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GREAT WALL OF CHINA-THE WONDERS OF WORLD

Written By Unknown on Jun 19, 2011 | 1:18 PM


GREAT WALL OF CHINA-THE WONDERS OF WORLD








Early Great Walls
The history of the Great Wall is a long one - it was built over many hundreds of years. Walls were first built to keep invaders away from the farming villages on the Chinese border. These walls were built at weak points in the natural landscape or where the threat was perceived as greatest.

Some of these walls eventually became of greater strategic importance when the localised defences were gradually joined to form the Great Wall of China. At those times that the Chinese territory expanded northward, earlier walls became secondary defences when a more northernly wall was built.

In the early days, the Great Wall was as much a demarcation of territory as a defence as such, but as the Great Wall became stronger, it's defence role increased. Where possible, natural barriers were integrated into the path of the wall. This is particularly true for mountains - their height was used to gain both a greater view and for advantage in defense.

The Great Wall of China was built by soldiers, civilians, farmers and prisoners, primarily during three dynasties: the Qin, the Han and the Ming, although the Sui Dynasty and the Ten Kingdoms period also played a part.

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 method 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 foot 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 western 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 strength. 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 (Yuan 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.



Visibility from the moon


A Ripley's Believe It or Not! cartoon from May 1932 claimed that the wall is "the mightiest work of man, the only one that would be visible to the human eye from the moon," and Richard Halliburton's 1938 book Second Book of Marvels makes a similar claim, but it is not true. This belief has persisted, assuming urban legend status, sometimes even appearing in school textbooks. Arthur Waldron, author of The Great Wall of China: From History to Myth, has speculated that the belief might go back to the fascination with the "canals" once believed to exist on Mars.

The Great Wall is a maximum 30 ft (9.1m) wide and is about the same color as the soil surrounding it. Based on the optics of resolving power (distance versus the width of the iris: a few millimetres for the human eye, metres for large telescopes) an object of reasonable contrast to its surroundings some four thousand miles in diameter (such as the Australian land mass) would be visible to the unaided eye from the moon (average distance from earth 238,857 miles (384,393 km)). But the Great Wall is of course not a disc but more like a thread, and a thread a foot (15 cm) long would not be visible from a hundred yards (90 m) away, even though a human head is. Not surprisingly, no lunar astronaut has ever claimed they could see the Great Wall from the moon.

The Great Wall of China was built mainly to protect the Chinese Empire from the Mongolians and other invaders. It was first built in the 7th century B.C. when China was still divided into many small states. The construction of the Great wall had never ceased for nearly all the Chinese fuadal dynasties.
The Great Wall China extends 4,000 miles westward: from the China Sea town of Shanhaiguan to Gansu province. It includes the Badaling, Huanghuacheng, Mutianyu, Jiankou, Gubeikou, Jinshanling and Simatai sections.
Badaling Great Wall, is located at Yanqing County, over 70 kilometers northwest of the Beijing city center. It is in the Jundu mountain pass and built in 1505. It has an elevation of 600 meters with the average wall at 7.5 m high, 4 me thick, 6.5m wide at the base and 5.8m at the top. Badaling, which means "giving access to every direction", is the best-preserved section of the Great Wall. It has a total length of 3, 741 meters with the highest part reaching 15 meters. The total area available for sightseeing is 19, 000 square meters. The top of the wall is wide enough for to fit five horses side by side. There are arched doors at the inner side of the wall that open into stone steps that lead to the top of the wall.
The Great Wall is not only manmade marvel but also the soul of China! Badaling is the best place to see this. Once you are at the top, you can see beautiful rolling hills and the Great wall stretching beyond with no visible end in sight. It is truly breathtaking.
Mutianyu Great Wall, set in Huairou county, is the main section of the Ming reconstruction of the Great Wall. In ancient times, it was used as a strategic point of defense.
Mutianyu tourism region of the Great Wall are mostly covered with luxuriant vegetation in the long range of mountains which gives it a great view. In spring you can see the flowers all in bloom; in the Summer, you can enjoy the cool green shade; in the autumn, the colorful foliage and in the winter, you can witness the white wonderland of snowy hills. This section of the great wall is known for the beauty of its view no matter what the season.
Great Wall China, Great Wall of China. In this scenic spot, there is also the "Luming animal amusement park", the "China dream stone city" and challenging "Shibide Slideway" for tourists.

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