vandalism
Great Wall of China – Couple use an excavator to dig a shortcut through China’s most iconic structure
The breach goes through the middle of the wall
© Handouts
Actually, they should have driven around the Great Wall to get to their construction site. To save the detour, a man and a woman dug a large breach through the historic building.
The Great Wall of China once separated the Middle Kingdom from the Mongols, the world of civilization from the predatory nomads. Today only one field separates them from the other. A man and a Apparently women didn’t want to take long detours to get from one side to the other. They took an excavator and created a wide passage. The Chinese media report.
Section from the Ming Dynasty
The construction of the Great Wall of China, divided into sections totaling thousands of kilometers, began in the third century BC. and lasted for centuries. The gap is in a section about a six-hour drive from Beijing. This section was built in China’s Ming Dynasty from the 14th to the 17th centuries. In this area, the wall is not an impeccably renovated structure, its remains are mostly covered by earth, so only a kind of rampart can be seen between the watchtowers.
Perpetrators were quickly discovered
The two vandals were obviously not the smartest. When the police in Shanxi Province discovered the gap, they quickly found the culprits through the tracks left by the heavy construction machinery. The 38-year-old man and a 55-year-old had created the shortcut to be able to reach their nearby construction site better. Apparently there was already a small path there that they massively enlarged with their excavator.
There is not much to see of the wall, but precisely because its remains are covered, it is relatively well preserved. CCTV said the suspects caused “irreversible damage” to the Ming-era wall. “Currently, the two suspects are being held in criminal custody in accordance with the law and the case remains under investigation.”
For a long time, the Great Wall of China was looted for building materials. But in recent years, the authorities have intervened in all forms of vandalism.
Source: Singtao; China Daily