China to repair east end of Great Wall

Repair work on the east section of the Great Wall built in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year in Dandong city, northeast China's Liaoning Province, a local tourism official said Thursday.

The Hushan section of the Great Wall stretches along the border between China and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

"A total 30 million yuan (4.4 million U.S. dollars) will be used to improve the environment around the Hushan section and to repair underground facilities and tourist facilities," said Wu Jingmei, deputy director of the local tourism bureau, in an interview with Xinhua.

The project also involved construction of a major road along the section, according to Wu.

The entrance to the sightseeing area around the Hushan Great Wall section and parking lot would be moved outward by 1,000 meters for better conservation of the heritage site, Wu added.

"Starting from the spring of this year, the resettlement work involving 77 local households for the current conservation project has almost finished. The whole project is expected to be finished at the end of 2010," Wu told Xinhua.

The Hushan wall will remain open to visitors during the repair work.

Dating back to around 200 B.C. when Emperor Qin Shihuang (259-210 B.C.) had fortification walls built to stop invasions from northern tribes, the Great Wall was rebuilt many times.

A national survey team announced in December 2008 that the exact length of the Great Wall built in the Ming Dynasty was 8,851.8 km, from the Hushan section to the Jiayu Pass in northwestern Gansu Province.

Before 2008, Shanhai Pass in northern China's Hebei Province was considered as the east end of the Great Wall, as the Hushan section was severely damaged in the past centuries.

The Great Wall passes through 10 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in north China, including Liaoning, Hebei, Tianjin, Beijing, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Ningxia, Gansu and Qinghai.

Source: Xinhua