Construction workers in central Shanxi province have been accused of severely damaging China’s Great Wall when they used an excavator to dig a shortcut for their construction work.
Two workers, a man aged 38 and a 55-year-old woman, have reportedly been detained. They were working on a section of the 32nd Great Wall.
According to the BBC, they dug a ‘big gap’ by widening an existing cavity of the Great Wall so that their excavator could pass through it. Police say the workers wanted to reduce the distance they had to travel.
Police said the pair caused ‘irreversible damage to the integrity of the Ming Great Wall and to the safety of the cultural relics’.
The Great Wall, a Unesco world heritage site since 1987, was built and rebuilt on a continual basis from around 220 BC until the Ming Dynasty in the 1600s, when it was the world’s largest military structure.
The best-preserved parts were built during the Ming Dynasty between the 14th and 17th centuries. It is one of these parts that now has a huge new hole dug out of it.