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 construction of the first sections of the wall began in the 3rd
century BC. e. during the Warring States period (475-221 BC) to protect
the state from the Xiongnu. One fifth of the then living population of
the country, that is, about a million people, took part in the
construction. The wall was supposed to clearly fix the boundaries of
Chinese civilization, contribute to the consolidation of a single
empire, just made up of a number of conquered kingdoms.
The
settlements that developed on the plain of central China, turning into
large centers of trade, attracted the attention of nomads, who began to
often attack them, making raids from behind Yingshan. Large kingdoms
such as Qin, Wei, Yan, Zhao attempted to build defensive walls on their
northern borders. These walls were adobe structures. The Wei kingdom
erects a wall around 353 BC. BC, which served as the border with the
kingdom of Qin, the kingdoms of Qin and Zhao build a wall around 300 BC.
e., and the kingdom of Yan - about 289 BC. e. The disparate structures
of the walls are later connected and form a single structure.
During the reign of Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi (259-210 BC, Qin Dynasty),
the empire unites into a single whole, reaches unprecedented power. More
than ever, she needs reliable protection from nomadic peoples. Qin Shi
Huang orders the construction of the Great Wall of China along Yingshan.
During construction, pre-existing parts of the wall are used, which are
strengthened, built on, connected by new sections and lengthened, while
sections that previously separated separate kingdoms are demolished. The
construction of the wall was appointed to manage the commander Meng
Tian.
Construction lasted 10 years and faced numerous
difficulties. The main problem was the lack of appropriate
infrastructure for construction: there were no roads, there was no
adequate water and food for those involved in the work, while their
number reached 300 thousand people, and the total number of builders
involved in Qin reached, according to some estimates, 2 million .
Slaves, soldiers, peasants were involved in the construction. As a
result of epidemics and overwork, at least tens of thousands of people
died. Resentment at the mobilization to build the wall caused popular
uprisings and was one of the reasons for the fall of the Qin Dynasty.
The terrain itself was extremely difficult for such a grandiose
structure: the wall went straight along the mountain range, skirting all
the spurs, while it was necessary to overcome both high rises and very
significant gorges. However, this is precisely what determined the
unique originality of the structure - the wall is unusually organically
inscribed in the landscape and forms a single whole with it.
Until the Qin time, a significant proportion of the wall was built from
the most primitive materials, mainly with the help of earth tamping.
Layers of clay, pebbles and other local materials were pressed between
shields of twigs or reeds. Most of the materials for such walls could be
obtained locally. Sometimes bricks were used, but not burnt, but dried
in the sun.
Obviously, the popular Chinese name for the wall,
“earth dragon,” is associated with building materials. In the Qin
period, stone slabs began to be used in some areas, which were laid
close to each other over layers of compacted earth. Stone structures
were widely used in the construction of the Wall in the east. In the
same places where, according to local conditions, the stone was not
available (western lands, in the territory of the modern provinces of
Gansu, Shaanxi), a large mound was erected.
The dimensions of the
wall varied in sections, the average parameters were: height - 7.5 m,
height with battlements - 9 m, width along the ridge - 5.5 m, width of
the base - 6.5 m. The battlements of the wall, located on the outside,
have simple rectangular shape. Towers are part of the wall. Some towers
built before the wall was built were built into it. Such towers are
often less than the width of the wall itself, and their locations are
random. There are about 25,000 towers along the entire length of the
wall. The towers erected along with the wall were located at a distance
of up to 200 meters from each other (the range of the arrow).
There are several types of towers, differing in architectural design.
The most common type of tower is two stories, rectangular in plan. Such
towers had an upper platform with loopholes. Also, within sight of the
fire (about 10 km), signal towers were located on the wall, from which
the enemy's approaches were monitored and signals were transmitted.
Twelve gates were made to pass through the wall, which over time
fortified into powerful outposts. The last battle near the Great Wall of
China took place in 1938 between China and Japan.
