Hello and welcome to  Voices from Other Lands on China Radio International. I'm your host Zhou Jing.

In China, William Lindesay from Britain is famed for being the first foreigner to have traveled, alone and on foot, the entire length of the Great Wall, back in the late 1980s. He has settled in Beijing, where he is the founder of the International Friends of the Great Wall, a non-governmental organization devoted to protecting this wonder of human civilization.

As destiny would have it, after his first exploration of the Wall, William Lindesay accidentally came to know another William. William Geil was an American missionary who traveled along the Wall from end to end a century ago who then chronicled his journey in his book, the 'Great Wall of China'. The magical encounter led to the Great Wall Revisited Program to recapture the same views of the Great Wall as William senior.

The pictures of 'now' and 'then' were first exhibited at the beginning of last year in Beijing with huge success. I spoke with William Lindesay when the photo show reopened recently in Beijing. This time not only more photographs had been added to the show but also some new findings of William Geil about which Lindesay felt extremely excited.

You are listening to  Voices from Other Lands. I'm Zhou Jing. Join me today is the Great Wall explorer and conservationist William Lindesay. Time for a short break, please stay tuned.

Welcome back. You are still listening to  Voices from Other Lands. I'm your host Zhou Jing.
In 1987, William Lindesay trekked alone on the Great Wall for a total of 2,470 km. He wrote about his adventures in his first book: 'Alone on the Great Wall'.

Over the next twenty years, Lindesay spent much of his time searching for old photos of the Great Wall, including those taken by William Geil and Scottish photographer John Thomson in the late 19th and early 20th century. He then went about retracing their footsteps and recapturing these images, showing the dramatic changes to the Great Wall over the last century.

His experiences with the Great Wall have changed him from just a Wall explorer to a preservationist.

That was William Lindesay British photographer and Great Wall preservationist talking about the Great Wall Revisited Program. If you are interested in Lindesay's Wall rephotographing and preservation project, you can go and visit his photo exhibition which will run till Dec. 20 at Beijing's Imperial College.

With that we come to the end of this week's  Voices from Other Lands. To listen to today's show or any of our previous editions, please visit www.crienglish.com. If you have any comments or suggestions, drop us an email at voices@cri.com.cn. From Beijing, I'm Zhou Jing. Hope you join me again same time next week for another edition of Voices from Other Lands. Goodbye!