Before the 2010 Asian Games, when Zhang Guangning, Secretary of the GuangZhou Municipal Committee of the CPC, was surveying the ancient city walls on Yuexiu Mountain, he stressed that since there were not many historical and cultural relics left in Guangzhou, efforts should be made to enable the ancient city walls to be a unique tourist attraction reflecting the style of Guangzhou as a historical and cultural city.

Nearly one year later, the restoration project of the ancient city walls was finally making progress. The project started one month ago in a low-key way and expected to be completed within six months. But nowadays, on the city walls, there are many trees and buildings whose fates are not yet determined, so the progress of the project is of necessity quite slow.

Straight from the west gate of the Yuexiu Park to the right side of 100-meter Zhenhai Road, the road to the top of the mountain has been sealed by a 20-meter iron sheet.

Based on the existing eastern, middle, and western parts of the ancient city walls, the designer set three paths with the respective theme of ‘path to find’, ‘path to paying homage’ and ‘path to stride over’. The whole design scope is about 34,000 square meters and the restoration project covers the body of the walls and the supporting landscape design.

According to Zheng Lipeng, Professor of the School of South China University of Technology, who is mainly responsible for the restoration of the main body of the city walls, previous research had found that the ancient city walls had been broken in many parts. ‘There is basically only 1045 meters left’ Zheng said. And he expressed the view that for the restoration of walls with such a length, the project should include corresponding reinforcement and other rehabilitation measures relating to their actual damage. He also said, in local parts of some of the wall’s structure, the battlements needed to be built and the platforms restored in order to display the basic style of the city walls at the time they were built.

According to the estimates made for this program, because of the major restoration required of the walls on the northern and southern sides, some 280,000 pieces of black bricks are needed for the restoration of the whole city walls. “It has been basically confirmed that these antique bricks are to be manufactured in Xi’an and transported to Guangzhou.” said Zheng, and the whole restoration project should comply with the principle of ‘carefully recovering the original style’; and the walls that had been destroyed would not be restored. The total cost for restoring the remaining body of the walls that are recoverable is about RMB 20 million.