Cheng Yongmao, an expert in the rescue and repair of the Jiankou Great Wall. Photo by Beijing News reporter Jing Ruyue.
Profile: Cheng Yongmao.
Guardian of the Great Wall.
He is a technical guidance expert of the Cultural Relics Management Institute of Huairou District, Beijing, and the sixteenth generation of Xinglong Gate Wa.
Cheng Yongmao is a native of Huairou and has been repairing the Great Wall for 20 years, covering Huanghuacheng, Mutianyu, Harrier Valley, Qinglong Gorge, Jiankou and so on. Now that he is close to his prime, he is still fighting on the front line of the repair of the Great Wall.
In January 2024, the winter snow near Xizhazi Village, Yanqi Town, Huairou District, Beijing, has not yet melted. The village is surrounded by mountains, and a "dragon" winds and undulates on the ridge, which is one of the most famous sections of the Great Wall of China - the Jiankou Great Wall.
Cheng Yongmao wore a red hard hat, held trekking poles in his hand, and carried a backpack on his back, and walked towards the mountain. The road leading to the mountain is covered with a thick layer of snow and the slope is steep, making it very slippery. There are no stone steps, no guardrails, and you can only follow the faint footprints left by your predecessors, with the help of the crutches in your hands and the bare branches on both sides, and carefully climb up.
Such road conditions are common for Cheng Yongmao. I saw him walking like a fly, and after a while, he was a big step ahead, and sometimes stopped around the corner to wait for the young man behind him. As a technical guidance expert at the Huairou District Cultural Relics Management Institute, he goes to the Great Wall every week. Every brick, stone, grass and tree here, he rubbed it repeatedly, and he couldn't be more familiar.
The Great Wall was repaired for 20 years, with a length of 20,000 meters.
Cheng Yongmao was born in 1956 in rural Huairou and began working as an apprentice bricklayer in 1973. After more than ten years of study and practice, he has gradually embarked on the road of protection and inheritance of cultural relics.
Since engaging in the construction of ancient buildings in 1991, he has successively completed key projects such as the roof of Hongqiao Market, the first roof, and the renovation of Lu Xun's former residence, and has become a veritable senior builder of ancient building tiles.
Although he grew up at the foot of the Great Wall and listened to his grandfather tell the story of General Cai Kai building the Great Wall, he never climbed the Great Wall himself. It wasn't until 2004 that Cheng Yongmao took over the renovation project of the Huanghuacheng Great Wall for the first time. "When I arrived at the Great Wall, I felt so shocked, hundreds of catties of big stones, I can't imagine how the ancestors transported them. I was deeply impressed by their hard-working spirit. ”
In Cheng Yongmao's studio, there are maps of the Huairou Huanghua Roadside Pass of the Ming Great Wall, the general plan of the repaired section of the Ming Great Wall in Huairou District, and the general plan of the Jiankou section of the Ming Great Wall. For the location and length of each section of the Great Wall, Cheng Yongmao is like a treasure. In the 20 years he has been engaged in the repair of the Great Wall, he has presided over more than 10 rescue and restoration projects of the Great Wall, such as Huanghuacheng, Mutianyu, Harrier's Valley, Hefangkou, Qinglongxia and Jiankou.
In February 2014, when the general secretary inspected Beijing, he put forward his ardent hope for the protection of Beijing's historical and cultural heritage: "Beijing is a world-famous ancient capital, and its rich historical and cultural heritage is a golden business card, and it is the responsibility of the capital to inherit and protect this precious historical and cultural heritage." "Over the past decade, Beijing has continuously stepped up the protection and repair of the Great Wall, and has launched a number of key repair projects, including the Jiankou Great Wall.
The Great Wall of Huairou is about 65 kilometers, and the length of the current repair is 20,000 meters. Cheng Yongmao said, "From 2019 to 2023, Beijing launched six rescue and repair projects for the Great Wall in the suburbs, using the form of 'emergency life-saving' to rescue and reinforce the collapsed single enemy building." In the past five years, Huairou District has completed the rescue and reinforcement of 16 enemy buildings. ”
On January 12, 2024, Cheng Yongmao was at the Jiankou Great Wall. Photo by Beijing News reporter Jing Ruyue.
Repair the arrow buckle to overcome the difficulty of water use, material transportation and construction.
What made Cheng Yongmao "stand out" in front of the public was the Jiankou Great Wall repair project launched by Beijing in 2016.
