On the Great Wall and Chinese identity...

I read with great interest, the article in Smithsonia magazine on the Great Wall in China. Of particular interest or concern, if you will, is its efforts in preservation (or the apparent lack thereof), and its link to the identity of Chinese.

It's greatly ironical, that China as a country and as a people, place such high value in its culture and history of 5000 years, as witnessed in its much celebrated opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics 2008, yet its indifference (on the border of ignorance, when most local Chinese don't even know how old the Great Wall is), its impotence in protecting one of the Seven Wonders on the world, make it so very infuriating. This shortcoming is particularly glaring, in the face of the wealth built up by the tremendous surplus that its government has built up, yet it could not and would not spare even 100 people in preservation. It has no documented efforts to better understand their own treasure, with the scholars on Great Wall all come from the West (the derogatory gwei-lo).

Chinese is a proud race. Its people are willing to smash anything and everything in their own house, by its own people, but they would not allow outsiders (foreigners) utter a single word of it. There was this saying (I can't remember who the source was, so I can only quote it), that Chinese can only look up to, or look down upon gwei-lo, but they can never bring themselves to look to the gwei-lo in the eyes, on level field. It's so true.