There is an old Chinese saying that "he who does not visit the Great Wall is not a real man". However, William Lindesay, a British, has changed the saying as "he who does not love the Great Wall is not a real man". His saying truly reflects his destined affinity for the Chinese Great Wall, CCTV international channel reported.
William has settled in China for more than ten years now and it seems that there is only one mission for him to do in China - to research and protect the Great Wall.
For once, he walked through the Great Wall with only a hat, a backpack and a camera.
To him, the Great Wall is a large outdoor museum. It traverses through grasslands, deserts, and mountains, and the only way to understand the Great Wall is to observe it with one's own eyes.
In 1986, William came to China for the first time. At that time, he was still in his twenties. Unaccustomed to the Chinese climate, his first efforts to conquer the Great Wall ended in vain. Five months later, he recovered from his illness and started his journey again. This time, he walked for 2,470 kilometers on the Great Wall. He felt excited about this breathtaking ancient engineering project. At the same time, he also felt regretful that in many parts, the Great Wall was seriously damaged.
In 1996, he launched a series of actions to protect the Great Wall. He established the Association of the Friendship of the Great Wall, collected funds from society and invited volunteers to collect garbage on the Great Wall. In addition, he spent three years revisiting some sections of the Great Wall, taking their pictures in order to show people how the Great Wall had changed in the past one hundred years. He found that of all the twenty years he stayed in China, one-seventh of his time was spent on the Great Wall. He once said that the Great Wall was like his home and the Chinese government awarded him a Friendship Medal. To William, this is a prize given for "foreign model worker."
William married a Chinese woman Wu Qi and they now have two sons. In order to support her husband's work, Wu has quitted her job and begun to do work related with the protection of the Great Wall.
(CRIENGLISH.com March 2, 2007)
