The Great Wall has stood for centuries but starting this March, how Beijing protects it is changing forever.
There are new rules, smarter tech and tighter oversight.
The question is will the new approach save the wall from the millions who love it and visit it every single year?
And if it works here, could it reshape heritage protection across the country?
This is Roundtable.
I'm Steve.
Thank you very much for sharing your time with us today.
And for the show, I'm with Fei-Fei and Yushan.
First up.
Starting March 1st, Beijing's brand new Great Wall Protection Regulation officially came into effect, and it marks a major change in how the city safeguards, or will safeguard, one of the world's most iconic cultural landmarks.
The new regulation introduces smarter monitoring, clearer responsibilities, long term funding mechanisms, and it also manages public access quite carefully as well.
It's a vision that blends law with technology, with culture and also community as well.
So what does this look like in practice?
That's what we're going to learn about today and also an important discussion point if this works here, this beijing model if it works here, then how will this impact other large-scale heritage sites that are preserved around the country?
I was going to say other, bigger heritage sites, but there are no bigger heritage sites than the 21000 kilometer plus Great Wall of China.
And also maybe one of the most iconic one coming from China as well.
From the world.
Yeah.
For anybody that haven't been to China at all in their lifetime, they've definitely heard about the Great Wall at some point of their life.
And I want to say this too, as we get started, and I think I've mentioned this before, but it's something that yeah, everybody around the world is aware of it.
Everyone has seen it through either video or images or something like that.
But when you go to see it and I'm not one that's easily impressed by structures around the world or nature
Sometimes you know you have to go see this temple or you have to go see this mountain or something.
I'm just, just my personality.
I feel like, okay, that's pretty cool.
But you know, I'm never really blown away.
When I went to the bottling section of the Great Wall, which is about maybe an hour and a half drive outside of the downtown area, I felt like oh whoa, this is actually really really, really impressive.
And the fact that it just keeps going and, going and going and they built it over a couple of thousand years from dynasty to dynasty, is just it's really impressive.
It is one of the most impressive things on the planet.
So let's get into it.
The changes that are coming into effect, the new regulations, they started already.
But the regulation was actually approved last year in November and is actually the first regulation in China specifically focused on the Great Wall protection, since we revised a new national law on the protection of cultural relics, which happened in the year 2025.
So, when it comes to this new regulation, it basically clears out a lot of previous confusions and also expand on the areas that, when we're talking about conservation, for example, it lays out clear legal standards for how the Great Wall in Beijing should be protected managed, used and pass down to future generations.
So that creates that legal foundation for that.
And the more on that it says the scope of protection for the Great Wall is not only just focusing on the wall itself.
It also covers related cultural heritage and also the surrounding environment.
So that means the protection is not just about the bricks, the water towers is also about the surrounding trees.
The soils may be on the Great Wall and more than that.
Yeah, and nature plays a big role now in not only the area around the Great Wall but also in the conservation of the wall itself, because you know plants and roots growing.
And that's one of the challenges, isn't it?
Yeah, indeed.
And also the regulation emphasis on the coordination because the Great Wall doesn't stop at city borders.
So that makes protection efforts necessary. should be expanding beyond that as well.
The new rules, they call for stronger collaboration within the Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei region, that's Beijing and the Tianjin municipality and Hebei province nearby to work as a system. to guarantee a better protection on the wall.
We know that the Great Wall isn't just located in Beijing.
It's like a regional spanning around several provinces, if not into Eastern.
I think it's 15 provinces.
15 provinces.
So yeah, that's a whole system they're trying to build here.
Yeah, the areas that you just mentioned Beijing Tianjin, Hubei these are areas that are geographically next to each other.
Precisely.
So it makes sense for some coordination to take place between those areas to help take care of the wall.
There's a fourth regulation as well.
Yeah.
Well, actually, this new regulation is a step further than a 2003 protection measure.
So it can be called a major upgrade.
It adds a dedicated chapter on utilization and inheritance.
