Inspired to study

Born and raised in Xinzhou, Yang remembers that as a child, he would stare at the rammed earth-made lumps as he herded cattle.

As he got older, he began to understand the profound history and culture behind the "lumps". Yang took a train in 1991 to Jiayuguan, a well-known pass at the western end of the Great Wall dating back to the Ming Dynasty in northwestern China's Gansu province.

"It was a long trip that took days," recalls Yang, then working as a reporter at a local newspaper.

On the journey, he came across Gao Fengshan, the curator of the Jiayuguan Great Wall Museum. Yang remembers how Gao held out his business card and told him that Shanxi possesses many Great Wall resources.

"It inspired me to study them," Yang says. Since ancient times, Shanxi's geographical features of mountains and rivers have made it strategically important for military affairs. It served as a border between the nomadic peoples of the grasslands and the agricultural peoples of the Central China Plains, as well as a place of cultural exchanges between the Han and other ethnic groups, he explains.

To rigorously protect the area around the capital, the Ming Dynasty constructed inner and outer walls, both of which intersected in Xinzhou, Yang says.

As he surveyed the Great Wall sections, Yang says he was pained to see they had suffered damage.

"The northwestern part of Shanxi has often seen strong winds and abundant sandstorms, which cause natural damage," Yang says.