Great Wall of China

Great Wall of China
The Great Wall of China, one of the greatest wonders of the world, was listed as a World Heritage by UNESCO in 1987. Just like a gigantic dragon, the Great Wall winds up and down across deserts, grasslands, mountains and plateaus, stretching approximately 8,851.8 kilometers (5,500 miles) from east to west of China. With a history of more than 2000 years, some of the sections are now in ruins or have disappeared. However, it is still one of the most appealing attractions all around the world owing to its architectural grandeur and historical significance.



The Great Wall we see today was mostly built during the Ming Dynasty (1368 - 1644). It starts from Hushan Great Wall in the east to Jiayuguan Pass in the west traversing Liaoning, Hebei, Beijing, Tianjin, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Shaanxi, Gansu and Qinghai.

The Great Wall was key to protecting agriculture and resisting cavalry of the Huns and other warrior tribes from the north. The advantages of the enormous barrier diminished with the advancement of gunpowder and other weaponry.

The wall was originally built of stone, wood, grass and earth. In the Ming Dynasty bricks were produced in kilns set up along the wall. The bricks were transported by men carrying them on their backs, donkeys, mules and even goats had a brick tied to their head before being driven up a mountain.

Great Wall History

The Great Wall of China was built mainly to protect the Chinese Empire from northern invaders. The first sections were built in the Seventh Century BC when China was still divided into many small states.

The history of the Great Wall is said to start from the Spring and Autumn Periods when seven powerful states appeared at the same time. In order to defend themselves, they all built walls and stationed troops on the borders. At that time, the total length of the wall had already reached 3,107 miles, belonging to different states.

In 221 BC, the Emperor Qin absorbed the other six states and set up the first unified kingdom in Chinese history. In order to strengthen his newly born authority and defend the Huns in the north, he ordered connecting the walls once built by the other states as well as adding some sections of his own. Thus was formed the long Qin's Great Wall which started from the east of today's Liaoning Province and ended at Lintao, Gansu Province.

In the Western Han Dynasty, the Huns became more powerful. The Han court started to build more walls on a larger scale in order to consolidate the frontier. In the west, the wall along the Hexi corridor, Yumenguan Pass, and Yangguan Pass was built. In the north, Yanmenguan Pass and Niangziguan Pass in Shanxi were set up. Many more sections of the wall extended to Yinshan Mountain and half of the ancient Silk Road was along the Han's wall.
The Northern Wei, Northern Qi and Northern Zhou Dynasties all built their own sections but on a smaller scale than the walls in the Han Dynasty. The powerful Tang Dynasty saw peace between the northern tribes and central China most of the time, so few Great Wall sections were built in this period.

The Ming Dynasty is the peak of wall building in Chinese history. The Ming suffered a lot by disturbances from minority tribes such as the Dadan, Tufan and Nuzhen. The Ming court from its first emperor to the last ceaselessly built walls in the north. The main line started from Jiuliancheng near the Yalu River in the east to the Jiayuguan Pass in the west and measured over 4,600 miles. Besides adding many more miles of its own, the Ming emperors ordered enlargement of the walls of previous dynasties into double-line or multi-line walls. For example, out of Yanmenguan Pass were added three big stone walls and 23 small stone walls. Eleven Garrisons were distributed along the main line of the wall. The countless walls, fortresses, and watch towers made the country strongly fortified. In the early Qing Dynasty, some sections of the walls were repaired and several sections were extended. This great engineering work stopped in the middle of the Qing Dynasty.

Owing to its long history, natural disasters and human activities, many sections of the Great Wall are severely damaged and disappearing. Being a world-famous engineering project and witness to the rise and fall of Chinese history, the Great Wall, needs us to take immediate action to protect it!

The building styles of each dynasty added their own flavor and advanced the techniques learned from the previous.

Qin Dynasty

The first dynasty of China was the short-lived Qin Dynasty (221-206BC). The first emperor, Qin ShiHuang, was a tyrannical emperor who unified China by force and set about constructing one Great Wall - by joining, where possible, existing one and filling the gaps. He even sent scholars to work on the Great Wall - anyone who was deemed

unproductive. These workers faced arduous labor, and the constant danger of being attacked by bandits.

Most of the early Great Walls were composed of loose stone, but when the natural stone in an area was not sufficient, the engineers turned to another meth

od of wall building - a stoneless wall that was built using a wooden, rectangular frame that was then filled with loose soil. The soil was trampled down for many hours by a team of workers until it was solid. This process of filling and trampling would be repeated over and over until the wall reached the desired height.

Han Dynasty

The second dynasty to add to the Great Wall was the Han Dynasty (206BC-220AD). This dynasty rose to power in 206 BC after the fall of the Qin. The most notable contribution of the Han Dynasty is that they extended the Great Wall westwards through the Gobi Desert. Despite a lack of building materials, ingenious Chinese engineers found a solution. Their answer was similar to that of the Qin, but created a stronger wall.

