Great Wall
The construction of the Great Wall started during the Warring States Period on 7th century B.C, it had a history of more than 2,500 years. Many dukedoms built walls in Central China to protect themselfs and their northern territories. When Qin Shihuang, the first emperor in Chinese history, unified China and established the first centralised feudal state in China, he decided to have the walls linked up and extended.
There were about one million people, one-fifth of China's population at the time, were involved in the project which took more than ten years. Most of the walls we see today were rebuilt during the Ming Dynasty in the 16th century. It extends from Shanhaiguan Pass in the east to Jiayuguan Pass in the west. It is the only construction that the American astronauts could recognize with their naked eyes on their first flight to the Moon.
Those who succeeded in climbing the wall today are often regarded as "Real heroes", from this we should realize the difficulty in climbing the wall, and can imagine how difficult it is to build the Great Wall without modern machinery at that time.
In Beijing, the Great Wall is about 630 km long, 6 sections of the Great Wall have been opened to visitors. There are Badaling Section, Juyongguan Section, Simatai Section, Mutianyu Section, Jinshanling Section and Gubeikou Section.
History of the Great Wall
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The construction of the Great Wall started during the Warring States Period on 7th century B.C, it had a history of more than 2,500 years. At that time, it was the Warring States Period, Many dukedoms built walls in Central China to protect themselves from each other and from the "barbarians", the walls were built in the states of Qi, Chu, Yan, Han, Zhao, Wei and Qin. These seven dukedoms conquered many other small states and became "the Seven Most Powerful States in the Warring States Period".
When Qin Shihuang, the first emperor in Chinese history, unified China and established the first centralised feudal state in China, he ordered that the northern sections of the Walls built by different dukedoms be linked up and put together into one defensive bulwark. Emperor Qin Shihuang sent general Meng Tian with an army of 300,000 forced labourers for the mission and built part of the new wall. That was the Qin Great Wall-From Lintao in Gansu Province in the west to Liaodong in the east.
The Han Great Wall started from Lop Nur in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to Liaodong in the east, which stretched about 10,000 Km (20,000 Li, one li = 500 metres) and in the following dynasties, except tthe Tang Dynasty when the Great Wall was all within the boundary of the Great Tang Empire, the Great Wall was under constant construction and repairing. Today, you may find some remnants of the wall scattered in the northwest of China, but not in the eastern part of China.
The Ming Dynasty was the last dynasty in Chinese history when large scale construction of the Great Wall took place, and most of the walls we see today were built in the Ming Dynasty. The Ming Great Wall stretched from the Yalu River in the east to Jiayuguan in the west, covering a total length of more than 5,000 Km. At present, however, Shanhaiguan Pass is generally considered as the eastern end of the Great Wall because the section from Shanhaiguan Pass to the Yalu River was poorly built and maintained. Shanhaiguan Pass is also considered as "the First Pass Under Heaven".
The Qing rulers did not continue building the Great Wall, they adopted a new policy by building a Summer Resort in Chengde to entertain the Mongolian and Tibetan nobles to ensure a peaceful boundary. | |
Juyongguan Pass - Top -
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Juyongguan Pass lies 50 Km northwest of Beijing, it is located in a 15 Km long valley. Many passes were built at strategic points along the wall, and the Juyongguan Pass was one of them. Besides its strategic significance, this pass was also famous for its beautiful scenery. In fact, in the Jin Dynasty (1115-1234 A.D), this place was listed one of the Eight Best Scenic Spots in Beijing.
The gate in the center of Juyongguan Pass is built of finely carved marble and called Cloud Terrace or Guojie (crossing-street) in Chinese. This building was originally the base of three towers and was built as early as 1345, more than 500 years of history now, this marble Cloud Terrace is nearly 10 mtres high, the bottom is 27 metres long from east to west, 15 metres wide from north to south. Seen from distance, this terrace is bigger at the bottom and smaller at the top.
Originally, on the top of the cloud terrace stood three towers, but an earthquake in the early Ming Dynasty destroyed the three towers on the top, only the terrace itself left. An arch gateway is underneath the terrace, which is more than 7 metres high, 6 metres wide, wide enough for carriages to go through. Both side of the arch gateway are decorated with carvings of Buddhas, four Celestial Kings, and the text of a buddist Sutra in Chinese, Tibetan, Sanskrit and three other minority languages.
In 1644, the troops of Peasant Uprising led by Li Zicheng, whose statue we saw on the way to the Great Wall, took over Beijing and entered the city from here. It was Li Zicheng, this peasant general who overthrew the Ming Dynasty that same year. At that time, this was a very crowded area. Later on, buses as well as railways went by here, nobody would stay here for the night or do business any more, therefore, this area gradually became deserted. |
"If you haven't climbed the Great Wall, you haven't seen China."
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"If you haven't climbed the Great Wall, you haven't seen China." Many of your friends who visited China before might have told you this. It is, indeed an experience of life. Who would leave the country without seeing the only construction that the American astronauts could recognise with their naked eyes, on their first flight to the Moon!
The Great Wall of China starts from Shanhaiguan Pass, a seaport along the coast of Bohai Bay in the east, to Jiayuguan Pass in Gansu Province in the west, covering 16 provinces, cities and autonomous regions in China. It is more than 6,000 Km long (one li=500 meters), hence the name "Ten Thousand-li-long Wall".
The Great Wall traverses many mountains and gullies, a countless number of inner walls, outer walls, fortified towers, signal beacon towers, fortifications and garrisons complete this complex, and make up the whole system of the Great Wall.
Those who succeeded in climbing the wall today are often regarded as "real heroes", from this we should realize the difficulty in climbing the wall, but can you imagine how even more difficult it is to build the Great Wall without modern machinery?
