The Chinese Great Wall
The Great Wall is from the Chinese often called "The 10,000 Li Wall". One Li is about 500 metres long which means that the whole length of the wall is about 5000 km! It starts at the east coast near Beijing and ends far west in the desert Gobi.
The construction of the wall started around 200 B.C. with the goal to defend the attacks of the northern nomades mainly the Mongols. For the construcion a few 100.000 labours were deployed, a lot of them were policital prisoners. Estimated around 180 millions cubic metres of mashed soil were used to build the core of the wall and legend has it that one of the materials which were used was the dead bodies of deceased labours who were buried in the wall after passing away.
The Chinese Great Wall could never really fulfil its originally planned function because like the great mongolian war lord Genghis Khan said: "A wall is only as strong as the courage of the ones who defend it!". And indeed China was captured and ruled by its northern neighbours several times namely by the Mongols and the Manchu who were ruling China until 1908 when a revolution displaced them from power.
Although the wall could serve as a protection it was used as a transport and trade way in the mountainous terrain. From the western end of the wall which was linked with the silk road silk and other goods could be brought to Beijing. Additionally the guard towers were used for signal fires to give warning of foreign armies.
During the Ming dynasty around 1400 A.D. new efforts were made to use the wall as a defence against the northern enemies. The wall was completed with stones and bricks which were built around the core made of mashed soil which was built a long time ago. In this construction around 60 million cubic metres stones were used and it lasted for about 100 years and needed again enormous ressources of man-power.
But due to differnt reasons after the construction the wall got forgotten again. Long parts of the wall would be fallen to dust if the wall hasn't been discovered by the tourist industry who provided the restoration and the maintenance of the wall.
While originally the wall was built the defend the attacks of the Mongols nowadays the wall is attacked by tourist crowds. So you have to get out of Beijing very far to see a part of the wall which isn't packed of tourists. So I was quite happy that I went out of Beijing very far because beside two Canadians who were with me on the wall the only other people we saw on our three hour trip were a few locals who wanted to sell souvenirs.
The Chinese Wall is definitely one of the biggest and greatest construction of mankind! And I can tell you it's a breathtaking feeling to stand on the wall and to look afield...end the wall doesn't seem like to end until it's so small that you can't see it on the horizon with the naked eye anymore....
By the way the Chinese Wall is also one of the candidates for the election of the new seven world wonders -and in the current election The Wall is No. 1, but that's not really surprising because when you have a look at the statistics you can see that the Chinese are very keen Voters...but to be honest: is it difficult to lead a international election when your popullation has about 1.3 billion people? For the ones who haven't elected yet here the link again:
I wish you all the best and hope you still can manage it without me back home ;-)
Nihao from Beijing
Andy
13.06.04, Beijing, China