Fortifying history, beyond bulwarks

Amateur archaeologists work to record a vanishing constellation of Great Wall forts in a county in Hebei as it undergoes rapid urbanization, Wang Qian reports.

The Great Wall's very name heralds its vastness and its function as a barrier — but zoom in closer on the details, and you'll see there's more to the Wall than, well, just its walls. Amateur archaeologist Cheng Changjin has spent 12 years making over 70 trips to Yuxian county in Zhangjiakou. The over 3,000-square-kilometer county in North China's Hebei province hosts a cluster of Great Wall fortresses built during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).

"The county's 796 villages contain 417 castles or forts that still stand, or at least partially remain as ruins. More than 60 others are totally gone," says Cheng, 62.

He adds that rapid urbanization is causing these forts and castles, which are a bedrock of Chinese culture, to vanish from the countryside. And the traditions and history on which they're built are consequently disappearing, too.