Google shows you the Great Wall of China, no pun intended - PingWest

Google shows you the Great Wall of China, no pun intended

Chen Du

posted on October 18, 2021 3:04 pmEditor : Wang Boyuan

Take a virtual tour of the famous Simatai Great Wall, in the comfort of your home.

Ever wanted to visit the Great Wall of China? Now Google China lets you do that in the comfort of your home. And absolutely no pun intended here before you whip out the GFW jokes.

The Chinese operation of Google, the world's largest search engine, advertising, and artificial intelligence company, recently held a press event for the Chinese version of the Google Arts & Culture app called Guanmiao Zhongguo (观妙中国, or literally "see the beautiful China", henceforth abbreviated as the "GAC China app") right under the Simatai Great Wall in Beijing's Miyun County. 

The event heavily focused on the virtual tour feature in the GAC China app, recently made available for many famous watchtowers along the Simatai Great Wall, featuring high definition photospheres and curated guide information, such as some trivia about the Great Wall of China, including its full length of more than 21,000 kilometers, as well as the diverse types of materials used in the construction process that spanned more than 2,000 years.

GAC is an online platform of high-resolution images and videos of artworks and cultural artifacts from partnering museums and cultural organizations throughout the world. It emerged from a side hobby policy within Google known as the "20% time", by which employees can dedicate some of their billable work time on projects of their interest. GAC was made available on the web in 2011, but its Chinese version apps only went online in China in 2019 for Android and March this year for iOS. 

After withdrawing core businesses from China a decade ago, the GAC app is one of the very few apps Google makes available in the country. That doesn't mean Google isn't spending much effort on it. In fact, now partnering with Beijing WTown, the tourism and resorts joint venture operating in the Simatai Village (adjacent to the Simatai Great Wall), the GAC China app becomes one of, if not the best virtual experience for showcasing the breathtaking views of the Great Wall of China.

Those who have been to the Great Wall know that its locations are not easily accessible like other tourism hotspots: the Shanhai Pass is located in Qinhuangdao of Hebei, while the Jiayu Pass is far away into the deserts and mountains in China's northwestern Gansu Province. Even Beijing's Simatai Great Wall is located a hundred kilometers from the metropolitan area. Generally speaking, visiting one of China's Great Walls from anywhere in the country would require at least 2 of the 3 standard transportation methods: air, train and car.

The entrance tickets to Great Wall operations are also priced high enough to support the continued protection of the ruins. There are so-called "wilde Great Walls" that are free and favored by many foreign visiting hikers, but commercialized tours to such locations are not really affordable as well. Although China prides itself in the fact that the Great Wall is recognized as World Heritage, it would probably be a surprise to people around the world that many people in China have not yet visited it.

The GAC China app offers a decent enough virtual substitute to physically visiting the Great Wall. With the Simatai Great Wall featured, the app now includes a total of 85 tours to locations that are either historical or culturally significant.

Making these tours available virtually has been the goal of the GAC's team in China for many years. Last year, the team members suffered from lockdowns when they were building assets for upcoming tours of local museums in Wuhan, the ground zero of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, that once-in-a-lifetime experience, as well as the continued remote working routine, further renewed and reshaped GAC team members' idea of digitizing the human race's diverse arts and culture.

The Simatai Great Wall, with the beginning of its construction dating back to 1368 AD, is the only section of the Great Wall and the only ancient building ruin in China that was able to maintain the original appearance of the Ming Dynasty, back when it is staffed heavily by the regime at the time to defend against northern invaders. The section is built on the most strenuous parts of the Yan Mountains, making it nearly impossible for regular tourists to visit despite the brilliant renovation efforts that stuck to the original appearances and styles, especially since many parts of the section are inaccessible to the public. In short, this is a prime location for the GAC team to do its digital magic.

The team was able to coordinate with Beijing WTown and the broader cultural heritage protection efforts to build a street view experience for the Simatai Great Wall. On both the GAC China app and the web version, virtual visitors can scroll through the 35 watchtowers and participate in a virtual hike on the walls and inside the towers.

The Fairy Tower, one of the most prestigious watch towers of the Simatai Great Wall only unofficially accessible to hikers, has its own standalone feature in the GAC China app that is themed and curated, according to Pierre Caessa, the global head of the GAC project who is the Program Manager of the Lab at Google Cultural Institute. 

The curated stories of the Fairy Tower feature local folk legends of the original naming of the tower about a fairy from the heavenly court lending her help to, and falling in love with, a local shepherd who was helping out with but ultimated died for the construction of the Great Wall.

Other important and interesting information about the section, such as detailed construction plans spanning more than 2,000 years, further exploration of the internal structural designs of the wall and the towers, and even investigations into the mysterious signage on the wall bricks, are also plenty in the curated virtual tour. 

For example, one part features a Qilin carving on one of the towers. In Chinese mythology, Qilin is supposed to be a divine creature that signifies peace and has barely anything to do with warfare, making its presence on the wall of construction for war highly mysterious and interesting. The virtual tour goes on to suspect, base on local folk lores that the soldiers stationed on the Qilin Tower made this carving to demonstrate their longing for peace.

Altogether, close to 400 high-definition pictures and photospheres from 35 standalone showcases are featured in the Simatai Great Wall virtual tour, giving domestic and global users unprecedented digital access to the largely publicly inaccessible sections of the Great Wall. 

The GAC China app also included augmented reality technologies that will be made available to visitors to the actual Great Wall section. Using the app, users can scan codes on the onsite demonstrations to further explore the structural details and internal beauties of the Great Wall and its watchtowers.