All about the Great Wall of China

All about the Great Wall of China

The wall that built China

How big is it?

hina is famous for many things, including its food,its pandas and its New Year celebrations (whichhappened on 5 February) but top of the list has to be
the Great Wall of China. This treasured monument
stretches nearly all the way across the enormous
country, split into different sections. Morethan half of it no longer exists,
yet the sections that still
stand have told historians
ta lot about the country’sahclaim t nlepoastonishing past.
epnyseeOU
DID YWKNO ?

Macan bethe wall e Moon, butfrom this a myth.
thisWatchtowers

Guards sent messagesby smoke signal.

From the start of construction,thousands of beacon towers werebuilt at regular intervals along
the wall. Guards were stationed
in these towers, and they sent
smoke signals or raised flags toindicate attacks. These signals
were seen up to nine miles away;
word could spread quickly.

Jiayuguan Fort inwestern China.

The wall as it stands runs fromly smok
The ear ed in the wall’sd
Shanhaiguan, in western
produc s were create
China, all the way to the Gobi
beacon ning wolf poo.
desert in the east. A Chinese
by bursurvey in 2012 revealed that thetotal length of the entire wall,
including all of its sections, is precisely
13,170.69 miles long. The newer Ming dynasty
section is more than 4,970 miles long. However,new sections are still being discovered, so thatfigure is likely to rise. Although the wall is
undoubtedly long, parts of it are very narrow.
In certain areas it is only wide enough forpeople walking in single file, and other bits
don’t even have a walkway.

How one of the world’s greatest engineering feats united a country.

CSMELKLYESMO e signals

ING,GOING,NGEO?
GOMing-era

ird of the
Almost a thisappeared, partly
wall has d f natural damage,
because o ecause of tourists
but also b ling bricks.
stea

The wall stretches
almost 13,171 miles.

The Qin dynasty (221–206BC)

The Han dynasty (202BC–AD221)

The Ming dynasty (1368–1644)

The wall today

Emperor Qin Shi Huang is widely
regarded as the ruler who began
construction of the Great Wall.
Emperor Huang was hoping
to unify China, which at thattime was separated into seven
kingdoms. The Qin dynasty(when generations of thesame family rule a country)
Qin Shi Huang.
had the first wall built mainly
from mud. Most of it was north of today’s
Great Wall, although its exact location is unknown
because almost no evidence of it remains.

Qin’s wall was extended west
as a defence from attacks fromthe Xiongnu (people from what
is now the Asian country ofMongolia). Western China ismainly desert, so builders had toweave frames for the wall out ofrose willow and weeds. They
poured gravel into the framework,
then sand, and built the wall up inlayers. Remarkably, more than
2,000 years later, sections of thiswall are still standing.

The Ming rulers were largely responsible
for the Great Wall as we know it today.
Large sections were made of soil that
had been pushed together until it
became solid, but some of the wall
was created around a stone basewith bricks built up around it, making
it much stronger than the previousversions. The emperor wanted it towithstand not only attacks, but also theeffects of time. The wall was now morethan 7.6 metres high and more than nine
metres thick in places.

The pictures of the wall mostcommonly seen today are fromthe section near Beijing, China’scapital. The most famous section
is at Badaling, about 45 miles
from the centre of the city. It
opened to tourists in 1957 and is
now the most popular section in
China. It is estimated that 37,000
people visited in one day alone
last October. When you are on thewall you can see it snaking overthe mountains into the distance.

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ALAMY · REX SHUTTERSTOCK · GETTY IMAGES

Han dynasty soldiersdefend their land.

The Week Junior • 9 February 20199 February 2019 • The Week Junior

Ming militaryleader Hu Ta-Hai.

Tourists flockto the wall.

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