What changed
Yu Haiwen, a 53-year-old farmer in Hebei’s Baiyangyu Village, has spent more than 30 years guarding the Great Wall beneath his home. He became an official protection officer in 2016, patrolling the roughly 4.5-kilometre Baiyangyu section every few days, documenting damage and clearing vegetation.
His family’s connection to the site reaches back centuries. Ancestors from Zhejiang moved there in 1369 to defend the frontier. Today, Yu also guides visitors, including tourists from more than 20 countries, using a few practical English words and a world map on the wall of his guesthouse.
Why it matters
Baiyangyu is not simply a monument at the edge of a village. It is also a working local economy. More than 70 households now run farm restaurants or guesthouses, with average annual household income above 120,000 yuan.
That makes Yu’s patrols unusually tangible. Checking bricks, photographing damage and reporting it through a system are small acts, but they help preserve the physical asset on which those businesses depend. The Baiyangyu section includes 1.5 kilometres of marble construction, a rare feature within Hebei’s roughly 2,499 kilometres of surviving Great Wall.
The wider lesson is plain: heritage protection here is not carried out only by distant institutions. It is folded into village life, family memory and tourism. Yu’s map of foreign visitors turns that connection into something visible. Whether the site attracts more visitors or receives new conservation funding remains unclear, but its protection already rests on a simple local arrangement: the people who live beside the wall are also among the people keeping it standing.
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