One man's 30-year duty cleaning up the Great Wall

William Lindesay is collecting garbage at the Jiankou section of the Great Wall during a cleanup event held on April 22. [Photo by Guan Weiwei/China.org.cn]

"Leave a place better than you found it." It is a simple philosophy, but one that William Lindesay holds dear. He led 20 volunteers to help clean up the Jiankou section of the Great Wall on April 22, which was also Earth Day.

"He who cares is the owner," William said in the opening remarks of the cleanup event. "The Great Wall belongs to China, and is also one of the greatest structures in the world. Everyone has a responsibility to protect it. Every day should be Earth Day," he said.

Trained in geography at the University of Liverpool, William has been captivated by the Great Wall of China since he was a child when he first discovered it in an atlas. His passion has led him to China three times, and he walked 2,470 km exploring the Great Wall during the 1980s before settling down in China in 1990.

During the past three decades, he has spent most of his time walking the Great Wall and has grown and developed his own efforts to protect the cultural relic.

The garbage on the Great Wall has increased over the years. William and his friends collected 288 bags of garbage last year.

"It's a good thing that people are going out to enjoy themselves and to discover the great heritage and history, but it's also quite dangerous if they don't understand how fragile the environment is and how fragile the antiquities are," William said.

"Every person can make a difference. If we can get a billion Chinese people to be environmentalists, China will be a green, beautiful and healthy country to live in," he said.

William believes that in order to get people passionate about the Great Wall, they need to know more about it and its history.

In 1989, his first book Alone on the Great Wall was published, and he has published another five books about the Great Wall since then. In 2001, he founded International Friends of the Great Wall, an association whose efforts are aimed at protecting this link to the past.

His next step is to organize exhibitions about the Great Wall as a monument over the last 400 years. The exhibitions are expected to be held in Beijing, London, Paris and Washington DC.

The cleanup event, started in 2002, is sponsored by BLACK YAK, a Korean outdoor clothing and equipment company also actively striving to protect the environment.