By Sun Ye

威廉·林賽：我的長城夢

William Lindesay’s Mission to Walk the Great Wall of China

By Sun Ye

自小時候在學(xué)校的地圖集看到中國的萬里長城，英國人威廉·林賽就對中國長城著迷不已。在空中拍攝長城是他從小到大的夢想，林賽從去年開始采取行動，逐步實(shí)現(xiàn)兒時夢想。林賽在接受英國廣播公司(BBC)1月6日采訪時表達(dá)了自己的渴望。

他在北京的家中說：“長城是奇觀，它應(yīng)當(dāng)被完美地呈現(xiàn)?！?/p>

為了更接近自己童年的夢想，為了長城，1986年，林賽從英國默西賽德郡的沃勒西移居到中國，自此他不斷進(jìn)行關(guān)于長城的研究，并出版多部著作，更因而獲得大英帝國官佐勛章（OBE）。

威廉·林賽鏡頭下的長城

William Lindesay has been obsessed with the Great Wall of China since seeing it in a school atlas as a child in England, and last year embarked on an epic journey to fulf l a lifelong ambition - to f lm the wall in its entirety from the air. He told the BBC’s about this quest.

“The Great Wall is an amazing sight, and it deserves to be seen in its best light.” says William from his home in Beijing. Unable to shake his childhood fascination, he moved to China from Wallasey on Merseyside in 1986 “for the wall”, and has since researched it extensively, writing several books and gaining an OBE for his work.

The wall most tourists see today is in places like Badaling, an easy day trip from Beijing, where the stones and towers havebeen repeatedly restored.

今天大多數(shù)游客看到的、從北京出發(fā)一日游非常便利的長城比如八達(dá)嶺長城，那里的城墻和烽火臺曾被

反復(fù)修復(fù)。被訓(xùn)練成了地理學(xué)家的林賽說：“但長城可不僅僅是這些，除了游客蜂擁而至的這些長城，還有許多‘中國長城’?！比f里長城橫跨中國北部，延伸至蒙古，這些城墻的修筑跨越了幾個世紀(jì)，在不同的朝代建成，而最古老的城墻，其歷史可追溯至2000年前。某些地方，長城穿過高聳的石頭，有時又跨過泥土堆，它有著多種不同用途——包括公路、抵抗外敵的堡壘、通訊系統(tǒng)、甚至用來控制遷徙的野生動物。

林賽說：“過去30年，我一直看著這些城墻，有多遠(yuǎn)去多遠(yuǎn)……我去過中國北方所有地方，甚至遠(yuǎn)至蒙古?！?/p>

上世紀(jì)90年代，林賽與妻子吳琪在長城腳下購買了一間農(nóng)舍，周末時夫妻倆常會研究、勘察長城。

林賽指出，攝影非常重要，無論是“攝影的成像還是建筑風(fēng)格本身都是那么美，我想通過我的鏡頭來闡述長城設(shè)計特點(diǎn)所蘊(yùn)含的一系列意義”。但在2016年，他的兒子吉姆和湯米提議使用一種新的方式來拍攝長城，纏著他要買一臺航拍機(jī)。林賽說：“我非常擔(dān)心孩子們在第一次旅行的時候就把航拍無人機(jī)弄丟了?！?他最后屈服，購入一臺航拍無人機(jī)，兩個兒子自行學(xué)會剪輯，拍攝成果美

得如夢如幻，猶如“不屬于這個世界”。他說：“不少出版商及電影制作人都跟我提議，不如從空中拍攝長城?！薄拔彝?/p>

常都會說，除非你有數(shù)百萬資金，及與政府和控制領(lǐng)空的軍方高層的聯(lián)系。假如都沒有的話，不如放棄這個念頭?！薄斑@樣

說來，航拍技術(shù)是上天賜予的禮物。”因此

，通過一家旅行社的贊助，這一家人花了60天帶著航拍無人機(jī)追蹤長城。這次旅程亦慶祝林賽的60歲生日及“為了長城”移居中國30年。他們的旅程從2016年7月開始，首站是老龍頭，這里是明長城東部接大海的起點(diǎn)。林賽一家從老龍頭往西走，到訪公元前300年建筑的趙長城。然后是漢朝建成的長城。8月

他們乘飛機(jī)到達(dá)蒙古烏蘭巴托。他們一家在野外露營，并尋找成吉思汗城墻。

“But there’s more to the wall than that,” says William, who trained as a geographer, “Before the tourist wall that people f ock to, there were many other ’Great Walls of China’.”

Sprawled across northern China and into Mongolia, the creation of these various walls spanned centuries and ruling dynasties. The oldest parts date back more than 2,000 years.

In some places towering stone and in others heaped-up earth, the walls have variously served as highways, defensive fortresses, a communication network and even a fence to contain migrating animals.

“Over the past 30 years I’ve been looking at all of these walls, as far as possible,” says William, “My travels have taken me all over northern China, even as far as Mongolia.”