Jiankou Great Wall is located in the northwest of Huairou District in the territory of Badaohe Township, 1141 meters above sea level, built on the dangerous peak cliff, because the whole section of the Great Wall winds in the shape of W, the shape is like a full bow and buckle arrow, and the total length is about 10 kilometers. As one of the most dangerous sections of the Great Wall, it has always been the section with the highest photographic rate of the Great Wall, and has a very high status in the hearts of travelers.
Due to the long-term exposure to wind and sun, the Great Wall has serious problems such as serious wall collapse and bare wall core. In 2016, the first phase of the Jiankou Great Wall rescue and repair project was launched. At that time, how to build the Great Wall aroused widespread concern in the society.
The "Eagle Flying Upside Up" section of the Great Wall of Jiankou has a slope of nearly 80 degrees, and each step is only a few fingers wide, and all of them are rubbing stones that are about to fall off. The restoration of this section of the Great Wall is a big challenge for Cheng Yongmao.
In April 2019, the "Eagle Flying Upside Up" section of the Jiankou Great Wall under repair. Photo by Beijing News reporter Pu Feng.
The length of the collapsed wall of the "Eagle Flying Upside Down" section reached more than 40 meters, and hundreds of pounds of stone bars rolled down to the bottom of the ditch several hundred meters deep. People can't move, and mules can't be pulled, so Cheng Yongmao had to let the workers drag them with a winch and pull them six or seven times to get the stone bars back into place.
With his dedication and dedication, Cheng Yongmao completed this arduous task. After the repair, the "eagle flies upside down", there is no trace of repair from the appearance, and the original appearance of the ancient Great Wall is retained, but it feels solid when you step on the steps, and you don't have to worry about the city bricks falling off. "This section of the Great Wall has been repaired and protected better and safer, and there have been no accidents. Cheng Yongmao said.
Following the experience of the first phase of repair, Cheng Yongmao and his team successively completed the second, third and fourth phases of the Jiankou Great Wall repair project, involving a 5,004-meter Great Wall and 27 enemy towers, accounting for about half of the total length of the Jiankou Great Wall.
The repair of the Great Wall mainly faces 'three difficulties': difficulty in using water, difficulty in transporting materials and difficulty in construction. Cheng Yongmao said that the water shortage refers to the need for water and ash for construction, and the Great Wall is built in a water-scarce area, so water can only be pumped from the village's deep wells with mountain pressure pumps. "The head limit of each pump is about 140 meters, and if the altitude of the Great Wall is 600 meters above sea level from the water source, it will take three or four pumps to successfully deliver the water up. ”
The difficulty in transporting materials is that the materials used to build the Great Wall cannot be transported directly by car, "those who can be transported by car can use a car, and where the car can't go, they will be carried by mule." Wait for the mules to carry the materials to the temporary discharge point at the foot of the Great Wall, and then the workers will carry the materials on their shoulders and distribute the materials to each working face. Cheng Yongmao said, "Manual labor is the hardest thing. For ordinary people, it is not easy to go up the mountain empty-handed, and they have to climb on the Great Wall with weights, carrying more than 70 pounds of bricks each time, which requires very high physical strength and willpower. ”
Transporting materials is a major difficulty in the repair of the Great Wall. Where the car can't go, the materials need to be transported up the mountain by mule. Photo by Beijing News reporter Pu Feng.
In addition, the construction of the Great Wall required work on steep cliffs and undulating hillsides, which required a high level of skill and talent from the bricklayers. Cheng Yongmao introduced, after more than ten years of repeated selection, some of the workers who were born in the Luanping Mountains of Hebei Province, can endure hardships and have experience in repairing the Great Wall stayed, and then introduced the craftsmen with good craftsmanship around them.
Summarize the "five follow" construction method and reproduce the beauty of the vicissitudes of the Great Wall.
During the renovation of the Jiankou Great Wall, Beijing continued to explore the limits of the principle of "minimal intervention and no change in the status quo of cultural relics".
Drainage is the primary problem to be solved in the repair of the Great Wall. Cheng Yongmao told reporters that in the first phase of the repair project of the Jiankou Great Wall, due to serious ground damage, the new brick addition rate of 20% to 30% was required to be repaired. Compared with the first phase of the renovation project, the second phase reduces the use of new materials, for example, during the construction of the battlement wall, the new bricks are placed on the back, and the ground is as old as possible.
In the third and fourth phases, the concept of 'minimal intervention' was applied to the extreme. Cheng Yongmao said that the area of cleaning up broken bricks has been greatly reduced, such as a four-meter-wide city wall, only one meter can be cleaned to ensure smooth drainage and the safety of management personnel. The replenishment of bricks should come up with the "embroidery spirit", and sometimes four or five old bricks are used to form a large square brick, so as to "add less new bricks".
