The Great Wall of China

The Great Wall of China, also known in China as the Great Wall of 10,000, is an ancient Chinese fortification built from the end of the 14th century until the beginning of the 17th century, during the Ming Dynasty, in order to protect China from raids by the Mongols and Turkic tribes. It was preceded by several walls built since the 3rd century BC against the raids of nomadic tribes coming from areas now in modern day Mongolia and Manchuria.The Wall stretches over a formidable 6,350 km (3,946 miles), from Shanhai Pass on the Bohai Gulf in the east, at the limit between China proper and Manchuria, to Lop Nur in the southeastern portion of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

The first major wall was built during the reign of the First Emperor, the main emperor of the short-lived Qin dynasty. This wall was not constructed as a single endeavor, but rather was created by the joining of several regional walls built by the Warring States. It was located much further north than the current Great Wall, and very little remains of it. A defensive wall on the northern border was built and maintained by several dynasties at different times in Chinese history. The Great Wall that can still be seen today was built during the Ming Dynasty, on a much larger scale and with longer lasting materials (solid stone used for the sides and the top of the Wall) than any wall that had been built before. The primary purpose of the wall was not to keep out people, who could scale the wall, but to insure that semi-nomadic people on the outside of the wall could not cross with their horses or return easily with stolen property.

There have been four major walls:

208 BC (the Qin Dynasty)

1st century BC (the Han Dynasty)

1138 - 1198 (the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period)

1368-1620 (from Hongwu Emperor until Wanli Emperor of the Ming Dynasty)

The Ming Dynasty Great Wall starts on the eastern end at Shanhai Pass, near Qinhuangdao, in Hebei Province, next to Bohai Gulf. Spanning nine provinces and 100 counties, the final 500 kilometers have all but turned to rubble, and today it ends on the western end at the historic site of Jiayu Pass, located in northwest Gansu Province at the limit of the Gobi Desert and the oases of the Silk Road. Jiayu Pass was intended to greet travelers along the Silk Road. Even though The Great Wall ends at Jiayu Pass, there are many watchtowers extending beyond Jiayu Pass along the Silk Road. These towers communicated by smoke to signal invasion.

The Kokes Manchus crossed the Wall by convincing an important general Wu Sangui to open the gates of Shanhai Pass and allow the Manchus to cross. Legend has it that they took three days for the Manchu armies to pass. After they conquered China, the Wall was of no strategic value as the people whom the Wall was intended to keep out were ruling the country (becoming the Qing Dynasty).

The government ordered people to work on the wall, and workers were under perpetual danger of being attacked by brigands. Because many people died while building the wall, it has obtained the gruesome title, "longest cemetery on Earth" or "the long graveyard". Their bodies were not entombed in the wall, however. A body buried in the wall would have weakened its structure, so workers were buried nearby instead.

While some portions near tourist centers have been preserved and even reconstructed, in most locations the Wall is in disrepair, serving as a playground for some villages and a source of stones to rebuild houses and roads. Sections of the Wall are also prone to graffiti. Parts have been bulldozed because the Wall is in the way of construction projects.

The materials used are those available near the site of construction. Near Beijing the wall is constructed from quarried limestone blocks. In other locations it may be quarried granite or fired brick. Where such materials are used, two finished walls are erected with earth and rubble fill placed in between with a final paving to form. a single unit. In some areas the blocks were cemented with a mixture of glutinous rice and eggwhite.In the extreme western desert locations, where good materials are scarce, the wall was constructed from dirt rammed between rough wood tied together with woven mats.

The Wall is included in lists of the "Seven Medieval Wonders of the World" but was of course not one of the classical Seven Wonders of the World recognized by the ancient Greeks. The Wall was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.

There is a longstanding disagreement about how visible the wall is in space. Richard Halliburton's 1938 book Second Book of Marvels said the Great Wall is the only man-made object visible from the moon. This myth has persisted, assuming urban legend status, sometimes even entering school textbooks. The Great Wall simply cannot be seen by the unaided eye from the distance of the moon. Even its visibility from near-earth orbit is questionable.

The Great Wall of China as seen in a false-color radar
image from the Space Shuttle, taken in April 1994

One astronaut reported, "We can see things as small as airport runways [but] the Great Wall is almost invisible from only 180 miles (290 km) up." Astronaut William Pogue thought he had seen it from Skylab but discovered he was actually looking at the Grand Canal near Beijing. He spotted the Great Wall with binoculars, but said that "it wasn't visible to the unaided eye." An Apollo astronaut said no human structures were visible at a distance of a few thousand miles. Chinese astronaut Yang Liwei said he couldn't see it at all.

From low-earth orbit, about a thousand times nearer than the moon, it may be visible under favorable conditions. Features on the moon that are dramatically visible at times can be undetectable on others, due to changes in lighting direction. The Great Wall is only a few meters wide - sized similar to highways and airport runways - and is about the same color as the soil surrounding it.Veteran U.S. astronaut Gene Cernan has stated: "At Earth orbit of 160 km to 320 km high, the Great Wall of China is, indeed, visible to the naked eye." Ed Lu, Expedition 7 Science Officer aboard the International Space Station, adds that, "...it's less visible than a lot of other objects. And you have to know where to look."

