French visitor causes sensation with heat wave visit to Great Wall

A video showing a French man taking selfies on a nearly empty Great Wall under the burning sun in Beijing went viral on Chinese social media.

With temperatures as high as 40 C, many Chinese netizens were amazed that he visited the Great Wall on such a hot day and admired his resistance to the heat.

With the topic "French man visiting the Great Wall under 40 C" trending on Weibo, a Twitter-like platform in China, a Weibo user named Zhao Xiao Xie said: "Does it ever occur to him why there are no other visitors?"

The man in the video is David Ban, a cast member on tour with the French musical drama Romeo et Juliette in Beijing, according to news outlet Beijing Youth Daily on Saturday.

"It sure was a hot day. But the view I saw from the Great Wall left a deep impression and the magical feeling made me forget about the high temperature." he told the reporter.

He said there were few visitors that day, and for some time he felt he was the only one there. "I felt full of power at that moment. After all, the Great Wall is a place I only saw on TV and in books. There is a song called Les Rois Du Monde in the musical drama, meaning king of the world. At that moment, I felt like I was the king of the world."

David told the reporter life is a gift. "In my life, I have the chance to be here in China, to get to meet so many Chinese audiences and to get to know a different culture."

As for the lyrics for his song on the Great Wall, he said part of the lyrics were from their musical drama, and part were his own version to express his admiration for the Great Wall.