During the Han
Dynasty (206 BC - 220 AD), the wall was extended west to Dunhuang. A
line of watchtowers was also built, going deep into the desert, to
protect trade caravans from nomadic raids. The next dynasty - the Jin -
restored and built, according to archaeologists, about 10,000 km of
walls - twice as many as the Qin. The Jin Dynasty began building its
walls in the 12th century, mobilizing up to 750,000 people at a time for
this purpose.
Those sections of the Great Wall that have survived
to our time were built mainly during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). In
this era, the main building materials were brick and stone blocks, which
made the construction more reliable. When laying the stone blocks of the
wall, glutinous rice porridge with an admixture of slaked lime was used.
During the reign of Ming, the wall stretched from east to west from the
Shanhaiguan outpost on the shores of the Bohai Bay (Liaodong Bay,
according to other sources) of the Yellow Sea to the Yumenguan outpost
at the junction of modern Gansu Province and the Xinjiang Uyghur
Autonomous Region.
The constant construction and restoration of the wall exhausted the
strength of the people and the state, but its value as a defensive
structure was questioned. Enemies, if desired, easily found weakly
fortified areas or simply bribed the guards. Sometimes, during attacks,
she did not dare to raise the alarm and silently let the enemy pass.
For Chinese scientists, the wall has become a symbol of military
weakness during the Ming dynasty, capitulation to the next barbarians.
Wang Xitong, a 17th-century historian and poet, wrote:
The Qin
people built the Long Wall as a defense against the barbarians.
The
long wall grew up, and the empire rolled down.
People still laugh at
her...
As soon as it was announced that the walls would be built in
the east,
It was necessarily reported that hordes of barbarians
attacked in the west ...
After the fall of the Ming Dynasty, the
Qing emperor dedicated a poem to her, in which it was written about the
wall:
You built it for ten thousand li, stretching to the sea,
But all your expenses were in vain -
You have exhausted the strength
of your people.
But when did the empire belong to you?
The
Chinese of the Qing era were surprised by the interest of Europeans in a
useless structure.
In modern Chinese culture, the wall has taken
on a new meaning. Regardless of the failures associated with its
military use, it has become a symbol of the resilience and creative
power of the people. On several sections of the Great Wall of China, you
can find monuments with the phrase of Mao Zedong: "If you have not
visited the Great Wall of China, you are not a real Chinese" (Chinese
ex. 不到长城非好汉).
The popular athletics marathon "The Great Wall" is
held annually, in which athletes run part of the distance along the
ridge of the wall.
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 the betrayal of Wu
Sangui, treated the wall with disdain after that.
During the
three centuries of Qing rule, the Great Wall almost collapsed under the
influence of time. Only a small part 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, at the initiative of Deng Xiaoping, a program was launched
to restore the Great Wall of China, funded by 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 televised 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 intended for auction - for which he
was booed so that the French delegation had to leave the hall. Armand's
works at the auction were ignored by Chinese buyers, so he had to buy
them himself in order not to lose his prestige.
Despite the work
carried out, the remains of the wall, far from tourist places, are still
in a ruined state. Some areas are destroyed when choosing a wall site as
a place to build villages or stone from a wall as a building material,
others due to the construction of highways, railways and other extended
artificial objects. Some areas are covered in graffiti by vandals.
It is reported that a 70-kilometer section of the wall in Minqin
County, Gansu Province in the northwest of the country is undergoing
active erosion. The reason is the intensive farming practices in China
since the 1950s, which have dried up groundwater, and as a result, this
region has become the main source and center of powerful sandstorms.
More than 40 km of the wall has already disappeared, and only 10 km are
still in place, 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 Lindsey discovered a significant section of the wall, which was
attributed to the period of the Han Dynasty. In 2012, the search for
further fragments of the wall by the expedition of William Lindsey
culminated in the discovery of a lost section already in Mongolia.
In 2012, a 36-meter-long section of the wall, located in Hebei
Province, collapsed due to heavy rains. No one was hurt in the collapse.
It happened on August 6, but the official announcement appeared only
four days later.
Wall - "remake"
It is not uncommon to find statements that the
wall was built relatively recently, in the 16th, 19th or even 20th
century. But this is just an illusion, caused by the fact that the wall
has an uneven height, masonry structure, was destroyed in some places
and was constantly reconstructed, and its indicative part near Beijing,
which is visited by tourists, was generally restored using modern
technologies in the middle of the 20th century.