A recent photograph taken from the International Space Station appears to confirm that China's Great Wall can be seen with the naked eye after all. Leroy Chiao, a Chinese-American astronaut, took what the state-run China Daily newspaper says is the first photographic evidence that the Great Wall could be seen from space with the naked eye, under certain favorable viewing conditions and if one knows exactly where to look.

Battle Forts and Watch Towers

The wall is complemented by defensive fighting stations, to which wall defenders may retreat if overwhelmed. Each tower has unique and restricted stairways and entries to confuse attackers. Barracks and administrative centers are located at larger intervals. In addition to the usual military weapons of the period, specialized wall defense weapons were used. Reproductions of weapons are displayed at the wall.

Battle forts built on the summits of hills.

The Mutianyu section of the Great Wall, 70 kilometers northeast of Beijing, is linked to the Gubeikou section on the east and the Badaling section on the west. It is one of the best sections of Great Wall. The Mutianyu section is crenellated for watching and shooting at the invading enemy. Some of the battle forts on the wall are as close as 50 meters apart.

Reference

Oldest Section of Great Wall IdentifiedNov. 2002 - Discovery

The first section of the Great Wall of China was constructed in the central portion of the country around 688 B.C., Chinese archaeologists announced at a recent academic conference in Henan Province.

If their claim holds true, the Great Wall is over 400 years older than previously thought. Before the announcement, the first official work on the wall generally was attributed to Emperor Shi Huangdi of the Qin Dynasty (221-206 B.C.).

At the conference, Xiao Luyang, director of the Institute of Archaeology of the Henan Academy of Social Sciences, said that the earliest portion of the wall measures 497.12 miles long. It zigzags in inverted "u" shapes across the present day counties of Lushan, Yexian, Fangcheng and Nanzhao in southwest Henan.

This section of the wall is in surprisingly good shape, considering its age and the fact that it was first constructed using only local stones, with no mortar or other adhesive.

It is part of the longest structure ever built, as the Great Wall - visible from space - extends over 4,500 miles across northern and north-central China. Constructed entirely by hand, with some sections in brick as well as stone, the Great Wall winds through mountainous regions and borders some desert areas. Towers break up the wall, and were believed to have once served as lookout posts. Xiao indicated that historical records link the earliest known portion of the wall to the Chu Kingdom (1100-223 B.C.). Dong Yaohui, president of the China Great Wall Society, was quoted in China's People's Daily paper as saying, "We can even call (the Chu people) the 'father of the Great Wall.' "

Prior to their association with the wall, the Chu were mostly known for producing one of China's most famous poets, Qu Yuan. During the Chu period, China was divided up into many small kingdoms that frequently waged wars with each other for territorial rights. The political environment may have led to the construction of the wall.

"Many historians now believe that the wall, or walls, were built to mark territories, similar to the way that forts were built here in the States," said Michael Nylan, professor of history at the University of California at Berkeley and an expert on early Chinese history and culture.

She explained that the wall is really more like a series of walls strung together. In addition to marking land ownership, they were used for relaying messages.

Because historical writings indicate that walls were being built early in China's history, Nylan believes it is only a matter of time before an even older section of the Great Wall is found or identified.

October 2002 - AP

The Great Wall of China just got a little bit greater.

A new 50-mile section of China's iconic structure has been discovered in northwestern China, centuries after being submerged by the sands that move across the arid area each year, the Chinese government said Wednesday.

The segment, on the southern slope of Helan Mountain in the Ningxia region, sits about 25 miles west of the regional capital of Yinchuan, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

That part of the wall was built in 1531 and gradually buried by moving sand, Xinhua said. When the section was repaired in 1540, three watchtowers were added at different parts of the section, which meanders from east to west, the agency said.

The 21-foot-high chunk of wall is 20 feet wide at its base and 11 feet wide at the top. It has seven drainage ditches and parapets at both flanks of the wall, Xinhua said.

The government said some parts were more fortified than others, being protected by stone segments that formed a "double-layered wall."

The Great Wall, from its starting point in the northwestern province of Gansu to Shanhaiguan Pass on the shores of Bohai Bay along China's east coast, is believed to span up to 3,700 miles through the north, which dynastic China's emperors considered most vulnerable to attack.

A series of dynasties built the Great Wall over the course of centuries to protect China from outside invasions. But the Ningxia region in particular long has been China's front line and a place deemed worthy of special fortification.

The freshly uncovered portion is near Great Wall sections built in what was known as the Period of the Warring States (475 B.C.-221 B.C.) and the following Qin, Han, Sui and Ming dynasties, the Chinese government said. Wall sections in that area were built with materials including sand, mud, stone and crudely fashioned bricks.

The surfacing of a new portion of the Great Wall is not unheard of.

In August, archaeologists said they uncovered 2,000-year-old sections of the wall in the desert northwest including two fortified castles dating to the Han dynasty, which lasted from 206 B.C. to A.D. 220.

The wall's modern sections around the Chinese capital date from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). Some parts have been restored since the Communist Party took power in 1949, and several including the most popular, Badaling, just north of Beijing draw hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.

In recent months, Chinese and foreigners alike have underscored the importance of preserving the decaying sections of the Great Wall and preventing stronger sections from being worn down by tourists and careless visitors.

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