The Great Wall Revisited by William Lindesay, OBE

RAS LECTURE

Tuesday 27^th April, 2010 at 7:00 p.m.

Mesa-Manifesto 748 Julu Road, 上海巨鹿路748号梅萨餐厅

Adventures on the Great Wall of China - ‘The Wall of Two Williams’

A story of the journey of a book

By

William Lindesay OBE

Go into any bookshop in Beijing and you’ll find ten or more coffee-table books all titled ‘The Great Wall of China’.

Few people know that the very first book with this name was published exactly 100 years ago, in November 1909 -- not by a Chinese, but by an American. This explorer was the first man to travel along the whole length of the Ming Great Wall (1908), the first to write a book on the structure, and the first to provide the world with a full-length panorama to show the Wall’s architectural diversity from east to west. This is William Geil (1865-1925).

Eighty years later in 1987, the ‘second William of the Great Wall’, from the UK, trekked solo and on foot for 2,470 km by following the ruins of the Ming Great Wall from its desert origins to its seaside terminus. He published Alone on the Great Wall in 1989, the first account of Great Wall exploration by a foreigner in modern times. This is William Lindesay.

The two Williams ‘meet’ when a copy of William Geil’s book is presented to William Lindesay, in 1991. As Lindesay examined the Wall photographs of William Geil, he found one image to be utterly remarkable. It depicted a very broken down section of Wall in Hebei

Province, a picture of which William Lindesay had taken and included in his own book. Viewed side by side, the two photos indeed showed the same location, but the Wall had changed enormously. A handsome watchtower – the focus of Geil’s photograph – had disappeared in the intervening 80 years.

This experience prompted William Lindesay to realize the legacy of William Geil: his carefully photographed traverse of the Great Wall preserved a view of the structure that in many places was no longer actually there. It also inspired Lindesay to search galleries and scour institutional collections worldwide for other vintage images of the Great Wall. 

After more than a decade’s preparation, in spring 2003 Lindesay began to take Geil’s photographs back to the Wall in his quest to ‘update’ them. Revisiting the Great Wall in this way, ‘accompanied’ by William Geil, permitted the two explorers to systematically and dramatically evidence for the first time precisely how and why the Great Wall has changed during the 20^th century, a time of cataclysmic upheavals in Chinese history.

Travelling for five years and clocking up a distance of 40,000 km back and forth along the Wall, searching for locations, Lindesay presented his moving photographic results showing how the Great Wall had changed in 84 locations in the form of two national exhibitions staged at premier venues in Beijing: the Capital Museum and Imperial Academy. Displayed in one cabinet was Lindesay’s copy of Geil’s The Great Wall of China.

“My first adventure, alone on the Great Wall in 1987, was an epic challenge at a time when most of China was closed to foreigners, and I was only concerned with success and survival,” says Lindesay, “but the second, in the company of William Geil, was a privilege -- arranged by history or destiny -- allowing us to see the Wall in the past and present, knowing that our joint work would surely augur good influence on its future.”

William Lindesay O.B.E. has lived in China for 20 years and spent 1,600 days on the Great Wall. He has authored four books on the subject, and founded International Friends of the Great Wall in 2001, an outspoken conservation society that has been widely credited with triggering an awakening of national consciousness to protect the Great Wall from modern attack.

Entrance: RMB 30 (RAS members) and RMB 80 (non-members) those unable to make the donation but wishing to attend may contact us for exemption, prior to the RAS Lecture. Membership applications and membership renewals will be available at this event.

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