People’s Daily Online reported on April 22, that several new sections of the Great Wall have been discovered in Gansu Province after a survey of the Gansu Great Wall began in 2007. The Great Wall in these newly discovered sections were built during the Qin Dynasty (221 BC – 206 BC), Han Dynasty (206 B.C.–220 A.D.) and Ming Dynasty (1368 A.D. – 1644 A.D.).

In 2007, a team surveyed nearly 1,000 kilometers of Gansu Province; and discovered three segments of wall and moats, and six barriers and four beacon towers in Tianzhu County, Liangzhou District and Jinta County. These sites, found in the wild and previously not documented, were named after their locations.

Gansu Province’s Great Wall sites include the work of five dynasties, with a total length of 4,000 kilometers of wall. Moreover, heads of the Great Wall, built during the Qin Dynasty, Han Dynasty and Ming Dynasty, are located in Gansu .

The World Bank have approved a loan of $38.4 million to a sustainable tourism project in the Gansu province.

The loan to the People’s Republic of China will be used to generate benefits for local communities through the development of a sustainable cultural tourism sector in Gansu Province in north-western China. Home to 26 million people, the province is regarded as one of the poorest in the country, measured by per capita GDP. With such cultural and natural heritage assets as the Silk Road, the Great Wall and the Yellow River, the Gansu Provincial Government regards the development of a sustainable tourism industry as key to its future. Currently, the sector contributes only 3 percent of the province’s GDP.

The project will focus on the conservation of cultural and natural assets and the development of priority infrastructure at nine key sites within the province. These include a portion of the Great Wall, courtyard houses in Qingcheng (thought to be the oldest town on the Yellow River), striking geological parks, and the vast complex of grottoes, temples, murals and statues of Maijishan, in the eastern part of Gansu along the Silk Road. (The World Bank)