Building The Wall up brick by brick
– At one of the most treacherous and least restored stretches of China’s Great Wall, a line of pack mules are laden with 150kg of bricks each.
For more than a decade, mules have been crucial in the effort to restore Jiankou, a serpentine 20km section of the wall about 70km north of central Beijing.
“The path is too steep, so the bricks can only be transported by mules,” said Cao Xinhua, who has worked on Great Wall restoration projects for 10 years.
Where they could, workers used the original bricks that had broken off the wall. When they found none, they used new bricks made to exacting specifications.
“We have to stick to the original material and craftsmanship, to preserve the historical values,” said Cheng Yongmao, the engineer leading Jiankou’s restoration.
Cheng, 61, has repaired 17km of the wall since 2003 –