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Craftsmen help to restore China’s Great Wall brick by ancient brick

Engineers and bricklayers scale perilous peaks armed only with basic tools to breathe new life into one of the undisputed wonders of the world

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Men work on the reconstruction of the Jiankou section of the Great Wall of China, in Huairou District, north of Beijing. Photo: Reuters

At one of the most treacherous and least restored stretches of China’s Great Wall, a line of pack mules halted upon emerging from the gloom of a dense forest draped in mist and dew.

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Each laden with 150kg of bricks, the seven animals finally got moving in response to the coaxing and swearing of their masters, eager to gain altitude before the sun climbed high in the sky.

For more than a decade, mules have been crucial in the effort to restore Jiankou, a serpentine 20km section of the wall about 70km north of central Beijing that is notorious for its ridges and perilous slopes.

“The path is too steep and the mountains are too high, so the bricks can only be transported by mules,” said local mule owner Cao Xinhua, who has worked on Great Wall restoration projects in the mountains north of Beijing for 10 years.

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A man walks behind a mule carrying bricks up a hillside towards the Jiankou section of the Great Wall. Animals are the only way to get supplies to the top because the mountain paths are so steep. Photo: Reuters
A man walks behind a mule carrying bricks up a hillside towards the Jiankou section of the Great Wall. Animals are the only way to get supplies to the top because the mountain paths are so steep. Photo: Reuters
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