Damaged wall of Pingyao ancient city fully repaired

An aerial view of the Ancient City of Pingyao in North China's Shanxi province [Photo/Shanxi Evening News]

As of the end of October, repairs on 61 sites along the wall around the Ancient City of Pingyao in North China's Shanxi province had been completed, and work on dismantling the scaffolding and cleaning up the repair sites is currently underway.

In early October last year, many places in Shanxi were hit by heavy rainfall, and the city wall along the Ancient City of Pingyao partially collapsed. It was the most severe rainstorm since the ancient city suffered waterlogging due to heavy rainfall in 1977.

The outer wall of the Ancient City of Pingyao is made of brick, while the inner wall is made of the exposed rammed earth wall. Continuous heavy rainfall is the biggest threat to the safety of the wall as a large-scale open-air soil heritage building.

"To not change the original state is the basic principle of the restoration of the wall," according to Shao Shuai, a person in charge of the wall repair project.

The once-damaged wall of the Ancient City of Pingyao is now fully repaired. [Photo/Shanxi Evening News]

In order to make the ancient city wall stronger and maintain the original shape, the repair efforts adopted a traditional craft that has existed for nearly a thousand years, since the time of the Song Dynasty (420-479), Shao said.

Currently, the dangers identified have been properly handled, and the wall is now better protected, ensuring the safety of tourists and surrounding residents while also allowing everyone to appreciate the ancient city wall as it originally looked.

"This is the largest renovation done on the city wall in more than 40 years," said Lei Yaxian, director of the Pingyao county cultural relics institute.

Moving forward, Pingyao will seek to do a quality job in the rescue, protection, monitoring and daily inspection of dangerous sections of the city wall to ensure its absolute safety.

The once-damaged wall of the Ancient City of Pingyao is now fully repaired. [Photo/Shanxi Evening News]