Visit places:
Jiayu Guam
Badaling & Juyong Guan
Mutianyu & Huanghua Cheng
Simatai
Shanhaiguan
The Great Wall of China is a separation wall almost 9000 km long
(total length - 21.2 thousand km), built in ancient China and is the
largest architectural monument. In Chinese, the word for the project
itself (长城, Chángchéng) has also taken on the figurative meaning of
"unbending powerful force, insurmountable barrier." The Great Wall
of China is mentioned in the National Anthem of the PRC.
The
wall runs through northern China for 8851.9 km, and in the Badaling
section it is located in close proximity to Beijing (this is the
length of the last structure of the Ming Dynasty, and this includes
6259 km of the walls themselves, 359 km of ditches, 2232 km of
natural defensive lines in the form hills and rivers).
The
length of the wall with all branches is 21,196 kilometers.
The thickness of the Great Wall of China is 5-6 m in the upper part
and does not exceed 7 m in the lower part, and the height is on
average from 6 to 8 m, reaching a maximum of 16 m.
The
construction stretches along the Yinshan mountain range, skirting
all the spurs, overcoming both high rises and very significant
gorges.
Over the centuries, the wall has changed its name.
Initially, it was called "Barrier", "Rampant" or "Fortress". Later,
the wall acquired more poetic names, such as "Purple Border" and
"Earth Dragon".
The Chinese name “10,000 Li Long Wall” (萬里長城 / 万里长城, Wànlǐ Chángchéng) includes the Chinese length lǐ (里). One historical Li corresponds to approximately 500 m, 10,000 Li is therefore approximately 5,000 km. However, the expression is not to be understood literally. The number 10,000, i.e. wàn (萬 / 万), also stands for infinity or an uncountable quantity (similar to the myriad) in Chinese. Therefore, the expression can be understood as “unimaginably long wall”.
The construction of ramparts and walls to define and fortify borders
has a long tradition in China. The individual states probably built
border fortifications as early as the time of the Spring and Autumn
Annals (722–481 BC) and the time of the Warring States (475–221 BC).
According to tradition, the first Chinese emperor, Qin Shihuangdi, ruled
around 220 BC. A “long wall” with “over 10,000 li” was built on the
northern border in 200 BC.
From the 17th century to the 19th
century, it was assumed in Europe that the fortifications near Beijing
were built under Qin Shihuangdi, the first emperor of China, and that
the entire (former) northern border was secured with such a wall. The
idea that the wall was at least started under Qin Shihuangdi still
exists today, but this does not agree with current knowledge (see map).
After it became clear that the iconic wall was much more recent than
initially assumed and that older bulwarks ran differently, it has become
common practice in China to summarize all longer border fortifications
through ramparts and walls historically built in northern China as 萬里長城
/ 万里长城, Wànlǐ Chángchéng - "10,000 Li Wall" or "10,000 Li Walls" (there
is no number in Chinese) - or as 長城 / 长城, Chángchéng, even if
historically other terms were used for the individual fortifications. In
English this is translated as “Great Wall,” which, although in the
singular, now stands for all of the former border fortifications in
northern China. In German, the term “Chinese Wall” is now used to
describe all of these border fortifications (see the heading on the
map). When making statements about “the Great Wall of China” in this
broader sense, it should be noted that the individual fortifications
come from widely separated eras and did not represent a system of walls
at any time.
In the following, the different bulwarks built by
the different dynasties are referred to as “Great Walls”, and the Great
Wall of China in the classical sense is referred to as “Great Wall of
the Ming Period”. It should be noted that this “Great Wall” was not
built as a uniform structure, but rather in sections with different
construction methods over a period of over 100 years.
According to the latest archaeological surveys, the Chinese Cultural
Heritage Office reported the total length of all Great Walls as 21,196
km in June 2012.
In terms of volume and mass, the Ming Period
Great Wall is considered the largest structure in the world. The wall
consists of a system of several sections, some of which are not
connected to each other, of different ages and different construction
methods, the main wall of which is 2,400 km long. In total, the wall
stretches across 15 provinces, autonomous regions and cities: Beijing,
Tianjin, Hebei, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang,
Shandong, Henan, Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, Xinjiang. The section
between Shanhaiguan, Yumenguan and Yangguan is recorded in the Guinness
Book of Records as the “longest wall in the world” with a stated length
of 3,460 km.
Today the wall is constantly being restored through
government funding. There is a 600 km long section near Beijing, most of
which is in good condition. Four sections can be visited by tourists.
