2 Construction Workers Were (Unfairly) Arrested For Smashing A Path Through The Great Wall Of China In Order To Make A Shortcut To Work
Gerhard Joren. Getty Images.HuffPo- China’s Great Wall has been pierced by Genghis Khan, the Manchus, and now, allegedly, a couple of construction workers named Zheng and Wang who wanted a shortcut. Authorities in China arrested two people for smashing a path through a section of the ancient wall, a cultural icon and United Nations-protected heritage site.
The government of Youyu County, hundreds of kilometers (miles) west of Beijing showed a dirt road cut through a section of the wall against a rural landscape, along with the two suspects, identified as a 38-year-old man surnamed Zheng and a 55-year-old woman surnamed Wang.
The pair wanted a shorter route for some construction work they were doing in nearby towns, the government report said.
Free Zheng! Free Wang! Kensil's a bitch! Oops, that last part was from a different freedom chant. It doesn't really matter though considering Zheng and Wang won't be getting freed anytime soon because they will probably be spending out the rest of their days in a windowless Chinese jail for destroying a national landmark in a place where you definitely shouldn't if you value your freedom.
That doesn't mean these two blue collar heroes deserve whatever awful punishment President Xi is dropping on their asses for doing this. If anything, they should be celebrated! Everyone knows how much commuting to work sucks as you scurry in the rat race with thousands of other people every morning and afternoon, spend God knows how much on your gas or train ticket, then wake up to do the same thing until the Grim Reaper is kind enough to call your number. Which is why shaving as much time as you can off of that daily bleeding of the soul is so important and why Steven Cheah is documenting every single one of his commutes in his new city.
In fact, you can make a case Zheng and Wang (I choose to believe their names rhyme because it makes them seem like a wrestling tag team) wouldn't be doing their jobs if they DIDN'T use an excavator to make life easier for themselves and anyone else who may have benefitted from that new shortcut. If a chunk of some old ass wall that isn't even doing anything these days outside of getting some tourist dollars has to be the casualty, so be it.
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I guarantee Steven Cheah would bulldoze the Wrigley bleachers if it meant he could save 15 seconds on his walk to HQ 3b and no jury full of commuters would convict him for it. Actually, I'm pretty sure Big Cat, Carl, and a gaggle of Cubs fan vigilantes would hang and quarter Steven in Wrigleyville as Portnoy charged $10/head for people to watch it on PPV. But the non-Cubs fans whose commutes got a little easier as well as White Sox fans who loathe the Cubbies would speak of Cheah in hallowed tones the same way Steven talks about himself as a Madden player.
TL;DR - Free Zheng and Wang. They did what any good samaritan would have done and the part of the Great Wall that they destroyed wasn't what I used in the thumbnail and the top of the blog but instead a section that already looked run down.
P.S. I didn't realize this until I searched our archives to get a link to the Kensil video, but the fact that mamaluke was (is?) in China after I used him in a blog about China by pure coincidence broke my brain.