City in Hebei issues tighter regulations to protect Great Wall

Tighter regulations to protect the Great Wall will be implemented in September in Qinhuangdao, Hebei province, according to the city’s government.

Painting, carving, posting advertisements, cattle grazing, camping and barbecues will be prohibited. Great Wall areas will also be off-limits to activities such as mining, dumping garbage and storing hazardous substances.

Individuals found camping at the Great Wall and refusing to leave will be punished with a fine of up to 1,000 yuan ($156). Companies organizing picnics with barbecues at the wall will be fined up to 10,000 yuan.

Dong Yaohui, vice-chairman of the Great Wall Society of China, said the newly released regulation sets a good example of how to protect the Great Wall because it lists punishments in detail.

“We call activities such as camping and wall carving ‘subtle destruction’ , which would bring devastating and irreversible harm to the ancient engineering works,” he said.

“Barbecues, for example, will blacken the walls with smoke. It’s nearly impossible to repair because you can’t paint the wall or scrape the black part off,” he said. “All the remedies just do further damage.”

The State Council released rules on Great Wall protection in 2006 with reference to the nation’s cultural relics protection law. Walls, watchtowers and gates of the Great Wall were then included under a standardized umbrella of protection.

Hebei province is home to 1,153 sections of the Great Wall dating to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and stretching nearly 1,400 kilometers, with more than 200 km of wall in Qinhuangdao, local authorities said.