This method involved first laying down a layer of willow reeds, possibly woven. Then a layer of gravel and a little water was applied and trampled solid. After the trampling, a new layer of reeds and gravel was added. This process would be repeated until the desired height was reached. Amazingly, some portions of this Great Wall are still standing, partly due to the dry conditions of the Gobi.

The Han also improved the watchtowers of the Great Wall - making them two storied to gain a better lookout.

The Great Wall we see today

Ming Dynasty

The last dynasty to build a northern wall was the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). This dynasty built the biggest, longest, strongest and most ornate Great Wall ever. These are the walls that we are familiar with today.

The early Great Wall was located much further north than the current Ming wall, with its eastern end at modern day North Korea. Very little of this first wall remains - although aerial photographs do reveal a low, long mound. The Great Wall that the Ming created was, more or less, completely new.

The Ming Emperors, having overthrown the Mongols from the north, devoted large amounts of material and manpower to making sure that they (and the other semi-nomadic peoples to the north) could not return.

Their methods of Great Wall building fused all that was learned by the two previous dynasties. First, a center of trampled earth was created. Then, around the firm center was applied a shell of stone and bricks. The bricks that were created by the Ming are so strong that they compare well with the ones we use today.

Near Beijing, the Great Wall is constructed from quarried limestone blocks and fired bricks.

The strong Ming wall was built across some of the most dangerous terrains in China, including steep mountains, sometimes on 75 degree inclines! It has been said that every fo

ot of the construction of this Great Wall cost one human life.

The Ming Dynasty Great Wall starts on the eastern end at ShanHai Pass, near QinHuangDao, in Hebei Province, next to Bohai Sea. It once spanned 9 provinces and 100 counties, but the final 500 kilometers of the Great Wall to the west have all but turned to rubble. Today, the wes

tern end of the Great Wall effectively ends at the historic site of JiaYuGuan Pass, in northwest GanSu Province, at the limit of the Gobi Desert and the oases of the Silk Road.

JiaYuGuan Pass was intended to greet travelers along the Silk Road. Although the Great Wall now ends at JiaYuGuan Pass, there are many watchtowers extending beyond there along the Silk Road.

In 1644, after two years of trying, the Manchus finally crossed the Great Wall by bribing an important general, Wu SanGui, to open the gates of ShanHai Pass and allow the Manchus into China. Legend has it that it took three days for the huge Manchu army to pass through

the Great Wall.

So began the Qing dynasty. After the Manchu conquered China, the Great Wall was of less strategic value, mainly because the Manchu extended their political control far to the north of it, much further than any previous Chinese dynasty.

The last Great Wall of the Ming Dynasty was a military fortification of great stren

gth. However, historians are sometimes dismissive of its net value. It was astonishingly expensive to build, maintain and garrison and the resources the Ming spent on the Great Wall could have been spent on other military capabilities. The fact remains that the Great Wall was of no help in preventing the fall of the Ming Dynasty.

However, only because the currently prevailing dynasty had weakened from within were invaders from the north able to advance and then conquer. Both the Mongols (Yu

an Dynasty, 1271-1368) and the Manchurians (Qing Dynasty, 1644-1911) were able take power not because of a weakness in the Great Wall but because of a weakness in the government. They took advantage of disenchantment and rebellion and stepped into the void of power without an extended war.

WatchTowers and Wall Design

Along the Ming Great Wall of China there are many watchtowers, spaced from less than a kilometer to several kilometers or more apart.

These were partly used to transmit military messages. Fire and smoke were the most efficient means for communication - fire was used at night and smoke during the day. Straw and dung was used for this. In 1468, a series of regulations set specific meanings to these signals: a single shot and a single fire or smoke signal implied about 100 enemies, two signals warned of 500, three warned of over a 1000 and so on. In this way, a message could be transmitted over more than 500 km of the Great Wall within a few hours

During the Ming Dynasty, two-storied watchtowers were built on the Great Wall in strategic places. The ground floor was used for living, and storing food and weapons, and the top floor was used as a high lookout platform and also for defense. Canons were installed in strategic places, sometimes in watchtowers but also along the wall.

The watchtowers also provided a place to retreat to, if necessary, from attackers who had scaled the Great Wall. Inside, the watchtowers have narrow and puzzling layouts to confuse any infiltrators. The internal passageways and staircases were unique and restricted. This allowed defenders to pick off attackers one by one.

Barracks and administrative centers were located at larger intervals along the Great Wall. Small armies were garrisoned along the length of the wall to provide early warning of invasion and a first line of defense.

The outer parapet of the Great Wall is crenelated with merlons almost 2 m high from the base of the wall. The merlons provided protection from incoming fire while the gaps allowed fire at invaders.

Travel Map of The Greatwall