The Great Wall of China

Even after you dispense with the myths that it is a single continuous structure and that it can be seen from space (it can’t, any more than a fishing line can be seen from the other side of a river), China’s best-known attraction is still mind-boggling. The world’s largest historical site is referred to in Mandarin as Wanli Changcheng (“10,000-Li Long Wall” or simply “Very Long Wall”). The Great Wall begins at Shanhai Guan on the Bo Hai Sea and snakes west to a fort at Jiayu Guan in the Gobi Desert. Its origins date back to the Warring States Period (453-221 B.C.), when rival kingdoms began building defensive walls to thwart each other’s armies. The king of Qin, who eventually conquered the other states to become the first emperor of a unified China, engaged in large-scale wall building toward the end of his reign, although tales of 300,000 conscripted laborers are embellishments of subsequent dynasties. During the Han dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220), the Wall was extended west, and additions were made in completely different locations, according to the military needs of the day.

Although many tour guides will try to persuade you otherwise, the Ming Wall you see today is unrelated to the Qin Wall, which lies far to the north. The Ming even went to the trouble of calling their wall Bian Qiang (Frontier Wall) to avoid comparisons with the tyrannical first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huangdi. The original Wall was built almost entirely from tamped earth, and often crumbled away within decades of being constructed. Talk of satellite mapping the current Wall is fanciful — for most of its length, the structure is barely visible from the ground. This, and the fact that there is no single “Great Wall,” makes it impossible to pin down the Wall’s precise length.

Those with an interest in exaggerating Chinese xenophobia portray Wall building as an essential part of the national psyche, but after the Han, few dynasties bothered with Wall construction, and relied mostly on trade, diplomacy, and the odd punitive expedition to keep the peace. Even during the inward-looking Ming dynasty, the Wall was viewed by many at court as an ancient version of the Star Wars missile-defense idea — ineffective, absurdly expensive, and successful only in antagonizing China’s neighbors. With the Ming wracked by internal rebellion, the Qing armies simply bribed the demoralized sentries. The Qing left the Wall as a monument to folly, and while early Western visitors were awed, it became a source of national pride only recently. Sun Yat-sen was among the first to view it as a symbol of national strength, an idea the Communists adopted, including it in the National Anthem.

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