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New deal for commercial flights over the Great Wall

Sightseers can rise above the crowds and get a bird's eye view of the Badaling section by taking a spin with Capital Helicopter on a single-engine, six-seat AS350B3 Squirrel helicopter. Tours start at Badaling Airport and last about 15 minutes...

July 06, 2011
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Great Wall forests scorched in blaze

Police are investigating after a blaze close to the iconic Great Wall destroyed 33 hectares of forest and fruit plantations...

  May 05, 2011
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Qinghai finds Great Wall remains

Archaeologists found in Qinghai Province new Great Wall relics, including the wall's body, beacon towers, so on in the recently-finished Great Wall Resource Examination...

March 22, 2011
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Great Wall, Hutong listed in the must-see places in the world

On March 8, Reuters listed 25 places in the world to see before they change forever, where the "Real" Great Wall of China and Beijing's Hutong Communities are on the list...

March 14, 2011
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Great Wall still under attack

The Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region was a blast of fresh air and I recalled my visit seven years previously when I had trekked along the Great Wall here.

I was excited to retrace my steps, this time with my wife and two boys, and show them what I considered to be one of the finest Great Wall desert landscapes.

The dirt track toward the Wall, from the Gobi Desert plains, was gouged by deep, dried up watercourses, telling of ancient floods that had swept down from the hills.

The jeep coped well with these tough conditions and with little more than an hour's light remaining we reached our camping site.

Things had changed a lot. The drone of machinery told of the arrival of mining in the hills nearby. Black smoke rose in the red sky to the west. Power lines poked through a gap in the Wall.

We were tired, had dinner and climbed into our tents. But it was far from serene. We were woken up by occasional blasts and trucks driving through the night.

Next morning we ascended the ramparts. We all agreed that it was higher, wider and better preserved than we imagined it would be.

Great Wall still under attack

But for me the view brought sharply into focus why the task of protecting the Wall is so complex.

Firstly, the Wall conflicts with modern life; secondly, it crosses many regional borders.

A mine has been established in the hills, 500 m to the west, which was in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

On the other side of the Wall lay the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, where the authorities in the capital just 40 km away had pioneered protection of this historical landscape by erecting an unobtrusive barbed wire fence.

The mine, primitive and polluting, left a scar on this historical landscape. Another 15-ton truck thundered down the desert road and through the Wall.

I wondered when I would return again and in what way the Wall would be attacked then.

(China Daily December 8, 2007)

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