So in practical terms that means that setting up a formal system to evaluate, for example, visitor areas and adjust them dynamically over time, so that qualified sections of the Great Wall can gradually open to the public when they decide it's well managed, has the conservation in place.
That's another thing that I didn't know, because I kind of had in my mind that the great wall was one uniform structure that starts at one point and ends at one point and it is exactly the same all the way through, meaning the structure looks the same all the way through.
But that's simply not true.
The other thing that i had in my head is that the entire wall has been, or would be, open to the public, but that's also not true.
There was at one point in time i'm not sure about the numbers now that less than 10 percent of the wall had been restored and developed into scenic spots for tourists to visit, and over 90 percent of the great wall again at one point in time i don't know the numbers now was in its original state unprotected, winding along different mountain ridges, and as it was, if you will, way back when.
I hear from a lot of my very outdoor enthusiastic friends that sometimes they will have like group organizations just to climb those so-called wild great walls.
Not really opening to the public.
Yeah, those are the ones falling into the majority of the ratio you just mentioned, Steve.
Those are not really open for tourism.
And it is considered not safe, if quite dangerous to climb on.
So it's not really that I'm encouraging it, but some people they occasionally will try to challenge themselves and sometimes get injured too.
Yeah, and go camping in the areas next to it.
You're not supposed to do that, right?
It has its charm, but certainly it's not something that everybody should follow. i guess that's just about the great wall and the fact that you mentioned how it's been developing over time is also very interesting in fact just very recently i watched a movie and it's a time travel movie set in the age of the qin dynasty at this very beginning that's from 221 to 207 bc when The Emperor Qin Shi Huang was building the Great Wall, actually, that was in Xi'an.
And then in the story that one ordinary soldier accidentally consumed the immortality pill and got sealed up in the terracotta warrior.
And when he wakes up, it's already the Republican China period in early 1920s.
And then in Xi'an he saw people transporting stuff and he asked where are you guys transporting this to?
And those workers said, oh, we're going to mend the Great Wall.
And he stood there and signed, gosh, the Great Wall is still not done.
You know, after 2,000, 3,000 years, gosh, how come it's still not done?
So I guess that's the charm here. about Great Wall.
It's not only a wall or a military defense functioning tool, but also there is cultural connotations that connects the Chinese history together.
Yeah, you were looking back at the history.
The first um, the initial plan of building the great wall, date back to the qin dynasty, which was 2200 years ago, and throughout this 2000 years of history, the government under different dynasties have always been, you know, either trying to mending the existing ones or building their own.
So that's why stretched over, you know, 21,000 kilometers.
And I think that's the cultural connotation that the current regulation is referring to is that not only it carries weight when it comes to the scale of the architecture, and the technology may be used when building and mending it.
It's also about, for example, when you are trying to build a massive infrastructure in that period of time.
When it comes to the governments, the management of the people involved in that is always changing and is always sort of a learning experience for people, especially of the future generations.
So that's one of the culture heritages.
I would say that when we're talking about, the Great Wall is about
These new laws and regulations are really important, not only because, I should say, of the significance of the Great Wall, but it actually needs protection.
And I think I mentioned it already talking about nature, wind and rain and temperature changes and plant growth.
All of these things have an impact too.
Exactly.
I mean when it comes.
Well, I think one of the biggest threats is coming from the nature, especially under the background of climate change.
Well, Beijing is seeing.
For example, in Beijing we're seeing more rainfalls.
It's getting more humid.
And when it comes to this level of water, in a stone brick system, that means is sometimes erode the bricks themselves and even sort of making them start to tilting, start to hollowing out, start to loosening and eventually some part of the great wall maybe collapsed at one time in the future.
And that's the reason that we're talking about how to really protect it, because you can't really shield the wall altogether from the rainfalls.
And another issue is about the plant growth, and it's also a very, very complicated issue because i looked up in it.
When it comes to trees growing on these walls, it's not as simple as just clearing them out altogether.
