explained the thick haze is the result of the clear cutting of trees. What was once a vast forest is now desert-an eastward encroachment of the Gobi Desert. "China made a mistake," Fang explained, "but now they are trying to correct it by planting trees again."

It may be too little, too late.

The winds that are almost always blowing through the mountains keep the fine dust suspended in the atmosphere. Consequently, Beijing is often shrouded in a sickly yellow haze far worse than anything the folks living in Los Angeles or Las Vegas have to deal with on their worst smog day. You can actually taste the dust in your mouth after being outside for a few hours.

The April 3 edition of the Beijing Review reported the situation is so bad a "sandstorm warning system" has been developed by the China Meteorological Administration. Over the past three years, sand and dust storms occurred in China 45 times.

A big sandstorm isn't just an eyesore. They have been known to cause huge damage, further deteriorating soil and increasing desertification in dry areas. "They harm the agriculture, forestry, industrial and transport sectors, cause health problems and even injure or kill people," explains Luo Zhongyun.

The postcards available at the many souvenir shops located inside the park feature photographs of the Great Wall taken at different times of the year. They are all stunning largely because they were taken on clear days, a condition that apparently will become rarer.

At least that is my conclusion after reading Luo's sobering assessment: "The degradation and decrease of pasturelands cannot be solved fundamentally. Worse still, water resources are deteriorating. It is difficult to reverse the irrational use of land resources in northwestern and northern areas overnight."

The greatest days of China's Great Wall may indeed be relegated to her past. n

Gregory J. Rummo is a syndicated columnist. Read all of his columns on his homepage, www.GregRummo.com. E-Mail Rummo at  GregoryJRummo@aol.com