The best-known restored section of the Wall extends near Badaling, 70 km
northwest of Beijing. Other tourist-developed sections are at Mutianyu,
Simatai and Juyongguan. While the sections at Mutianyu and Badaling are
to be expanded due to the great tourist interest, new sections at
Huanghuacheng and Hefangkou that are open to the public are also
planned.
It is believed that as early as the 7th century BC Great walls were
built. The oldest Great Walls found so far are those of the Qi Duchy in
today's Shandong Province and the Great Wall of the Chu Kingdom in
today's Henan Province. They go back to the time of the Spring and
Autumn Annals (770–476 BC).
Other early wall-like border
fortifications were probably built in the second half of the 5th century
BC during the Warring States Period as protection against the feuding
Chinese. These individual wall sections consisted of compacted clay,
which was mixed with layers of straw and brushwood to make it more
durable.
In the 4th century BC, the first Chinese emperor, Qin
Shihuangdi, had protective walls built to protect the Chinese empire
from the peoples from the north, especially the Xiongnu, after its
expansion across the Yellow River. In contrast to the existing old
remains of the wall, the wall was not built in the valleys, but below
the ridge line of the mountains on the northern slopes. Due to the lack
of clay, it consisted largely of natural stone slabs stacked on top of
each other.
Since then, Great Walls have been built again and
again.
In 1907, the British archaeologist Aurel Stein discovered
numerous bamboo strips in the area of the Great Wall of the Han Dynasty
(汉长城, Han changcheng) on which he was able to decipher orders,
instructions and field post letters from the first century BC, as well
as seals of the commanders, secret ones Codes on separate boards and
operational plans of the soldiers deployed on that section of the wall
at the time. The most important records found are information about an
optical telegraphy system named after Stein, with which coded smoke
signals were sent from the towers in front of the wall during the day
and fire signals at night to the watchtowers on the wall and in the
Chinese hinterland to the garrisons stationed there. when attackers from
the north approached the section of the wall. Thanks to a fixed code, it
was even possible to specify the number and distance of the attackers.
In the Ming period, construction began in 1442 with the construction
of ramparts on the Liaodong Peninsula. After this, ramparts were built
in the Ordos Plateau from 1473 onwards. By 1550, ramparts or walls made
of dry stone were built in other places, especially north and northeast
of Beijing - only passages and forts were built with mortar.
From
1550, the previously existing dry stone wall north of Beijing was
replaced by the current wall made of mortared stone. From 1569 to 1571,
1,200 brick towers were built here, which served as weapons depots and
signal towers and offered protection against attackers. From 1577
onwards, bricks were used instead of natural stone further east. Further
walls were built with bricks until at least 1623. The mortar used
consists of quicklime and around three percent glutinous rice, with the
amylopectin contained in this early composite material ensuring its
particularly high resistance. Only the outer skin of the building is
made of brick (form masonry); the interior is filled with clay, sand and
gravel. The course follows the mountain ridges, which made production
particularly difficult.
The dimensions of today's walls built
with mortar are quite different; In the Beijing area, 4 to 8 m width at
the crown and 10 m at the base and a height of 6 to 9 m are common. The
towers are approximately 12 m high and are a few hundred meters apart.
On the famous map of China by the Flemish cartographer Abraham
Ortelius, which appeared in the Atlas Theatrum Orbis Terrarum in 1584, a
Great Wall is depicted, which in terms of architectural style roughly
corresponds to the wall built from 1550 with the towers built from 1569,
although the width of the Wall was underestimated. This west-facing map
is the first map of China printed in Europe. The length of the wall was
given by this cartographer as 400 Dutch miles, which is 2336 km. The
Latin text next to the wall reads: Murus quadringentarum leucarum inter
montium crepidines a Rege Chinæ contra Tartarorum ab hac parte
eruptiones extructus. In English: A four hundred mile long wall was
built between the mountain ridges by the King of China against Tartar
invasions in this area.
Sven Hedin and Folke Bergman explored the course of the Silk Road during their Chinese-Swedish expedition from 1927 to 1935 and discovered the remains of a signal tower in the Lop Nor desert, which Folke Bergman described in 1937. They themselves viewed this find as evidence of the course of the trade route. In early 2001, after reading his book in Chinese in 2000, Chinese scientists visited the signal tower described there, nearly 500 km west of Jiayuguan Fortress. It is believed that such towers were built to protect the middle route of the Silk Road, along which richly laden trade caravans traveled west. With renewed interest in the Great Wall of China, there has been recent speculation that the ruins represent a continuation of the Ming Great Wall.
UNESCO declared the Great Wall of China a World Heritage Site in
1987.