Because, first of all, Under that, you know, the Great Wall is enlisted as the World Cultural Heritage in the year of 1987.
So under the convention concerning the protection of the world culture and natural heritage.
It highlights the authenticity of that place.
That means the country needs to protect the site to its original features, not only including the structure and the building materials, and also the surroundings.
So you can't just clearing out all the trees.
They have to stay there.
Yeah, they have to stay there.
And also when it comes to these plants.
Some part of the plants can also sort of protect the water towers, because they can shield some of the rainfalls away from the bricks.
So it's really complicated when it comes to clearing out this plant and also the soil contaminated and, you know, accumulated on the stones.
And that's why they are also calling for coordination among different departments and different agencies, because when it comes to clearing out plants, maybe experts in planetation needs to be involved.
It's not only about the responsibility of cultural, you know, architecture conservation as well.
So it's a very big, big and complicated project we're talking about here.
Over such a long range in so many different sections too.
And that's just nature.
Then you've got the damage that was done to the wall by humans over the decades.
Some are sadly deliberate and sometimes it's unintentional.
For example, the original gap of the ancient Great Wall in a town in north China's Shanxi province was excavated into a large gap by a digger during a construction project nearby in 2023.
And other damages include graffiti carved into bricks.
I never understand why people do that.
I've been here.
They have to carve their name or something on wherever they go to.
So that's the thing.
And also there's illegal climbing, like I mentioned earlier, of the so-called wild sections of the Great Wall.
Then also we now open the Badaling and parts in different sites in Beijing and other areas.
And that heavy traffic of visitors, millions of visitors might also cause harm to the stairs and to the wall itself.
Oh, 1,000%.
That has to have a pretty severe impact.
I mean, when I went there, I went during a National Day holiday.
The perfect time.
Yeah.
Don't do that.
The traffic.
Well, first of all, you can take a train, right?
You can take a train right to the bottling section of the Great Wall, which is amazing.
I mean, literally, you get off the train and you're there.
But there were no tickets to that.
So couldn't do that.
So I thought, oh, I'll take a taxi.
That's a smart idea.
It's supposed to take about from where we took the taxi.
It's supposed to take about 50 minutes 5-0, and it took us two hours and 40 minutes.
Because of traffic jams?
Yes, because everyone else in China had the same idea I had on that particular day, I think.
And the wall is beautiful, and once you're there, it's stunning.
The only thing i would nitpick is i wish they would build larger roads that get to the wall, like multi-lane highways or something like that.
Maybe there are, maybe we were just in the wrong spot, but we were in a two-lane section, so just the line of cars was.
Yeah, I was on my phone for a lot of that.
And I heard another cute story that you know.
Yeah, not just people visiting or people climbing where they're not supposed to be climbing or things like that, but also people using parts of the wall to build their homes.
Yeah, that happened once.
20, 30 years ago.
Yeah, got to be decades ago.
Yeah, that's well.
That happened actually happened to a lot of ancient Chinese architecture is that nearby villages go to that place and collect the bricks and take them home to build their own homes.
You'd have to know.
You know, it's convenient.
Thank you very much.
I'll be taking this now.
I'll return it sometime later.
Yeah.
So lots of reasons to protect the wall and lots of different ways that the wall needs to be protected as well.
Now, let's get into the legality, the legal side of things.
These new regulations.
They do provide and I think you mentioned it before as well a legal basis for protection.
Yeah, and here we actually have the local villagers to thank on that, because for more than a decade, villagers like Liu Hongyan in Beijing's Yanqing district have been working as a local guardian of the ancient Great Wall sections.
They walk nearly 20000 steps a day just to inspect the whole wall and monitor the structural risks, clear out the weeds and the green growing near or on the bricks.
And then they actually tell visitors to get off, stop trying to climb walls where you shouldn't and also pick up the trash nearby.
