Page 13 - The Great Wall of China

Did you know?

When Emperor Qin Shi Huang ordered construction of the Great
Wall around 221 B.C., the labor force that built the wall was made
up largely of soldiers and convicts. It is said that as many as
400,000 people died during the wall’s construction; many of these
workers were buried within the wall itself.

The Great Wall of China is an ancient Around 220 B.C., Qin Shi Huang,
series of walls and fortifications, the first emperor of a unified China
totaling more than 13,000 miles in under the Qin Dynasty, ordered that
length, located in northern China. earlier fortifications between states
Perhaps the most recognizable be removed and a number of existing
symbol of China and its long and walls along the northern border be
vivid history, the Great Wall was joined into a single system that would
originally conceived by Emperor Qin extend for more than 10,000 li (a li is
Shi Huang in the third century B.C. about one-third of a mile) and protect
as a means of preventing incursions China against attacks from the north.
from barbarian nomads. The best- Construction of the “Wan Li Chang
known and best-preserved section of Cheng,” or 10,000-Li-Long Wall, was
the Great Wall was built in the 14th one of the most ambitious building
through 17th centuries A.D., during projects ever undertaken by any
the Ming dynasty. Though the Great civilization. The famous Chinese
Wall never effectively prevented general Meng Tian initially directed
invaders from entering China, it came the project, and was said to have used
to function as a powerful symbol a massive army of soldiers, convicts
of Chinese civilization’s enduring and commoners as workers.
strength.
Made mostly of earth and stone, the
Qin Dynasty Construction wall stretched from the China Sea
port of Shanhaiguan over 3,000 miles
Though the beginning of the Great west into Gansu province. In some
Wall of China can be traced to strategic areas, sections of the wall
the fifth century B.C., many of the overlapped for maximum security
fortifications included in the wall date (including the Badaling stretch, north
from hundreds of years earlier, when of Beijing, that was later restored
China was divided into a number of during the Ming Dynasty).
individual kingdoms during the so-
called Warring States Period.

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