While some parts of the wall near tourist centers have been
preserved or even restored, large parts of the wall are now in poor
condition. Some of them are used by nearby villagers as a source of
stone for houses and roads. Sections of the wall were also graffitied or
torn down to make way for other construction projects. The wall has been
protected since 2006 and it is forbidden to use it as a quarry. The
Great Wall of China Society is committed to preservation.
In
2007, the wall was voted one of the “new seven wonders of the world” by
70 million people worldwide as part of a private initiative. Both UNESCO
as the official guardian of the world cultural heritage and e.g. Egypt
(Ancient Wonders of the World: Pyramids of Giza) distanced themselves
from the election, which was described as a “private campaign” without
scientific criteria.
Despite many years of efforts, the wall was systematically destroyed
and fell into disrepair. During the Qing Empire (1644–1911), the
Manchus, having overcome the wall with the help of Wu Sangui's betrayal,
then treated the wall with disdain.
During the three centuries of
Qing rule, the Great Wall almost collapsed under the influence of time.
Only a small section of it near Beijing - Badaling - was maintained in
order; it served as a kind of “gateway to the capital”. In 1899,
American newspapers started a rumor that the wall would be completely
demolished and a highway would be built in its place.
In 1984, on
the initiative of Deng Xiaoping, a program for the restoration of the
Great Wall of China was launched, financed from funds from Chinese and
foreign companies, as well as individuals. In the late 1980s, a major
art auction took place in Beijing to coincide with the restoration of
the wall and was broadcast on television in Paris, London and New York.
It was preceded by a banquet of Western cultural figures and Chinese
dignitaries, at which the artist Armand publicly smashed a violin
against a wall in order to assemble a panel from its fragments to be
sold at auction - for which he was booed so much that the French
delegation had to leave the hall. Arman's works were ignored by Chinese
buyers at auction, so he had to buy them himself so as not to damage his
prestige.
Despite the work carried out, the remains of the wall,
removed from tourist places, are still in a ruined state today. Some
areas are destroyed when the site of the wall is chosen as a place to
build villages or stone from the wall as a construction material, others
- due to the construction of highways, railways and other extended
artificial objects. Vandals spray graffiti on some areas.
It is
reported that a 70-kilometer section of the wall in Minqin County, Gansu
Province in the north-west of the country is undergoing active erosion.
The reason is China's intensive farming practices since the 1950s have
dried up groundwater, making the region a major source and hotspot for
powerful sandstorms. More than 40 km of the wall have already
disappeared, and only 10 km are still standing; the height of the wall
in some places has decreased from five to two meters.
In 2007, on
the border of China and Mongolia, William Lindsay discovered a
significant section of the wall, which was attributed to the Han
Dynasty. In 2012, the search for further fragments of the wall by
William Lindsay's expedition culminated in the discovery of a lost
section in Mongolia.
In 2012, a 36-meter section of the wall,
located in Hebei province, collapsed due to heavy rains. No one was
injured in the collapse. This happened on August 6, but the official
message appeared only four days later.
One of the earliest references to the myth of the wall being visible
from the moon comes from a 1754 letter from the English antiquarian
William Stukeley. Stukeley wrote: “This huge wall, 128 km long (we are
talking about Hadrian’s Wall), is surpassed only by the Chinese Wall,
which takes up so much space on the globe, and in addition it can be
seen from the Moon.” Henry Norman, an English journalist and politician,
also mentions this. In 1895, he reports: “...besides its age, this wall
is the only human creation that can be seen from the moon.” At the end
of the nineteenth century, the theme of Martian canals was widely
discussed, which may have led to the idea that long, thin objects on the
surface of planets were visible far from space. The visibility of the
Great Wall of China from the Moon was also heard in 1932 in the popular
American comics Ripley's Believe It or Not! and in the 1938 book Second
Book of Marvels by an American traveler Richard Halliburton.
This
myth has been debunked more than once, but has not yet been eradicated
from popular culture. The maximum width of the wall is 9.1 meters, and
it is approximately the same color as the ground on which it is located.
Based on the resolving power of optics (the ratio of the distance to an
object to the diameter of the entrance pupil of the optical system - a
few millimeters for the human eye and several meters for large
telescopes), only an object that is contrasted with the surrounding
background and has a size of 10 kilometers or more in diameter ( which
corresponds to 1 arc minute), can be seen with the naked eye from the
Moon, the average distance from which to the Earth is 384,393
kilometers. The approximate width of the Great Wall of China, when
viewed from the Moon, would be the same as that of a human hair when
viewed from a distance of 3.2 kilometers. Seeing the wall from the Moon
would require vision 17,000 times better than normal. It is not
surprising that none of the astronauts who visited the Moon ever
reported seeing the wall while on the surface of our satellite.
