Nearly everyone has heard of the huge stone wall known as the Great Wall of China. The Great Wall of China was built mainly to protect the Chinese Empire from the Mongolians and other invaders. Successive Chinese dynasties all had a hand in repairing, re-building, lengthening, modifying and preserving the Great Wall. There are huge discrepancies regarding the length of the wall.

One account puts the length of the wall at over 3,720 miles. Richard Nixon said it was 2,484 miles long, while Time magazine favored 1,684 miles. What is a fact is that the Great Wall of China extends from Kansu in the west to the Yellow Sea in the east. Ancient records reported that at least one million slaves and prisoners of war were used to build this wall. Many laborers died from exhaustion and starvation while working on this colossal task. Their bodies were added to the rubble and masonry as the quickest means of disposal. For centuries, the Wall was known as “the longest cemetery in the world.”

Shi Huangdi was credited with linking the various sections of the wall, which was then known as the Wan Li Chang Cheng (Ten Thousand Li Long Wall), to form what is now known as the Great Wall of China. It twists and winds along hill crests, gorges, and rivers. Its length extends 3,000 miles westward: from the China Sea town of Shanhaiguan to Gansu province. To put this in perspective, it is equivalent to the distance from Los Angeles to Boston, or from London to beyond the Urals mountain chains that separate Europe from Asia.

History of Great Wall

It’s generally believed that China began to build the Great Wall during the Spring and Autumn Periods when the country was in a great chaos, with rival states fighting for territory and power. to protect their states and people, independent walls were successively built along their states’ borders by those states. However, it’s not until the Qin Dynasty after the country was unified by Qinshihuang, did the mass construction of the Great Wall took place.

In 221 BC, after Emperor Qinshihuang defeated the other six states and unified China, he decided to link up all the separate high walls built by its rivals, especially the walls in the northern part of China built by the states of Qin, Zhao and Yan as a great defense project to ward off the harassment by the Huns. When it was finished, the total length of the Wall exceeds 5, 000 kilometers. The Qin Great Wall winds its way from Linrao, Gansu Province in the west to the Liaodong Peninsula, Liaoning Province.

In the Chinese history, the Great Wall built in four dynasties exceed 10, 000 li in length: the dynasties of Qin, Han, Jing and Ming. Among them, the Han Great Wall, from Liaodao in the east to Yanze in the west, is the longest: more than 10, 000 kms.

The construction of the Great wall had never ceased for nearly all the Chinese fuadal dynasties. The smaller and less powerful dynasties of North Wei, North Qi, East Wei and North Zhou all spent a lot on the Great Wall. The Shui Dynasty rebuilt the Wall for 6 times while its following dynasty of Tang, the culmination of China’s feudal age, never built the Great wall owing to its superior power and advantage over its northern nomad neighbors. Song Dynasty had the history of building Great Wall against the invasions of Liao, Xixia and Jing in the north and northwest. The Jing Great wall, 5, 000 kilometers long, is the longest among those built by a government of minority ethnic people. And the vast Empire of Yuan did not have a history of building the Great Wall.

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