Guardians of Great Wall strive to protect great wonder

As the Great Wall, a great legacy of humanity, is being threatened by various factors, a growing number of rangers have been organized to protect the UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Among them, Li Yong, who grew up in an ancient village at the foot of the Great Wall, loves the national treasure from the bottom of his heart. In 2018, he gave up his city job, returned to his hometown, and became a Great Wall guardian.

"I guard 27 watchtowers. I know everything about them. What worries us most is natural collapse. See, only a bit is left in the middle here. There used to be more bricks up here. They don’t fall off all at once. This (support frame) doesn't cost much. I buy steel pipes, weld them together and take my own measurements. It's large so I break it into three parts to carry it up the mountain. Once up here I use a wrench to reassemble it," the Great Wall Guardian said.

The Great Wall, as one of the world's great wonders, was built during more than 2,000 years of continuous construction, from the Spring and Autumn Period (770 BC-221 BC) to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). The existing sections have a total length of over 21,000 kilometers.

To protect this historical and cultural heritage, local governments have recruited over 5,000 farmers, including Li Yong, to serve as Great Wall guardians.

In addition to patrolling the Great Wall daily, Li, with the help of Great Wall enthusiasts, has established a small exhibition hall that is open to visitors for free.

"Friends tell me that I get super excited when I talk to tourists about the Great Wall. I don’t feel it though. Maybe because my fondness for the Great Wall comes naturally. If possible, in the future, I will build an even larger Great Wall museum of 200 or even 2,000 square meters. I feel this is a great dream," said Li.

China has continued to step up efforts to protect the Great Wall. From 2015 to 2023, the country approved 289 protection and maintenance projects.

Guardians of Great Wall strive to protect great wonder

Nanjing City, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province, has rolled out various favorable policies to stabilize and improve its real estate market this year.

On Sept. 14, China's National Bureau of Statistics released a report on residential sales prices in 70 cities in August this year, and new home prices in Nanjing rose by 0.3 percent month on month, second only to Shanghai.

At the three-day Nanjing autumn housing fair, which opened last Friday, 187 newly built housing projects comprising nearly 20,000 housing units were exhibited, attracting nearly 50,000 visitors. A total of 1,933 commercial housing units were signed, worth 9.76 billion yuan (about 1.38 billion U.S. dollars).

Nanjing launched two "old for new" promotional events in April and June this year. In the past six months, the policy has played a significant role in promoting the smooth replacement chain and increasing the activity of the real estate market.

According to exhibitors at the housing fair, the enthusiasm of home buyers and the volume of transactions are far beyond expectation.

"We received thousands of customers and sold 110 housing units. The overall effect was beyond our expectation," said Zhang Yiji, sales manager of a housing project at the exhibition.

"About 70 to 80 percent of our transactions are trade-ins, and customers are very positive about this activity," said Chen Haoyu, another sales manager of a housing project at the exhibition.

During the exhibition, Nanjing provided an additional subsidy of 1 percent of the contract value of the house purchase on top of the existing housing subsidy policy in each district, and home buyers applied for subsidies of nearly 100 million yuan during the exhibition.

"I had plans to buy a house before, but this time with the subsidy, I just happened to be ready to book the house at this time," said a homebuyer.

Multiple favorable policies boost housing sales in Jiangsu capital