More controversial is the question of whether the Great Wall of China
is visible from orbit (more than 200 km above the earth). According to
NASA, the Wall is barely visible, and only under ideal conditions. It is
no more visible than other artificial structures. Some authors argue
that due to the limited optical capabilities of the human eye and the
distance between the photoreceptors on the retina, the wall cannot be
seen even from low orbit with the naked eye, which would require vision
7.7 times sharper than normal.
Astronaut William Pogue, while
aboard Skylab, initially thought he saw a wall, but it turned out that
he saw the Grand Canal of China near Beijing. He was able to see the
wall with the help of binoculars, but noted that without it the wall was
indistinguishable. Astronaut and US Senator Edwin Garn claimed to have
seen the wall with the naked eye from orbit while aboard the Space
Shuttle in 1985, but his claim has been questioned by several
astronauts. Eugene Cernan also stated: “From Earth’s orbit at an
altitude of 160 to 320 kilometers, the Great Wall of China is truly
visible to the naked eye.” Edward Lu, a member of the ISS-7 crew of the
International Space Station, added that “it is less visible than many
other objects. And you definitely have to know where to look.”
In
2001, Neil Armstrong stated about his time aboard Apollo 11: “I do not
believe, at least as far as my own eyes are concerned, that there is any
artificial object that I could see. And I don’t know anyone who would
admit to me that they saw the Great Wall of China from earth orbit... I
asked various people, especially guys who flew over China many times
during the daytime, and none of them saw it.”
In October 2003,
Chinese astronaut Yang Liwei said that he was unable to see the Great
Wall of China. In response, the European Space Agency issued a press
release stating that from an orbit altitude of 160 to 320 kilometers,
the wall is still visible to the naked eye. In an attempt to clarify
this issue, the European Space Agency published a photo of part of the
Great Wall of China taken from space. However, a week later they
admitted the mistake (instead of a wall in the photo there was one of
the rivers).
Leroy Chiao, a Chinese-American astronaut, took a
photo of the wall from the International Space Station. She was so
indistinguishable that Chiao wasn't even sure if he had photographed
her. Based on this photograph, the Chinese newspaper China Daily
reported that the wall could be visible from space with the naked eye if
viewing conditions are favorable and if you know where to look. However,
the resolution of a camera can be significantly greater than that of the
human visual system, the optics are different, and photographic evidence
cannot be the answer to the question of whether the Wall can be
distinguished by the human eye.
The museum was built in 1994 as part of the patriotic "Love China,
Save the Great Wall" campaign launched by Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping
in 1984. It is located on a 10-meter terrace, approximately 400 meters
from the entrance to the Badaling site. Since 2022 it has been under
reconstruction. By June 22, 2022, its 5,741 cultural artifacts had been
moved to nearby district cultural institutions in Yanqing.
General planning for the museum's improvements began in early 2020. The
main goal of the renovation is to better showcase the history of the
Great Wall and to house artifacts found in the building from the Warring
States period (475-221 BC) to the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). Following
the renovation, three main areas of the site will be open to the public:
the exhibition hall, the visitor center and the Great Wall International
Institute for Research and Exchange. It is expected that once the
renovation work is completed, the museum's area will be 16,000 square
meters.
Following the renovation, the museum also plans to focus
on research to promote the "spirit of the Great Wall" and improve the
institution's research, education and communication functions. The goal
is to develop the museum into a center for observing the heritage of the
Great Wall, introducing the culture of the wall, displaying the
intangible cultural heritage of the structure, and developing related
cultural and creative projects.
According to legend, a huge dragon showed the direction and place to
build the wall to the workers. He walked along the borders of the
country, and workers erected a wall at the site of his tracks. Some
argue that even the very shape that the wall formed resembles a soaring
dragon.
The most famous legend is the story of Meng Jiangnu, the
wife of a peasant who was forced to work on the wall during the Qin
Dynasty. When the sad news reached the woman that her husband was buried
in the wall, she arrived at that place and cried so bitterly that part
of the wall where the remains of her husband were hidden collapsed from
her crying, revealing them to her eyes. There is a Meng Jiangnyu Temple
in Qinhuangdao, in front of which there is a sculpture of her. The
famous Soviet and Russian sinologist B. L. Riftin dedicated a detailed
monograph to this legend, for which he was awarded the academic degree
of Candidate of Philological Sciences in 1961.