Defender of the Great Wall: William Lindesay Sees "Wilderness That Needs Protection"

My first encounter with William Lindesay, OBE, was at a Great Wall cleanup in Jinshanling, on October 1, 1998. Sponsored on this occasion by the Great Wall Sheraton Hotel, about 40 Chinese and foreign citizens of Beijing joined Lindesay for this jaunt out to one of the Wall’s wilder, but more easily accessible sections. The day’s event had two simple goals: remove trash left behind by inconsiderate visitors, and place 15 to 20 heavy-duty garbage cans donated by the hotel, so that in the future, hikers would at least have a choice of where to throw their waste.

What most of us found on the Wall was shocking: Aside from mounds of cigarette butts, lunch wrappers, and discarded bottles, was obvious evidence that this Wonder of the World had been used not just as a garbage can, but as a toilet. Even on an early autumn day, the stench in places was overpowering.

“Jinshanling is one of the best-kept sections within a stone’s throw of Beijing,” Lindesay said, “But Juyongguan [close to the Badaling section] is a national disgrace,” describing the smell of “ammonia” that greets hikers on any given day.

For Lindesay, preserving the Wall isn’t just about protecting the bricks. Having coined the term “Wild Wall,” he said: “There are thousands of kilometers of Wild Wall. It is wilderness that needs protection,” seeing his work now not just as protecting the world’s longest artifact, but backing environmental protection for the land around the Wall also.

Lindesay was no stranger to the great outdoors before he made the acquaintance of the Great Wall. A long-distance runner in his native England, the idea to conquer the Great Wall came during a job with his brother along more familiar terrain, Hadrian’s Wall on the border with Scotland. That dream never died, and on his third try in 1987, Lindesay completed his journey from Jiayuguan to Shanhaiguan. It wasn’t the end; it was only the beginning.

Shortly after completing the walk, Lindesay moved to Beijing. In his early years, he spent his time at the Xinhua News Agency, leaving the office on Friday afternoons, cycling about 100 kilometers to the Wall, where he would camp and hike until Sunday afternoon and it was time to ride back into town.

“I’ve always been here for the Wall,” Lindesay said, now splitting his time not between an office and the Wall, but between writing and photographing numerous books on the Wall, making documentary films about it, running The Barracks, a village primary school that now serves as a courtyard hotel with dramatic views and access to the Great Wall, and his conservation work. That’s in addition to being a husband to his wife Wu Qi, and father of two sons, James and Thomas.

Lindesay’s organization, International Friends of the Great Wall, seeks to keep the Wall in the public spotlight. “I can’t save the Wall,” he said. “All I can do is get some things rolling.”

One of his most recent projects demonstrated just how much the Wall requires conservation at every level – from citizens and government alike. His 2007 book, The Great Wall Revisited: From the Jade Gate to the Old Dragon’s Head, was partly inspired by a missing tower. William Geil, an American missionary, may be the first person – certainly the first foreigner – to travel the entire length of the Great Wall, having completed the feat in 1908, taking many photographs along the way, and publishing his own book, The Great Wall of China.

A photo shows Geil sitting on a tower near Luowenyu in Hebei Province. Lindesay knew the area and happened to have a photograph of himself hiking there. The biggest difference: the tower was now gone.

The picture spurred Lindesay to revisit and re-photograph many of the places documented by Geil, to see how they had changed in the century that had passed in between, and everything that has come with it: a population boom, war, earthquakes, and environmental change.

“If the Chinese people need to know why the Great Wall needs preservation, they should look at this evidence,” Lindesay said.

His Wall work, and the scope of his conservation efforts, now extends beyond China’s political borders. Having first noticed wall-like structures in southern Mongolia, Lindesay led an expedition, along with Mongolian academic Professor Baasan Tudevin, to an area of the southern Gobi desert about 80 kilometers north of the border with China. There he discovered what satellite and historical evidence had suggested: a rammed earth wall that also contained local scrub brush.

“From maps, we couldn’t tell that the wall contained wood, and large quantities of wood at that,” he said. Lindesay returned to Mongolia in 2012 and will go again this year to look at possible Mongolian-built walls in other sections of the country.

As for protecting China’s Wall, he said there is no single answer. “Do we protect it section by section, or valley by valley?” Lindesay acknowledged that while national level policies can go a long way, governance in China is ultimately local.

“Tourism is one of the top threats to the Wall,” he said. His greatest fear is the “Badalingization” of the Wall, an attempt to generate revenue for local communities by promoting mass tourism. The Wall is strong, but wasn’t built for that purpose. He pointed to a picture of photographers standing on a tower. “Seventy photographers at an average of 70 kilograms each. That’s five metric tons!”

Learn more about William Lindesay and his Wild Wall conservation efforts at www.wildwall.com.

Photo: Courtesy of William Lindesay.

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