Visibility of the
wall from the moon
One of the earliest references to the myth of the
wall being visible from the moon is in 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
China Wall, which takes up so much space on the globe, and in addition
it is visible from the moon.” Sir Henry Norman, an English journalist
and politician, also mentions this. In 1895, he reports: "... besides
its age, this wall is the only creation of man that is visible from the
moon." At the end of the nineteenth century, the topic of the Martian
canals was exaggerated with might and main, which may have led to the
idea that long thin objects on the surface of the planets are
distinguishable 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. Richard
Halliburton.
This myth has been exposed 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 about the same color as the ground on
which it is located. Based on the resolution of optics (the ratio of the
distance to the 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 contrasting 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 a human hair when viewed
from a distance of 3.2 kilometers. To see the wall from the moon would
require vision 17,000 times better than normal. Not surprisingly, none
of the astronauts who have been to the Moon have ever reported seeing a
wall while on the surface of our satellite.
Visibility of the
wall from Earth orbit
More debatable is whether the Great Wall of
China is visible from orbit (that's over 200 km above the ground).
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 he saw the Grand Canal of China near Beijing. He was able to
see the wall with 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 the Earth's orbit at a
height of 160 to 320 kilometers, the Great Wall of China is indeed
visible to the naked eye." Edward Lu, crew member of the International
Space Station ISS-7, added that “it is less visible than many other
objects. And you definitely need to know where to look.”
In 2001,
Neil Armstrong stated of his time aboard Apollo 11: “I do not believe,
at least as far as my own eyes are concerned, that there is any man-made
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 the earth’s orbit ... I asked
different people, especially guys who flew over China many times in the
daytime, and none of them saw it.”
In October 2003, Chinese
astronaut Yang Liwei stated that he had not been able to see the Great
Wall of China. In response, the European Space Agency issued a press
release stating that from an orbit with an 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 released a photograph of
part of the Great Wall of China taken from space. However, a week later
they admitted their mistake (instead of a wall in the photo there was
one of the rivers).
Leroy Chiao, a US-Chinese astronaut, took a
photo of the wall from the International Space Station. She was so
indistinguishable that Chiao was not even sure if he photographed her.
Based on this photo, the China Daily reported that the wall could be
seen 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 much greater than that of the human visual system, there are
different optics, and photographic evidence cannot be an answer to the
question of the possibility of distinguishing the Wall with the human
eye.
The museum was built in 1994 as part of the "Love China, Save the
Great Wall" patriotic campaign launched by Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping
in 1984. It is located on a 10-meter terrace, about 400 meters from the
entrance to the Badaling site. It has been under renovation since 2022.
By June 22, 2022, his 5,741 cultural artifacts had been moved to nearby
district cultural institutions in Yanqing.
General planning for
the improvement of the museum began in early 2020. The main purpose of
the renovation is to better showcase the history of the Great Wall of
China and house artefacts found in the building from the Warring States
period (475-221 BC) to the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). After the
renovation, three main areas of the site will be open to the public: the
exhibit hall, the visitor center, and the Great Wall International
Research and Exchange Institute. It is expected that after the
completion of the renovation works, the area of the museum will be
16,000 square meters.
After 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 turn the museum into a center for observing
the heritage of the Great Wall, learning about the culture of the wall,
displaying the structure's intangible cultural heritage, and developing
related cultural and creative projects.
According to legend, a huge dragon pointed out the direction and
place of construction of the wall to the workers. He walked along the
borders of the country, and the workers erected a wall in the place of
his footprints. Some argue that even the very shape that the wall formed
bears a resemblance to a soaring dragon.
The most famous legend
is that 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
wept so bitterly that from her crying the part of the wall where the
remains of her husband were hidden collapsed, opening them to her gaze.
In Qinhuangdao there is a temple of Meng Jiangnu, in front of which her
sculpture is installed. The well-known Soviet and Russian sinologist B.
L. Riftin devoted a detailed monograph to this legend, for which he was
awarded the degree of candidate of philological sciences in 1961.