How did man destroy the Great Wall?

Mr. Yue Banghu, 77, is the former director of Gansu Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and an expert in Great Wall archaeology. He pointed out that the destruction of the Great Wall is divided into natural factors and human factors. Natural factors mainly include wind erosion, rainstorm and flood erosion and earthquake collapse. Man-made factors, first, constructive destruction, such as building roads, railways and houses. This kind of damage is the most severe, often directly knocking down the wall; The second is to borrow soil. For many years, the Great Wall has been dug up by local people for use as superior fertilizer because of its "long history"; Third, cattle, sheep and other livestock trample; The fourth is to dig holes in the city wall to avoid rain and cold, or dig holes under the city wall to repair canals. In the destruction of the Great Wall, human factors are far greater than natural factors, which is the most distressing.

Man-made destruction of the Great Wall has different manifestations in different periods. Zhou Xinghua, former deputy director of Ningxia Cultural Relics Bureau, told reporters that in the 1950s, the Great Wall was often dug into farmland in rural areas of Ningxia, or the Great Wall soil was scattered into farmland as fertilizer. Many farmers think that the soil of the Great Wall is fertile and can restrain alkali. Later, some people randomly borrowed soil, dug pits, repaired kilns and built warehouses on the Great Wall. In the last two or three decades, all kinds of constructive sabotage incidents have risen rapidly. Many factories are under construction, roads are under construction, development zones are expanding, and cities are being rebuilt at the cost of destroying the Great Wall!

In 2005 alone, there were many incidents of destroying the Great Wall in Ningxia, of which more than a dozen were exposed by the media, and this year there have been many incidents one after another. In September 2006, a unit dug a gap of nearly 200 meters in a section of the Great Wall during the construction of Zhongwei in Ningxia. After the relevant personnel received the report from the masses, the construction party felt that the situation was serious and used bulldozers to block the gap without authorization, and inserted wormwood on it in an attempt to cover up the evidence. As a result, it caused secondary damage to the Great Wall, and the original Great Wall was unrecognizable.

Coincidentally, when the reporter interviewed the Great Wall Plateau in Pengyang County, southern Ningxia, a local insider simply pointed to the gravel road under his feet and told the reporter that the road you are standing on now is Qin Changcheng!

Zhang Zeng, director of the Cultural and Historical Committee of the Political Consultative Conference of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, pointed out: "There are countless examples of privately building temples and arbitrarily building on the Great Wall, using the Great Wall as a courtyard wall, a sheepfold and a toilet, or digging holes on the Great Wall to live and store things."

The Great Wall is an immovable cultural relic, spanning many provinces. In the investigation of the current situation of the Great Wall in various places, we found many shocking human destruction of the Great Wall:

In 2002, Wanquan County, Zhangjiakou City, Hebei Province built a road and asked farmers for stones. Farmers can't find it, so they just go up the mountain and tear down the Great Wall. They sold more than 1000 miles of Great Wall bricks to builders at the price of1a tractor in 5 yuan. Now the Great Wall there has no foundation, and it has disappeared forever.

The Three-Pass Great Wall of Helan Mountain at the junction of Ningmeng is adjacent to the quarry. For the convenience of transportation, operators will not hesitate to open gaps on the Great Wall, allowing vehicles carrying stones to pass through the Great Wall, and excavators for quarrying even drive to the Great Wall.

There is a well-preserved Great Wall near Longgong Temple in northern zhongwei, Ningxia. Someone actually dug a lake just a few hundred meters away from the Great Wall to store water. As a result, in 2005, the lake surged, the water was long and the wall of 300-400 meters collapsed.

In April, 2003, three construction units in Dingbian County, Shaanxi Province tore three large gaps with a width of 30-40 meters on the Great Wall while building the expressway. The Great Wall here was originally about 4 meters high and 5-6 meters thick. It is a well-preserved rammed earth relic. Three big gaps destroyed the 105 meter Great Wall at once, leaving this section of the Ming Great Wall ruins devastated. After the incident, Shaanxi Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau quickly sent people to the scene to investigate and fined each of the three construction units 500,000 yuan. 1.5 million yuan fine is indeed a large amount, but what's the use of more money for the damaged Great Wall?

There is another situation that makes people laugh and cry. In recent years, because the importance of protecting the Great Wall has been accepted by more and more people, some local governments and individuals have begun to repair the Great Wall, but this repair has often not been scientifically demonstrated, causing irreparable damage to the Great Wall again. There is a rammed earth mound in Mazhen Town, Fugu County, Shaanxi Province. In 2005, a local old man launched a fund-raising activity to repair the Great Wall Pier, and won 80,000 yuan to repair a rammed earth pier site of the Great Wall in Chenghua period of Ming Dynasty. This new pier is partly covered with old bricks and partly covered with red bricks, which is completely out of harmony with the yellow rammed earth left below, seriously damaging the ancient Great Wall.

Zhong Wei, deputy director of Ningxia Cultural Relics Bureau, told the reporter that a private entrepreneur built a two-kilometer-long Great Wall with new bricks for tourism development without the approval of the cultural relics department of the autonomous region. As a result, the brand-new brick structure caused disastrous damage to the ancient Great Wall, which is known as the "small faucet" in the local area, and his investment of 8 million yuan was also lost. And this "masterpiece" of "the dog's tail continues the mink" has not been demolished so far.