In April 2019, workers were laying the ground with bricks from the old city. Photo by Beijing News reporter Pu Feng.
The Great Wall is not like the Great Wall Scenic Area, and the height of the Great Wall Scenic Wall should be built to at least one meter or more, mainly to protect the safety of tourists. The principle of protection of the Great Wall is to extend the life of the Great Wall under the existing circumstances, so that the sense of the ancient vicissitudes of the Great Wall can be truly continued.
Cheng Yongmao continues to explore and innovate, and summed up a set of "five with" construction methods, that is, with the layer, with the slope, with the bend, with the old, with the residue.
The Great Wall changes with the undulations of the terrain, and during the restoration, each point has to be made according to the original curve and slope. When dealing with the top surface, it is necessary to make the remnants of natural damage, and do not make the bricks square. Cheng Yongmao said, "The 'five follows' are indispensable, and only when all of them are in place can we reproduce the beauty of the vicissitudes of the Great Wall." ”
Obsession with the Great Wall is also a blessing."
There are 15 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) involved along the Great Wall, and there should be a demonstration case on how to repair it. In Cheng Yongmao's view, the seven-year repair of the Jiankou Great Wall has formed a mature system, and the Great Wall in other regions can also learn from the repair results of the Jiankou Great Wall for unified protection in the future.
In 2020, the country's first Great Wall protection and restoration practice base was established at the foot of the Jiankou Great Wall, relying on the foundation of the Jiankou Great Wall repair work, to create an exchange platform and achievement display window for the maintenance and protection experience of the Great Wall at home and abroad.
A number of training courses were held here, and managers and craftsmen from along the Great Wall learned and exchanged together. In the class, Cheng Yongmao told them about the history and culture of the Great Wall, the rich resources of the Great Wall in Huairou, and demonstrated the "Five Sui" construction method. "Before, everyone didn't know how far the masonry Great Wall would be built. Through exchanges, the repair experience of the Jiankou Great Wall was brought to other provinces, and the effect was very good. ”
In 2021, taking the opportunity of the establishment of the Great Wall Protection and Restoration Practice Base, the repair of the Great Wall in Beijing will be transformed from a general protection project to a research repair project, and the Great Wall of Dazhuang Section of Yanqing District and the Jiankou Great Wall of Huairou District will be selected as pilots, with archaeological excavation as the beginning, multidisciplinary research as the means, and digital tracking records as the guarantee, to guide the participation of social forces, and strive to summarize a set of Beijing experience that can be replicated and promoted.
The length of the research repair of the Jiankou Great Wall is 429 meters, including 5 enemy platforms. One of the major features of research restoration is the intervention of archaeology in the early stage, which studies what the source of the disease is, and adopts different protection measures according to different diseases. At the same time, attention should be paid to the overall protection of the environment and features, and the vegetation on the side wall that does not threaten the safety of the Great Wall itself should be retained. Cheng Yongmao said.
In the resolution of the 44th session of the World Heritage Committee on the report on the state of conservation of the heritage, the protection and management of the Jiankou Great Wall was highly praised. Cheng Yongmao has also won the Capital Spiritual Civilization Construction Award, the 2nd China Construction Ingenuity Award, Huairou District Technical Expert, and the title of "2023 Beijing Model".
On August 20, 2022, a drone photographed the landscape of the Great Wall in the Jiankou section of Huairou District, Beijing. Figure ic photo
Nowadays, standing on the Jiankou Great Wall and looking out, the mountains and cities in the distance are shrouded in a layer of mist, and the dangerous peaks overlap in the near distance, which has a thrilling beauty. Cheng Yongmao pointed to the tallest enemy tower in the distance and said: "That is the fifth phase of the Jiankou repair project that will be launched this year, it is not the most dangerous section of the Jiankou Great Wall, but it is the farthest from the village, the highest altitude, with a length of 915 meters, including 6 enemy platforms." It takes two hours to walk from the village to the Great Wall. ”
Because of his deep love for the Great Wall, Cheng Yongmao, who is nearly a few years old, is still fighting on the front line of the Great Wall repair. In recent years, he has also taught himself CAD computer graphics in order to better carry out the repair work of the Great Wall. Someone commented on him that Lao Cheng was already obsessed with the Great Wall, and he couldn't do without it, he was reluctant to let go, and he couldn't let it go. Cheng Yongmao said, "Obsession is also a kind of happiness, and a person's greatest luck is to discover his mission, and my mission is to be a Great Wall craftsman in a down-to-earth manner." ”
Beijing News reporter Zhan Sheng.
Edited by Liu Mengjie.
Proofread by Zhao Lin.