The bricks, rocks and lime used to build the Wall had to be carried up the mountains at the cost of back-breaking labor, morever, goats and donkeys carried the earth and bricks in baskets, some of the rocks were moved up slopes by means of rolling rods and hoisting bars. It is hard to calculate the amount of manpower used in the construction of the Great Wall.
In Beijing, the Great Wall is 629 Km long, five sections of the Great Wall have been opened to visitors. There are Badaling Section, Simatai Section, Mutianyu Section, Jinshanling Section and Gubeikou Section. Of all these five sections, the Great Wall at Badaling Section is the most famous and best preserved.
In ancient China, military information is usually conveyed through horsesiders and beacon-towers. In pain area, emergent military information is conveyed from one station to another by riding horses-at each station the horses should be changed and supplies refilled. However, in the Tang Dynasty, when the whole country is not at war, horses were used to carry fresh Lichii to Chang'an, the capital at that time for the emperor's most favorite concubine-Lady Yang Yuhuan. Du Fu, a famous poet in the Tang Dynasty wrote certain poems to criticise the corruption of the emperor.
In the mountainous area, on the other hand, it could ne extremely difficult for the horses to send messages, therefore, beacon towers were built along the wall to relay information from place to place. When the enemy invaded in the daytime, wolve's dung was used to burn for a strong smoke, while at night, beacon fires were lit on the towers to give a warning message. But you may ask why wolve's dung were used?
One reason is that there were many wolves in the region and wolve's dung could easily be found, another reason is that the wolve's dung gathered closely and went straight upward so it can easily be seen from afar. Moreover, the number of the smoke signals could reveal the number of invading enemies. One smoke used to represent 100 enemies, two smokes, 500, and 3 smokes,1,000 etc, and the amount of smokes also expressed the degree of emergency.
It is evident that the purpose of building the wall was to prevent the frontier from the invasion of the northern nomadic tribes. | |
Beijing Zhangjiakou Railway - Top -
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Everyday, there're two trains from Beijing Xizhimen Railway station to Badaling Great Wall at Qinglongqiao Railway Station, where you can see a bronze statue erected by the Chinese government. But who was he?
This railway is very famous in China, known to almost every household, because this railway was the first of its kind designed and built by us Chinese, it was called Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway and recorded in the textbook for primary school pupils.
The chief engineer is Zhan Tianyou, a Yale graduate majoring in Civil and railway engineering, he was born in 1861 in Guangdong Province, and he was very intelligent and interested in machinery at an early age. Upon graduation from the Yale University in 1881, he returned to China and became the Chief engineer in 1905 for the first railway in China, he succeeded in overcoming the gradient problem by switching back the line, and he initially used two locomotives instead of one, one pulling, another pushing the train over this area. The railway was completed in 1909, two years ahead of time. It added a brilliant page in the history of the Chinese Railway Construction.
Therefore, the Chinese government decided to erect a bronze statue at Qinglongqiao Railway Station in memory of his great contribution. | |
Badaling Fortress - Top -
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Badaling Fortress was built in 1505, it was 7.5 metres high, 4 metres thick. Badaling was actually a hub of communications in ancient times.
The Badaling Fortress is about 600 metres above sea level. East of the Fortress is a huge rock seven metres long and two metres high. It is called Looking-Toward Beijing Rock. The name of the rock was from the Empress Dowager Ci'xi, who passed here as she fled to the north when the Eight Allied Forces invaded Beijing in 1990. From this big rock, she looked back and gave Beijng her last look. Hence the name.
Standing on the rock, you may see the east side of the Fortress, on which four Chinese characters are written, the outer town of Juyong. That is to say, this is indeed an important defensive area on the north side of Juyongguan Pass.
When you entered the Fortress, you will soon find on the west side of the Fortress another four Chinese characters: the key to the north gate of Beijing. This simply means that strategically, this area is very important. |
Great Wall at Badaling - Top -
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Badaling means "giving access to every direction", the name itself suggests its strategic importance. Badaling Great Wall lies in Yanqing County, northwest of Beijing. It covers five counties and one district, namely: Miyun, Huairou, Pinggu, Yanqing and Changping County and Mentougou District.
Badaling Great Wall was the best preserved part of the Ming Great Wall. Here, the wall averages 7.8 metres high, 6.5 metres wide of the base, and 5.8 metres at the top. The wall was designed to allow five horsemen or ten soldiers to march side by side along the wall. The flights of stairs up to the outer wall are fairely widely spaced.
The wall could almost be considered as a superhighway on the rough mountain terrain. On the highway, news, men or even food could travel rapidly. Suppose you were a solider 500 years ago in the Ming Dynasty, when you found some enemies were about to invade your country, in the daytime, they should start a heavy smoke to tell the other soliders to get ready, when seeing their signal, would start another smoke in the distance, this signal would be relayed until finally it reached the capital and the whole country would be ready for the war. But what if the enemies invade the country at night, as most invasion started, they should light up beconfires to communicate military information to the emperor at a very rapid speed.
For every few hundred metres, you can see a watchtower. Also, the wall of this section was built of giant rocks and bricks of similar size. It was faced with stone, and the inside was filled with earth and rubber, therefore, Badaling Great Wall was also regarded the strongest section of the Ming Great Wall.
To experience the real splendor of the Great Wall, you should not only see the Great Wall and take pictures from down here, but also walk on it. There're two entrances where you can climb the Badaling Great Wall, most people, however, climb the Great Wall from the right entrance because it is an easier way. It takes about an hour to climb to the top of the raised towers either way. From the top on the right looking northwest, you can see the famous Guanting Reservoir; The wall on the left is a little more steep, naturally, less people climb the wall from this side.
Different people may have very different preferences. Make your choice and start climbing now! | | | | |
