外媒看中国：为什么长城在渐渐消失？

Around 30 percent of China's Ming-era Great Wall has disappeared over time as adverse natural conditions and reckless human activities -- including stealing the bricks to build houses -- erode the UNESCO World Heritage site, state media reported.

据官媒报道，中国的明长城大约有30%随着时间的推移已经消失，这是由于不利的自然条件和不计后果的人类活动（包括偷长城上的砖盖房子）侵蚀了这座由联合国教科文组织认定的世界文化遗产。

In places it is so dilapidated that estimates of its total length vary from 5,600 to 13,000 miles, depending on whether missing sections are included. Despite its length it is not, as is sometimes claimed, visible from space.

长城有些地方破旧不堪，所以对它长度的估算从5600英里到13000英里不等，这取决于是否把消失的部分涵盖在内。尽管长城很长，但不像有时人们说的那样从太空里能看见它。

Of that, 1,200 miles has melted away over the centuries, the Beijing Times reported.

《京华时报》报道称：“几个世纪以来，其中有1200英里已经消失了。”

Some of the construction weathered away, while plants growing in the walls have accelerated the decay, said the report Sunday, citing a survey last year by the Great Wall of China Society.

周日的报道引用了中国长城学会去年的调查，说一部分长城风化掉了，还有的城墙里植物疯长加速了损毁。

"Even though some of the walls are built of bricks and stones, they cannot withstand the perennial exposure to wind and rain," the paper quoted Dong Yaohui, a vice president of the society, as saying.

《京华时报》引用学会的副会长董耀会的话说：“即使部分城墙用砖石砌成，也禁不住常年风吹雨淋。”

Tourism and local residents' activities are also damaging the longest human construction in the world, the paper added.

报纸补充说：“旅游业和当地居民的活动也正在破坏这个世界上人类最长建筑。”

Poor villagers in Lulong county in the northern province of Hebei used to knock thick grey bricks from a section of wall in their village to build homes, and slabs engraved with Chinese characters were sold for 30 yuan ($4.80) each by local residents, it said.

据报道，位于华北的河北省的卢龙县里村民很穷，过去经常敲下村里部分城墙上青灰色的厚砖拿去盖房，而且刻有汉字的砖被当地居民卖到30元（4.80美元）一块。

Under Chinese regulations people who take bricks from the Great Wall can be fined up to 5,000 yuan, the Global Times said on Monday.

《环球时报》周一称：“中国条例规定从长城上偷砖会被处以高达5000元的罚款。”

"But there is no specific organisation to enforce the rules. Damage could only be reported to higher authorities and it is hard to solve when it happened on the border of two provinces," said Jia Hailin, a cultural relics protection official in Hebei, according to the report.

报道称，河北文化遗产保护官员贾海林说：“但是没有专门的部门来执行这一规定，破坏行为只能报告上级机关，如果发生在两省交界处就很难处理了。”

It added that explorations of undeveloped parts of the Great Wall -- an increasingly popular leisure activity in recent years -- had brought those sections more tourists than they could bear, damaging them severely.

报道还提到，近些年探索未开发部分的长城作为休闲活动逐渐兴起，带来的游客数量超出了这些野长城的负荷，对长城损毁严重。