So these villagers, once using bricks, brick collectors, are now turning into guardians, or rather they have a name for those squats or like half voluntary, half encouraged kind of teams they're forming inside the villages and but it's really hard work for them, for them in the meantime, because You know walking 20000 steps per day is no easy task for anybody.
And their monitoring mainly functioned on, you know, just being a person, telling people to get up.
Sure, boots on the ground.
Yeah, and taking pictures as a way of reporting any issue they found.
So that was a lot of work and the efficiency was has been relatively lower over the past few years, now that we have technologies to kind of boost on all that.
And also when it comes to, you know, patrolling around the Great Wall.
One thing that I think we need to point out for our listeners is that most sections of the Great Wall is located in the forest, deep in the mountains.
So you can see when you are trying to patrolling on that.
That means you need to clearing your ways as well.
You can think about the conditions, for example, in summers can be very humid and hot.
Maybe a lot of mosquitoes in this winter will be very windy and cold.
So it's not a very pleasant task.
I would say.
Almost impossible at some points, I would think.
Yes, but now we have technology to help.
When you visited any sections of the Great Wall in Beijing now either it's opening for tourism or not you can see there are sort of civilians cameras installed on the walls, which can of course serve as one of the patrolling functions, as these villagers are doing, and also they have this sort of sensor data collecting functions that can sort of keep an eye on the level of water fell on the wall, on the stones, and if there are new damages happening on the watchtowers, for example.
So new plants growing out maybe need to be cleared away or need more protection.
So these cameras are now helping these villagers in their patrolling job.
Is it just cameras or is it more in terms of how tech is now being used?
Because i would think it's.
It's a lot more because of what's available to us now and we've learned through different discussions on different topics how, For example, in the agriculture industry, drones are being used now to assist farmers.
Are we seeing that type of tech at play here with the Great Wall?
Yeah, definitely.
Not only drones, but also more modern tools like digital archives and digital monitoring.
So speaking of monitoring, it's actually coming from China. satellite.
That was a bit of a surprise because when we think about satellites, it's usually for mapping.
And that's also part of its function here in monitoring the Great Wall, because in some sections the mountains are simply too steep and the rangers and those guardians can't really walk to each and every point on the Great Wall.
So, by tracking subtle changes in the landscape over time, these satellite monitors can clearly spot shifts around the different segments of the Great Wall, which also the experts who were using these tools said that next up their plan is to expand the use of drones, which brings us to another very interesting topic, which is a video I saw back in 2024 which offers a glimpse on just how these drones work so well on the Great Wall.
If I remember correctly, even until nowadays in the Badaling section they have two sets of drones from DJI that were deployed and that's operating along 18 pre-programmed inspection routes.
So during the very busy tourism times, like during the national holiday for example, when visitors numbers really surge, these daily patrol flights, they increase from one per day to two and just covering every stretch of the wall's core heritage area.
So Traditional food patrols, they have their limitations, like we've already mentioned.
But drones equipped with thermal image can monitor crowd density in real time.
And if anything happens, if one segment gets too crowded or become risky even it will send back the alarm alerts immediately back to the crew members at the management center.
And on top of that, once every two weeks, the drone even conduct a 3D modeling flight.
That's to digitally archive the wall structure and allow conservation teams to quickly detect issues like which brick is falling apart or is there a new crack on which part of the wall.
So drones they're really bringing this patrol and monitoring work to a next level and speeding things up.
For everybody.
So for those who really love to camp on the wild sections, be aware of that.
Wave to the drone.
Yeah.
And also there is an electronic fence system that are also keeping an eye.
Like they can send monitoring signals from.
You know they can send stereo signals from mobile phones or other electronic devices.
So if somebody enters a restricted area, they will send a text message or other types of alert to the management and also to the invader intruder themselves as well.
Intruder alert, intruder alert.
Okay, and all of these things are necessary steps for the quality preservation of the wall.
But does this mean?
