Chinese couple turns 100,000 photos of Great Wall into a museum

YINCHUAN -- For most visitors, the Great Wall is something to walk along once and leave behind, but for Gao Wandong and Chen Jing, it was something they could not stop returning to, until after more than a decade and 100,000 photographs, it demanded a museum of its own.

That museum sits in Changcheng village, literally, "Great Wall Village," in Yanchi county, Northwest China's Ningxia Hui autonomous region, a quiet courtyard built with borrowed money and stubborn conviction.

Inside are photographs taken at dawn and dusk, shards of porcelain pulled from sand, Ming-era bricks rescued from being reused as doorsteps, and shelves of local chronicles gathered one by one over years of travel.

Yanchi is a place where the Great Wall stretches for 259 kilometers across desert plains and rolling hills. Along it lie the remnants of an old frontier: 23 ancient forts and 169 watchtowers and beacon platforms. Locals sometimes call it an open-air museum.

"The Great Wall was our childhood companion," Gao said. At 55, he still remembers using tall beacon towers as shelter from sudden sandstorms while herding sheep. As a boy, he picked up arrowheads and shards of pottery without thinking much of them. Only years later did he realize those "lumps of earth," as he once called them, were disappearing, flattened by time, weather or reuse.

After they married, Gao, a civil servant, and Chen, a schoolteacher, began spending weekends driving deep into the countryside. Some sections of wall existed only as faint lines on old maps or as directions passed between villagers. Gao drove and kept notes. Chen photographed. At first, it was an unsystematic hobby, physically exhausting and logistically uncertain. But it held them.

Meandering over mountain ridges across north China, the Great Wall was built during more than 2,000 years of continuous construction -- from the Spring and Autumn Period (770 BC-221 BC) to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). The sections of this world wonder that exist today have a total length of over 21,000 km. It was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.

Verification often meant long, punishing days. Gao and Chen drove more than 100 kilometers to confirm the existence of a single beacon tower. Cars became stuck in the sand. Food ran out. They left before sunrise and waited until dusk -- all for light, for a chance to capture the Wall as it truly was.

Chen's equipment evolved alongside her resolve. She borrowed a camera, then bought one. Later, she learned to fly drones, process images, and design layouts.

In 2014, the work took on new urgency. Yanchi county established a Great Wall protection association and launched a program allowing individuals to "adopt" specific sites. Gao and Chen contributed 5,000 yuan (about $712) to take responsibility for a Ming-era beacon tower. They set themselves a goal: to systematically document every remaining stretch of the Wall in Yanchi within five or six years.

The result was published in 2019. Illustrated Yanchi Great Wall, selecting 600 images from more than 100,000 photographs, reads less like technical records than visual testimony. Watchtowers at dawn. Border walls at dusk. Life pressed quietly against stone.

"Standing beneath the ruins," Chen said, "I feel like I can talk to them."

But images alone, they soon realized, were not enough.

China's Ministry of Culture and Tourism has required 15 provinces and municipalities along the Great Wall to formulate specific plans for the construction of a national Great Wall culture park, tailored to local conditions.

The Great Wall is gaining new life with new development opportunities.

To raise public awareness and preserve Great Wall culture, the couple spent more than 200,000 yuan rescuing Ming-era bricks and ancient construction tools from villagers who might otherwise reuse them. They also collected more than 2,000 local chronicles tracing the Wall's history across centuries. Gradually, the idea of a museum became inevitable.

Since opening in 2020, the museum has welcomed thousands of visitors each year, many of them researchers and dedicated Great Wall enthusiasts. The couple host photography exhibitions and educational programs, turning a private obsession into shared memory.

Today, Gao serves as vice-president of the county's Great Wall protection association. "In recent years, Yanchi has stepped up protection of the Great Wall, and cases of deliberate damage have largely disappeared," he said.

"Before restoration techniques can fully achieve the goal of repairing the old as old, the best protection is to avoid causing damage," Chen said. "Our greatest wish is that the Great Wall can grow old with dignity."