Great Wall of China | Great Wall | great wall of china made
T o understand the wall, we must first understand why it was built more great stories tell us that Wall was built to keep the nomadic tribes of the north, but that they were exactly.
Almost half of modern China is desert, mountain or arid plateau, particularly in northern Throughout China's history, people from these ruthless northern steppe areas lived nearby territories often overlap with the Chinese These nomads of the North were certainly not all homogeneous, but they shared many similarities and had different cultures and languages distinctly Chinese.
For over 2,000 years, they regularly harassed, invaded and conquered even sedentary agricultural civilizations of the Chinese Empire.
Today, historians debate the reasons for this complex, dynamic interaction However, throughout history, the Chinese typically use simplistic explanations These nomads are naturally warlike uncivilized and even subhuman.
For example, a Han Dynasty historian wrote that the Northern Xiongnu was simply an innate character to pillage and plunder that is almost too simplistic to say that modern terrorists attack us because they hate our freedom.
Modern historians, however, focus on the fundamental incompatibility between sedentary agriculture and pastoralism The theory is that the conflict between the two civilizations should not be surprising given their proximity.
If, for example, drought or famine struck the northern steppes, nomads were forced to find pasture in the Chinese territory Han inevitably leading to conflict or in really desperate times, they might resort to plunder the colonies Chinese.
This must have been a tempting option given their far superior riding skills, which included exceptional skills in archery mounted general, they were trained horse at an early age.
For these first shock and fear warriors, they could blend in as easily escape without the threat of being hunted down and captured.
Historians will also look at the dynamics of these two cultures through the prism of trade over the centuries coexisted peacefully committed relationship and they certainly wasn t always antagonists often in mutually beneficial trade.
For example, the nomads of northern precious grain, textiles, drugs, pottery and metal tools, including the other hand weapons, the Chinese land weren t well suited to raise essential horses for mounted cavalry is beat them and nomadic There was also a strong Chinese demand for skins, cattle and sheep.
However, during periods when trade relations were cut, the nomads were able to just break and grabbing.
These nomadic tribes t weren few small groups of sporadic raids or during the centuries, many consolidated his power and built empires with large armies well organized with ambitions beyond simply ravaged Some were pretty dreadful to conquer and rule the China Mongols ruled for a century from 1279 and the Manchus for almost two centuries from 1644.
As a result, over 2,000 years, successive Chinese emperors were concerned containing their northern neighbors Their solutions ranged from a mixture of diplomatic and military options.
For particularly strong dynasties, the military option has sometimes succeeded, for example, the emperor Han Wudi led successful attacks in the Xiongnu homelands in 119 BC But these campaigns were costly and skills below the horse always put at a disadvantage , either fighting or chasing.
Historians also note that these persistent problems with their neighbors helped shape a sense of Chinese cultural superiority This was evident from 3000 years ago, when the Chinese name for China today was used in the Zhong Guo Zhou dynasty 1066-771 BC 中国 literally or central nation of the Middle Kingdom All foreigners were grouped in the category of uncivilized barbarians, an attitude which will persist until the early 20th century in fact, it is still a sense of cultural superiority in China today.
As mentioned in the preview, the construction of large-scale wall began during the Warring States period 475-221BC fighters During the Qin Dynasty some of these ancient fortifications along the northern border would be part of the first Great Wall.
In 215 BC, the first emperor Qin Shi Huang ordered his general Meng Tian to start construction of the Great Wall to protect against the nomads of the North in addition to the construction of the walls already built along the northern border, he also ordered the destruction of previous wall sections now divided his empire along the former borders to impose centralized rule and prevent resurrection of regional warlords.
The first and most famous historical reference to the Great Wall is located in the Shi Ji the first systematic Chinese historical text.
After Qin had unified the world, Meng Tian was sent to control a crowd of 300,000 and built a big wall, construction of parades and passes by the terrain He started Lintao, crossed the Yellow River, Wound touching north of Mount Yang and Liaodong extended, reaching a distance of more than 10,000 li.
This brief hit two key phrases that gave the Great Wall the name The first was chang cheng long wall or great wall The second was wan li, or 10,000 li li a unit of distance about half a kilometer or third in a mile.
Although the distance is not meant to be literal, the Chinese today refer to as the Great Wall wan li chang cheng chang cheng usually abbreviated Just In ancient China, 10,000 li was often used as a shortcut for 'infinite.
Besides the Qin, the two other large wall building dynasties were the Han Dynasty 206BC-220AD and the Ming Dynasty 1368-1644.