I'm wondering, if this preservation means that people will and maybe it's a little ironic to say, or counterintuitive, that people will have more access to the wall because
It will be known at which parts you shouldn't go, at which parts need repairing, at which parts data from the past will tell us about degradation and things like that, in terms of soil or what have you.
Because there's a pretty small percentage now that are open to scenic areas.
Only 5, in fact less than 5 of the Beijing Great Wall is open to scenic areas.
So will we see more spots open in the future?
I hope.
Hopefully.
I think that's also one of the goals that this regulation is trying to achieve.
I think one of the reasons that we are seeing a lot of sections of the Great Walls not opening to the public is not because, you know, for example, local governments just just don't want to open it up is that they're not really sure about the conditions of that site, when it comes to whether it's safe to house thousands and even millions of visitors a day, and also whether these amount of visitor flows will impact on the preservation status of that section of the Great Wall.
And with, for example, new legal foundations ready, with new technologies coming in to help, Maybe they have a clearer picture when it comes to okay, this is what the Great Wall is looked like at the current stage and which sections is safe and is okay for us to open it up.
I mean, even around the Beijing area, it's hundreds of kilometers, right?
We're not talking about a little tiny stretch.
Yeah.
And for people who has never been on the Great Wall before.
It's not that we just open a segment and put visitors on.
It's not that simple.
There are steps just shaped for easier stepping on, for people to just step on different segments of the Great Wall.
There are poles for you to hold on the Great Wall that's also built for visitors.
So that's not just like we open a segment And it's a site like people come, this is for visiting.
It's really a big project.
It's if not a development of the local segment.
And speaking of which part is being opened right now?
That's in Yanqing District, where a 165 kilometer visitor route is being built to connect Shui Guan Badaling, the ancient Great Wall.
And Huajayao section.
So it's being built.
There's a lot of things that we're still working on.
So I'm very optimistic about this.
And also for visitors that have been to sections of the Great Wall.
You know that part of the Great Wall is not easy to walk.
Yeah.
Really tall steps.
Oh, even the parts that are open.
Yeah.
Yeah. are quite the challenge physically to navigate your way up there.
It's on a mountain.
Yeah, and also, for example, in the winter times, when days are snowing, it can be very slippery as well.
So it needs a lot of consideration before opening up.
And I think I went to one section.
It's called, I think called Jinshanling Great Wall in Miyun District in Beijing.
And it's protected, it's preserved very differently from Badaling.
It doesn't sort of preserve its original state, meaning that part of the walls are already decayed and collapsed.
You can only climb on really steep steps up to the walls.
And it's literally on top of a mountain.
Challenging.
You can feel the wind blowing your face from all the directions that you can imagine.
And I'm a little scared about climbing on that part of the Great Wall.
You have a different experience depending on which part you go to.
If you go to the Badaling area, which is, I think, the number one place for tourists to visit.
Then you'll have a different experience, because there you've got shops and restaurants and little touristy knickknack, things that you can buy.
And there's a cable car.
If you don't mind standing in line for a little while, you can take that up to a spot and then take it back down again.
You have to pay a little more for that ticket.
Or, if you were me, you could walk up the steps to the Great Wall, look at the wall of people on the Great Wall and then walk back down.
Because again, it was a holiday and there were so many people trying to walk up that section of the mountain that it literally created a wall of people that wasn't really moving at the time.
That's the fun experiences.
Just not every national holiday is all that crowded.
I will not know the answer to that because I'm not going to find out again.
Survey done by Steve.
Unbelievable.
The structure, 21, we talked about it, right?
Over 21,000 kilometers.
I actually looked it up because I was curious to know if we put the Great Wall in Canada...
You know, what space would it cover?
And the answer was it would go all the way from the east coast of Canada all the way to the west coast of Canada and then all the way back to the east coast of Canada one more time.
It's phenomenally large, and if you ever ever have the chance to visit it, you should not miss that opportunity.
And new regulations now, as we just learned, are in place.
Tech is helping to make sure that we're preserving it the way that it deserves to be.
