Welcome to International Friends of the Great Wall

In 1980, when visiting National Geographic headquarters in Washington D.C. , I purchased a globe and, as I had done as a child marveled thereupon at the appearance of a castellated symbol drawn to represent China 's Great Wall. Picturesque and vivid, it was this distant view that prompted me to travel to China to explore the Wall from end to end. On that journey I saw spectacular sections of Wall, but also I encountered many places where it was barely extant, and in others absent. In 2004, returning to Washington , I purchased a new globe: the world had changed a lot politically. But I was distressed to learn that the Great Wall had disappeared off the face of this new world, reflecting perhaps that it had become shorter in length and lower in height.

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