In the 1990s, he and his wife, Wu Qi, bought a farmhouse at the foot of the wall, and would spend most weekends there exploring it.

Photography has always been important, says William, whether the images were “just beautiful or whether the architecture, the design features had a meaning that I wanted to explain in my writing”.

But in 2016 his sons, Jim and Tommy, had a suggestion for seeing the wall in a whole new way, and began, as they put it, pestering him to buy them a drone.

“I was very concerned they’d come back from the f rst trip without the drone.” says William. He eventually caved, and the results, coupled with some self-taught editing f air from his sons, have been “out of this world”.

“Over the years, publishers and filmmakers have come to me and said, let’s do the Great Wall from the air.” he says.

“My typical reply was that unless you’ve got millions and millions of dollars, and high-level contacts with the government and the armed forces, who control the skies, then forget it.”

“In this way drone technology is a godsend.”

So armed with their drone and with a travel agency sponsor, the family spent a total of 60 days tracing the walls in 2016, celebrating William’s 60th birthday and his 30th year of living in China“for the wall”.

They began in July at the Old Dragon’s Head, the point where the Ming dynasty-era Great Wall meets the sea in the east, and followed it westwards, branching off to explore the older Zhao wall, dating back to 300BC, then hundreds of kilometres further west, the Han dynasty wall.

That was followed in August by a f ight to Ulan Bator in Mongolia, from where they camped in the wild while tracing what is marked on old maps as the Wall of Genghis Khan.

William calculates the entire journey to have been some 15,000km (9,320 miles) and says f ying the drone over these re-mote areas gave a whole new perspective on the ruins.

威廉·林賽熱愛拍攝長城

林賽估計他們的總旅程約為15000公里（9320英里），而在四野無人的地方使用航拍無人機(jī)，令他們對于

長城遺跡有嶄新的想法?！叭ッ晒诺臅r候，你能發(fā)現(xiàn)有一堵看起來平淡無奇的

城墻，但在白天幾乎都看不到這城墻?！薄扒宄繒r分，或在太陽還未下山之前，假如你幸運(yùn)的話，陽光以低角度射進(jìn)來的話，你可以看到這城墻的影子穿越草原。不過從空中拍攝的話，加上空曠草原、金色陽光及黑影襯托的護(hù)堤，城墻景觀變得壯麗無

比?！薄拔倚哪恐姓J(rèn)為，兒子在空中拍攝的視頻，最令人驚奇。視頻美得讓人贊嘆。長城就在空曠的背景中，你感覺自己好像就在中亞邊緣一樣?！绷仲悓﹂L城在中國歷史中的角色亦深感興趣。他認(rèn)為，在空中看長城，能幫助其他人去了解長城的建造者

的心境。“我們看到蜿蜒的長城，我們會問，為何在這里轉(zhuǎn)彎？為何他們在這邊建長城，而非其他地方？”“城墻旁邊的土地，就是工人筑起營地、村莊、收集建筑材料的地方。我認(rèn)為這就是長城的歷史景觀

?！背寺糜渭皵z影外，長城的新舊對比亦是他們踏上旅程的原因之一。

林賽說：“長城究竟有多長，存在諸多爭議，亦有不少傳聞指由于被破壞的關(guān)系，長城變得越來越短?！?/p>

“我會查看我們拍攝的鏡頭，看看長城的受損程度。”

“過去10年，政府立法保護(hù)長城，到底實(shí)況如何，我很有興趣知道?！?/p>

“When you go to Mongolia, you f nd a wall that doesn’t actually excite you. You can barely see it in the broad light of day.”“Very early in the morning, just before sundown, if you’re lucky you get low angle sunlight, you can see the shadow of this structure not snaking, but streaking straight across the steppe.”

But from the air it becomes “a phenomenal sight... with the empty steppeland, golden sunlight and the mound underlined by very very dark shadow.”

“In my mind of all the shots that the boys took of the Great Wall from the air, that is the most surprising, because it just looks so amazing, the wall in that completely empty landscape, you feel as though you’re on the very edge of Central Asia.”

William is also clearly fascinated by the role the wall has played in the history of the Chinese people. Seeing it from the air, he says, helps an observer get in to the mind of its creators.“We see the twists and turns, and we ask, why did it twist and turn there? Why did they route it along there, and not along there?”

“The land beside the wall where the builders established their camps, their villages, where they sourced all their building materials - I view this as the Great Wall’s historical landscape.”Beyond the romance of travel and photography, this contrast of old and new underlines the other reason for their trip.

“There’s a lot of hullabaloo always about how long the Great Wall is, and stories about the wall getting shorter because it’s getting damaged.” says William.

“So I’ll be looking at the footage and, trying to work out how close things are getting to the wall.”

“There are laws and regulations made in the last 10 years to protect the Great Wall landscape, and I’m going to be be interested to see how the reality matches up.”