To allow its residents to "touch history", Beijing has begun protecting its ancient walls.

One of the projects is to renovate the 1,600-meter long city wall of Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). As the largest cultural relic protection project of Beijing in the past 50-odd years, this project will relocate over 2,600 households, dismantle more than 6,000 buildings of various types and lay 120,000 square meters of greenbelts so that residents can fly kites at the foot of the ancient city wall again and "touch history".

Common Beijing citizens gave positive support to the protection of the city wall. According to the department undertaking the Ming Dynasty city wall renovation project, the entire project took about two million bricks, one-fifth being old bricks, and a considerable proportion of them were donated by Beijing citizens.

Every few days, an old man in his 70s would bicycle to send the department two old bricks. He is said to have been donating old bricks for ten years.

"Beijing's ancient city wall has witnessed the history of this city. Pigeon whew at the city wall has left a deep mark in the memory of old Beijing residents. The city wall renovation project aims to enable today's people to once again touch the ancient Beijing," said a relevant official of Beijing's city planning department.
 
(Chinanews.cn June 14, 2006)