The Great Wall, along with Tian’anmen Square and the Terracotta Warriors, is known as one of the great symbols of China.
The Great Wall was built to help defend the northern borders of China against invasions by various nomadic tribes in ancient China. It extends about 5,000 km from east to west. The extant section today was built in the 14th century in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), stretching 8,851.8 km from the Jiayuguan Pass in the west to the Hushan Mountain (in the east of Liaoning Province) in the east. It is 6-7 meters in height and 4-5 meters in width on average. The Great Wall is one of the greatest wonders created by the ancient Chinese people and it has witnessed the time-honored history of China. In 1987, the Great Wall was included on the World Heritage List by UNESCO.
During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period (770 BC-221 BC), various states tended to construct extensive fortifications to defend their borders. These fortifications were connected with city walls, and this was the Great Wall in its early form. Emperors in the following dynasties kept reinforcing the defensive work. Records say that Emperor Yingzheng during the Qin Dynasty (221 BC-206 BC) forced nearly a million people to engage in its construction. Without any machines, all of the work was done by hand. Handicapped by the dangerous topography, it is hard to imagine the difficulty of completing the construction.
The Great Wall is regarded as a treasure of Chinese civilization and one of the great world cultural heritage sites. It enjoys equal fame with the Pyramids in Egypt. Today, whoever visits the Great Wall is amazed at its majesty and magnificence. It represents the indestructible will of the Chinese nation and the indomitable spirit of mankind.
During the 2,000 years of its history, a great number of stories and legends about the Great Wall have been handed down, among which, the legend about Meng Jiangnu was the most popular. It is said that when Emperor Yingzheng of the Qin Dynasty was building the Great Wall, a young man named Fan Xiliang was forced to do labour on the third day after his marriage to Meng Jiangnu. Before long, Fan Xiliang died of exhaustion and cold and hunger, and was buried under the Great Wall. Not knowing the death of her husband, Meng Jiangnu made some padded clothes and set off alone to look for him. When she got to the destination and was told of her husband’s death, the heart-broken woman could not locate the whereabouts of his body. She sat down at the foot of the Great Wall and started crying. She cried day and night, and her wailing made the wall fall. She finally saw her husband’s bones under the wall. Desperate with grief, she jumped into the sea and died.
The construction of the Great Wall was the cruelest forced labor in any dynasty in China. During the nearly 2,000 years from the Spring and Autumn Period (770 BC-476 BC) to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the defense work underwent many repairs, which meant the press ganging of countless number of people in the work. Hence, the story about Meng Jiangnu was typical, telling us that the Great Wall we see today was built at the expense of the lives of countless Chinese people.
“He who has never been to the Great Wall is not a true man” -this is a phrase that comes from a poem written by Mao Zedong (1893-1976) in 1935, showing the great spirit of the Chinese nation and their positive attitude. For years, a great number of tourists from home and abroad have come to climb the Great Wall.
