Last year, the Society sponsored a hotline soliciting suggestions for repairing the damage to the wall caused by name-carving. Hundreds of proposals were collected, but none considered feasible. "The damage was irreparable and we already knew that in advance," said Dong. "The real purpose of the event was to call public attention to the issue."

    Starting from the main entrance, walking either north or south of the Badaling Great Wall, almost every brick has been scratched by a knife, key, pointed stone or hairpin. Carving decreased after 1997, according to the Society. This might have been due to enhanced public awareness, or simply because there was no accessible space left for vandals to bring their artistic instincts into play.

    Among the suggestions collected via hotline last year was a proposal for furnishing special brick or wood plaques on the Wall for tourists to do their own paid carving. In this way, the adviser said, people had a vandalism-free opportunity to express their pride of conquering the Great Wall and becoming "a hero".

    The Great Wall was listed by UNESCO as a World Cultural Heritage site in 1987. It was later placed on the World Monuments Fund list of the World's 100 Most Endangered Sites.

    "Just as the world does not belong only to human beings, the Great Wall does not belong only to China," said William Lindsey, a passionate promoter of Great Wall conservation efforts ever since he walked the entire length of the Wall 1986-87. Lindsey now heads the International Friends of the Great Wall, an NGO dedicated to its conservation.

    Speaking at a press conference in July 2002 for the signing of a cooperative memorandum between Beijing government and the International Friends, Kong Fanshi, deputy director of Beijing Cultural Relics Bureau, said they recognized that preservation of the Great Wall did not merely mean repairing. He said the Bureau would also try prevent human damage, prevent the invasion of modernism and to preserve the environment around the Wall.

    "The prospects are bright, " said Dong Yaohui. "Growing media reports of Great Wall problems are not the result of increasing damage, but a reflection of growing public concern and enhanced awareness. This will help solve the problem of conservation and exploitation."

    A recent public appraisal by 31 Chinese newspapers produced a list of 50 tourist places worth visiting most by foreign tourists. The number one spot was the Badaling Great Wall. Enditem

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