The Qin Dynasty brief was followed by the Han Dynasty which lasted for more than four centuries the capital of Chang Xi today a building on the Qin walls, Han has invested a lot in strengthening their national defense order Hu to stop horses crossing the Yinshan mountains, in the words of the time.
Han greatly extended the wall to the Gobi Desert in large part because of their westward expansion of the Silk Road of the protected wall traders roving bandits In fact, the Han era wall extends to Liaodong eastern Xinjiang in the west, was the longest wall built by a dynasty.
After the Han, the wall fell into disuse mostly mainly because it was expensive to maintain and often constantly repaired future emperors relied on a combination of alliances, good diplomacy and a strong military to keep their neighbors North in check.
For example, a Tang Dynasty emperor 618-907 said that one of his generals was better than the Great Wall walls built by Emperor Sui Yangdi previous dynasty.
Throughout its history where relationships weren t too antagonist wall served as commercial markets for different cultures to meet and trade goods.
After years of the economic and cultural exchanges along various passages along the wall, entire cities sprouted with residents on both sides, including in Shanhaiguan, Zhangjiakou, Gubeikou and Jiayuguan Pass.
Fast forward to the 1200s during the Song Dynasty South from 1127 to 1279, China has seen the emergence of a new breed of warriors fierce Mongol steppes Led by the legendary Genghis Khan united the Mongol Empire northern states to become a great, formidable, well -Organisation the army that was more than capable of threatening the whole of the Chinese Empire.
Despite important fortifications, the wall at the time was still largely the mud walls of past centuries and relatively easy to overcome Khan and his Mongol horde easily passed through the Juyongguan strategic passageway in 1211 They plunder at will around the capital of Beijing, although didn t attempt to sack.
Over the following decades, the means Mongolians regularly found around or through the Wall In 1279, the Mongols led by Kublai Khan, grand-son of Genghis defeated the song and ruled all of China for the next 100 years the Yuan dynasty As expected, the walls have not been maintained during the Yuan dynasty because there was no threat to push north.
Fast forward a century later, the Chinese were back in charge in 1368, after chasing the Mongols return signal north the beginning of the Ming Dynasty 1368-1644 All modern sections of the wall that you usually see in pictures were all created during the Ming dynasty.
With the threat of Mongol still fresh in mind, the government Ming naturally spent a lot of time thinking about the policies and border defenses and diplomatic strategy.
Building a new wall, however, has caused much debate many officials believed that the construction and maintenance of a new wall would simply be too expensive and because of early successes in the fight against the Mongols in their own territory, the project was shelved until the 1400s, after the relationship with the Mongols deteriorated.
An interesting note official documents Ming didn t refer to chang cheng, because he was still so firmly associated in Chinese folklore with the widespread suffering caused by disgraced First Qin Emperor fifteen centuries earlier, it was called the border bian cheng wall.
Finally, the Ming rulers decided to begin construction of a new wall impregnable They also came to the conclusion that the more the walls were necessary military outposts near the northern border is the first line of defense against invaders These supposedly new garrisons were outside the base of operations for a military community, whose purpose was defensive and diplomatic the second inner line of defense consisted of former walls, which were linked by new walls and forts to mountain passes.
The walls of the Ming Dynasty more than 100 years to complete but not always continuously given constant internal political struggles in the late 16th century, the Great Wall 2 0 was mostly completed the Ming Walls are undoubtedly the heyday of the Great Wall built.
After nearly three hundred years, the Ming Dynasty ended in 1644 after the collapse of corruption, inefficiency, and finally the internal rebellion Ming was followed by the Qing Dynasty as the Mongol Yuan Dynasty, Qing was a non-Chinese state of the north, called the Manchus.
Unlike the Mongols, however, the Manchus took power through the back door in 1644, weakened the Ming government was quickly overrun by a peasant led rebellion At the same time, the Manchus who coexisted relatively peacefully with Ming had their opening and their army marched to the gates of the Great Wall on the first pass under heaven aka, Shanhaiguan.
General Ming in charge of Shanhaiguan was caught in a dilemma, he finally decided they could not defeat the rebellion only then it is allied with the Manchus, he opened the doors and allowed them to walk through the Manchus marched in Beijing, helped defeat the rebels and declared the beginning of a new dynasty, the Qing dynasty.
Great Wall historians like to emphasize that it is ironic Ming spent over a century building the wall to defend against the Mongol invasion of letting another north of the foreign group simply walk through and take above.
