Overtourism and Lax Oversight Threaten Great Wall of China
Skift Take
The Great Wall of China doesn’t need Hollywood to remain one of the world’s wonders. But stampedes of Chinese tourists still threaten an edifice that northern armies failed to conquer.
Editor's Note: Skift launched a series, Gateway, as we broaden our news coverage geographically with first-hand, original stories from correspondents embedded in cities around the world.
We started with regular reports several times per month from tourism hubs Beijing, Singapore and Capetown. Gateway Beijing and Gateway Singapore, for example, signify that the reporters are writing from those cities although their coverage of the business of travel will meander to other locales in their regions. Read about the series here, and check out all the stories in the series here.
Three spring weekends saw stampedes at the Great Wall, China’s most iconic monument.
In fact, these holidays, while they’ve existed on the Chinese calendar for decades, if not centuries, were codified specifically to give all 1,500 or so miles of the Great Wall and other national heritage and natural areas a break.
There’s a saying in Chinese that “If you don’t see the Great Wall, you are not a good man (or good Chinese),” depending on which translation you accept. That’s a marketing slogan that Beijing’s Forbid
