20 years as a devoted guardian of Great Wall
Print Edition
As night fell on Helan Mountain, Li Shixiang lit a mosquito-repellent coil, opened a book on the Great Wall and made notes using the headlights of his car alongside a section of the ancient wall he was reading about.
鈥淚t feels like we are guarding each other,鈥 Li said. He would spend the night in his car as he usually did.
The 45-year-old lives in Haiyuan County in northwest China鈥檚 Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, known as a 鈥淢useum of the Great Wall.鈥 Ningxia has a total of over 1,500 kilometers of the Great Wall built during multiple dynasties.
Born near the ruins of an ancient city, Li spent a lot of time there, playing with bronze coins and broken arrows after school. The fun the relics had brought him was unforgettable.
Li dropped out of a local college about 20 years ago and painted wall advertisements for a living. When he was traveling and painting in rural areas, he noticed a lot of Great Wall sections and smoke towers that were unrecorded and unprotected. He felt an urge to do something.
鈥淭he Great Wall symbolizes the Chinese nation as it conveys spirits such as solidarity, courage and peace,鈥 Li said. 鈥淚 have a responsibility to get to know it and better protect it.鈥
Not academically trained, Li has his own method. He first draws a scope where wall relics might exist based on related books and documents, and then searches on the satellite map.
If a promising location appears, he rides his motorbike or drives there immediately, with just a pen, a notebook, a tape measure, a cellphone and some food.
Often, he drives all the way to a site only to find nothing. But there have also been surprises. In 2019, after five hours of driving, he found the relics of an ancient city in the desert of the neighboring Gansu Province.
鈥淭here was not a single footprint around. I was so excited that I cried and forgot my tiredness,鈥 Li said.
He has explored almost all of the areas of the Great Wall in China 鈥 Beijing, Shaanxi, Hebei and Inner Mongolia. He has driven over 300,000km, taken tens of thousands of photos and his writings have filled over 300 notebooks.
He plans to write a book on the Great Wall. 鈥淭here is a limit to what I can do. But at least I can make them remember.鈥
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