In March, a local cultural relics authority reported that the four-year renovation project of the Western Great Wall of China on Gansu Province was 95 percent complete, costing 195 million yuan.
Other parts of the Great Wall also underwent repair recently, but CNN reported on Wednesday that the Xiaohekou section, a stretch of the landmark was covered in a smooth white trail of cement. The use of modern construction materials – which made the iconic tourist destination ugly – was done in 2014 on orders of the Cultural Relics Bureau of Suizhong County, although the use of cement was only discovered now.
The repairs were done because of the bad state of that stretch of the 700-year-old wall near the border of Liaoning and Hebei Provinces. However, social media users and cultural advocates condemned the restoration work done.
In Sina Weibo, China’s microblogging site, netizens used the hashtag #The most beautiful, wild Great Wall flattened# which trended. Dong Yaohui, deputy director of the Great Wall of China Society, described the restoration work as very badly done. He lamented, “It damaged the original look of the Great Wall and took away the history from the people.”
The repair job done was obviously a breach of the Great Wall Protection Ordinance in China, issued in 2006, which put in place strict rules for the development of tourists destinations.
Local officials from the bureau defended the use of cement as necessary to protect tourists from loose masonry and falling debris, according to Time. The modern look of the wall’s section has disappointed Chinese students majoring in painting and photography buffs who says they would not return upon seeing the botched repair job. The impact of it is the decline in number of tourists who check in at hotels in the nearby Yong’anpu village.