Visit the Great Wall of China

Along the Great Wall of China. When viewed from space the Great Wall of China appears like a Chinese dragon winding its way across the mountain tops. The Chinese named it “Wan Li Chang Cheng” which translates as ‘Wall of 5000km’. It begins in the famous Shanhai Pass and runs its length to Lop Nur in the Xinjiang Uygur Region.

This is not an exaggeration, as the Great Wall was actually 7,200 km long. The Wall varies in height from around 4.5m up to 9m. The width also varies, from 4.5m up to 8m. Unlike it appears in tourist photographs the structure is not just built of stone, at various points along its length it is also constructed from bricks, sand, timber, clay or whatever is available along China's ever changing terrain. The stone walls are not solid stone; they are filled with hard packed earth.

The Wall was built over a very protracted period of 1800 years, from 221BC to1644AD, by a series of Chinese royal dynasties, the Qin, the Han and the Ming. Over this long period of history many tens of millions of Chinese peasants worked on the wall, as forced labor, often dying in the process. They all worked with one aim, to keep out the ‘Huns’ from Mongolia and Manchuria, who continuously attempted to take over Northern areas of China.

The first Emperor of China named Qin Shi Huang, began the construction of this massive building project. With amazing effort and dedication, the Qin Dynasty managed to build 4,800km of the wall in just 10 years that is the equivalent of over one kilometer every single day.

They were followed by the Han Dynasty who further extended the Wall across the formidable Gobi Desert. They also built Watchtowers along the wall, which included smoke spirals, which acted as an alarm system. One warning column of smoke would mean that 100 men were attacking the wall; two smoke columns indicated that over 500 soldiers were attacking, and so forth.

The Great Wall as we consider it today can be credited to the mighty Ming Dynasty. By the time they came to power the Great Wall have lost all of its magnificence and the fallen into piles of rubble. The Ming emperors set out a plan that would take two hundred years to complete. They rebuilt the wall using new technology that involved mixing rice flour to produce mortar to hold the structure together, as it remains to this day.

These days only approximately 20% of the original wall still remains fully intact. Much of the rest as either melted away with erosion, or has been plundered for its materials for construction over the last few hundred years.

The first modern renovations of the wall were centred on Badaling which was originally built in the early 1500’s and is over 600 m above sea level. This is the most well visited section of the wall, and stretches for just under 5 km and includes 19 watchtowers. It is wide enough at this point to allow ten soldiers to march along the wall at one time.

In the North West of China near the town of Huairou is the so called Mutianyu section of the great Wall. This section winds along the mountain tops before dropping down to form a triangle shaped area. The Jiankou Great Wall can be found adjoining this Mutianyu section of the wall, the Jiankou is notable for having been built on a treacherous mountain incline.

The Jinshanling and Simatai sections of the wall were built to guard the Gubeikou Gateway. This section of the wall is popular with tourists because it encompasses most of architectural styles of utilized in the building of 67 Ming towers in just a 10km stretch of the Great Wall of China.