In 2008, a construction team building a new expressway linking Shenmu county and Yulin city, both in Shaanxi province, found the remains of an ancient wall buried in the ground. The ruins were only 30 centimeters high. Archaeologists later learned that the wall belonged to a section of the Great Wall of China, and they discovered more ruins. To protect the new discovery, the local government decided to dig a tunnel under the walls for the new expressway to pass. Now China's cultural protection authority will end the trouble to change the construction plan at the last minute since some of the Great Wall has been found - the authority has figured out the length and location of all of the walls. Last week, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage published its latest survey result, which said the Great Wall measures 21,196.18 kilometers, almost 2.4 times the widely believed estimation of 8,851.8 km, reported The China Daily. The survey was performed jointly by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage and the National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation. "The previous estimation particularly refers to Great Walls built in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), but this new measure includes Great Walls built in all dynasties," said Yan Jianmin, office director of the-China Great Wall Society, an NGO founded by specialists and scholars to protect the Great Wall of China. Archaeologists and mapping experts conducted field surveys in 15 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions including Heilongjiang, Hebei, Beijing, Shaanxi and Xinjiang, and found 43,721 sites related to the Great Wall. Using historical records, artifacts and information from locals, Li and his colleagues unveiled small parts of the Great Wall that had long been forgotten by people. The survey is only the first step in a larger project to protect the Great Wall. The State Administration of Cultural Heritage launched a protection project in 2006, and planned on a long-term maintenance map to be completed before the end of the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15) period. The Great Wall was first built during the reign of China's first emperor Qin Shihuang (259-210 B.C.) to keep out foreign invaders. The municipal government of Jiayuguan in northwest China's Gansu province on November 18, 2011 kicked off a repair and construction project focused on the western end of China's Great Wall, reported Xinhua.

The municipal government of Jiayuguan in northwest China's Gansu province on November 18 kicked off a repair and construction project focused on the western end of China's Great Wall, reported Xinhua. The project will involve repair work on the sections of Great Wall in the city of Jiayuguan, including the Jiayu Pass - the starting point of a section of the Great Wall constructed during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). It also includes the construction of a world cultural heritage theme park and a heritage inspection center. The project will have a total investment US$ 317 million, mostly financed by the central government. Built in 1372, the Jiayu Pass also served as a vital passage on the ancient Silk Road. It was listed on UNESCO's World Heritage List in 1987. The pass underwent large-scale repairs and maintenance in 1984. The Great Wall was first built during the reign of China's first emperor Qin Shihuang (259-210 B.C.) to keep out foreign invaders. A national survey in 2008 showed that the exact length of the Great Wall built in the Ming Dynasty was 8,851.8 km, stretching from the Hushan section in northeast Liaoning province to the Jiayu Pass. The Great Wall passes through 10 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in northern China, including Liaoning, Hebei, Tianjin, Beijing, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Ningxia, Gansu and Qinghai.