SHOPS and restaurants atop the Badaling section of the Great Wall are being given the shove as part of a move to restore the original appearance of China's best-known historical site, a Beijing newspaper reported yesterday.

The Yanqing County Government of Beijing will invest 600 million yuan (US$77 million) in the facelift of the wall in preparation for the 2008 Olympic Games.

Since the 1950s, more than 30 small commercial outlets from tea houses to photo booths have accumulated along the wall's heavily visited Badaling section, the Beijing Daily reported.

Those outlets have created an atmosphere that is "too commercial," the paper said, also citing problems they create with noise, sanitation, and damage to the wall.

Plans call for those to be moved to an adjacent shopping plaza by the end of the year "in order to dilute the commercial atmosphere and return the Great Wall to its original historical appearance," the paper said.

Built during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) 500 years ago, the Badaling section of the wall, 80 kilometers north of Beijing, was heavily restored in the 1950s and is visited by world leaders and hordes of tourists every year.

China in recent years has tried to rein in commercial development on and around the wall, which weaves for roughly 6,300 kilometers across northern China from the Bohai Gulf to the Gobi Desert.

Laws have also been passed to prevent damage to the wall, which in places has been demolished for roads and hotels and its bricks plundered by farmers for houses and fences.

(SD-Agencies)