For most people, the Great Wall is a tourist attraction, but for Dong Yaohui, the Great Wall has another meaning, and is worth dedicating his whole life to it.

Dong Yaohui, known as the "Son of the Great Wall," is a famous Great Wall expert, who is also the vice president of the Great Wall Society of China and president of the Great Wall Research Institute of Hebei University of Geosciences. The Great Wall is what Dong has walked on, studied, publicized and protected for more than 30 years.

The Great Wall is the symbol of China, a representation of the Chinese civilization. But for a long time, the Great Wall wasn't maintained well and fell into disrepair. Most of the Great Wall in the wild is constantly under threat from both natural and human factors, and it urgently needs comprehensive and effective protection. Dong Yaohui, a native of Qinhuangdao, began his career studying and protecting the Great Wall over 30 years ago, and he has been fully devoted to this career without complaint or regret. 

Dong was born in the beautiful coastal city of Qinhuangdao on January 5, 1957, which is also where the Great Wall of the Ming Dynasty wound eastward to the “old dragon head”. In 1982, Dong came up with a bold idea that would become very meaningful for him: He was to walk along the Great Wall once to accomplish the very first complete journey along the Great Wall in the human history.

Therefore, on May 4, 1984, he set out from the “old dragon head” and arrived at Jiayuguan successfully on September 24 of the next year. He walked for 508 days during what was the first human trek of the entire Great Wall.

After trekking on the Great Wall, Dong completed his first monograph – “Textual Research on the Great Wall of the Ming Dynasty” in 1986. This work combines literature and field investigation materials and breaks through the traditional research method of "writing history by history," which is a comprehensive innovation.

The Great Wall Society of China is committed to researching, protecting, publicizing and developing the Great Wall. Dong has witnessed the establishment of the Great Wall Society of China and has been an important participant of it.

His talent and organizational ability was quickly revealed and he was elected to be the deputy secretary-general of the Great Wall Society. In 1996, he took over as secretary-general, and later as executive vice-president. He devoted all his efforts to the development of the Great Wall Society.

In 1987, the Great Wall was listed in the World Heritage List and became one of the first batch of world heritage sites in China. Since then, Dong started to feel like he had more responsibilities.

After over three decades, the most satisfying thing for Dong was to preside over the completion of "The Chronicle of the Great Wall of China". It had been his dream to make a historical analysis of the Great Wall, and he realized it in eight years. “The Chronicle of the Great Wall of China” is the first large-scale academic work to comprehensively records the historical documents of the Great Wall. It has a total of 11 volumes, and is compiled in seven styles: Narrative, notes, journal, biography, map, table and record.

In 2015, Dong's Great Wall cause finally bloomed in the “spring” of the Great Wall conservation. The Great Wall protection campaign swept across China.

On August 9, 2015, Vice Premier Liu Yandong of the State Council chaired a National Symposium on the protection of the Great Wall, which put forward seven specific requirements for the conservation of the Great Wall. On August 26, the State Administration of Cultural Relics issued the Guiding Opinions on the Preparation of Great Wall Protection Planning (Draft for Opinions).

The plan for the protection of the Great Wall at the national, provincial and municipal levels was completed in 2016, and a detailed plan for the protection of important sections of the Great Wall was launched and is being gradually completed. More and more people have been participating in the conservation of the Great Wall. Now the “Son of the Great Wall” is not alone anymore.