During the Qing Dynasty, the wall fell into disrepair again the one hand, there was no threat of North steppe people, the Qing rulers were there and had good relations with other states North more importantly, they soon their hands full with a new threat arrived by sea the maritime powers of Europe as well as Japan's most powerful and aggressive.
It wasn t until 1930 that the Great Wall has played a significant role in Chinese history before and during the Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945 the Chinese United Front nationalists and communists actually used the great Wall at its destination as a physical barrier to defend against the invasion from the north what the odds.
At the time, Japan had control of the areas north of the Wall, in Manchuria when the Japanese market troops south to attack Beijing in 1933, they encountered an unexpected obstacle along a wall blocking their way curiously was concentrated most of the fighting near Shanhaiguan where the Manchus marched in.
After three days of intense fighting, the most modern and well-oiled Japanese troops broke well today, thousands of bullet holes are visible along the wall battles against the Japanese.
Twelve years later, Shanhaiguan and the Japanese again make history at the Great Wall Despite the fact that Japan had lost World War II, and officially handed over 1945 other Japanese troops hunkered down there have refused to disarm perhaps because of their ever giving the code of honor of the samurai August 30, 1945, the Chinese supported by shelling of the Soviet red army supposedly killed 3,000 Japanese soldiers in the space of three hours.
For three centuries after the Ming Dynasty collapsed, Chinese intellectuals tended to regard the wall as a symbol of what was wrong with China they said often that he was a colossal waste of lives and resources that was less a symbol of the strength of the country of a paralyzing sense of insecurity of China.
As a result, the wall was considered a cultural treasure in the relatively modern Chinese history Although this is Chairman Mao Zedong who said that you are not a real man if you haven t climbed the Great Wall, the communist revolution did nothing to preserve the wall.
On the contrary, the Great Wall like so destroyed ancient Chinese temples, relics, and art have been denounced as ancient symbols of feudalism that held China in 1960, Mao's Red Guard carried this contempt for revolutionary excesses, destroying feudal relic sections.
Even before the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards, Mao also actively encouraged farmers to use use stones and bricks of the wall as a free building material During the Mao era, and even beyond, the peasants looted clay walls to restore their fields, and stones to build houses, walls and outbuildings country.
Fortunately successor Deng Xiaoping Mao preferred to understand the symbolic value of the wall in 1984, he famously declared love China, to restore the Great Wall, and launched a restoration and reconstruction from sections near Beijing Badaling was the first to undergo a major restoration.
Maybe Deng felt that the nation he hoped to build a superpower needed to recover the legacy of a China whose ingenuity had built one of the greatest wonders of the world.
Despite the efforts of Deng, the Great Wall is still under assault by the man and in particular the nature in highly polluted areas Although nobody knows for sure, the Great Wall Chinese authorities have estimated that more than two-thirds of the wall may have been damaged or destroyed, while the rest under siege.
Today's threats come unwary tourists, opportunistic developers, an indifferent public and the ravages of nature Taken together, these forces largely byproducts of China's economic boom jeopardize the wall, its earthen ramparts packed in the deserts of the west to its majestic stone fortifications spanning the wooded hills north of Beijing, near Badaling, where several million tourists converge every year.
The Great Wall is a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage since 1987. However, many residents living near the Wall See more indifferently.
According to William Lindesay, founder and International Friends of director of the Great Wall The next 30 years will be a period in which the destruction of the wall will be much, much less the British geographer was the first foreigner to run the length of the wall and was arrested several times in the process, including being deported Commenting on the preservation of the wall, he even wrote in the 1990s, I saw farmers with towers dismantled hoes, put the bricks in their baskets to carry descent for construction.
Stricter regulations were adopted at the end of 2006 to curb these abuses damage the wall is now Anyone criminal offense took bulldozed sections or whatever's the rave night on both walls of many affronts the wall suffered now faces fines laws, however, contain any provision of additional staff or funds According to Dong Yaohui, president of the China Great Wall Society, the problem is not the lack of laws but the failure to implement them.
Most recently, in 2009, gold prospectors Mongolia irreparably damaged about 300 feet from a 2000 years section of the wall in a remote part of Inner Mongolia In 2006, a construction company was sentenced to a fine of Y500 , about 000 63000 to intentionally damage the wall in order to build a road through a large part of it without the approval of the government, despite several warnings.
The Great Wall is a miracle, a cultural achievement, not only for China, but for humanity, said Dong Yaohui If we let be damaged beyond repair in a generation or two, this will be our lasting shame Click here for the best of the Great Wall Photo Gallery.
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