Dear Language Enthusiast,
Welcome to the Chinese
Monthly, the Internet newsletter from
Transparent Language. In this issue, we will
talk about the Great Wall of China.
Sincerely,
Transparent Language
www.transparent.com
In English:
In this issue, we will talk about the only
man-made structure in the world that is
visible from space–the Great Wall of China.
The Wall is the longest structure ever built
and was erected entirely by hand.
The construction of the Great Wall began in
the seventh century B.C. At that time,
different Chinese kingdoms built walls for
defensive purposes. Qin Shi Huang, the first
emperor to unify China in 221 B.C., linked
three northern kingdoms' walls to prevent
Han invasions. The Wall was then more than
10,000 li long (a li being about a third of a
mile). This is the origin of the name
commonly used in China, "10,000-Li Long
Wall." The Great Wall was China's primary
protective northern barrier for the next two
thousand years.
There are many stories about the Great Wall.
Chinese legend says that a peasant woman's
cry collapsed the Wall in the Qin Dynasty
(221 B.C.-206 B.C.). Shortly after Meng
Jiangnu got married, her husband was
conscripted to work on the Wall. She worried
that her husband would suffer from the cold
weather in the north, so she made a cotton-
padded jacket for him and walked from their
home in the southern China to the Wall. When
she finally got there, people told her that
her husband was dead. After hearing this,
Meng Jiangnu wailed so miserably that 20 li
of the wall collapsed. She found her
husband's body in a pit and leaped in,
committing suicide.
After the Qin Dynasty, several succeeding
dynasties renovated the Great Wall. In the
Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220), Emperor Wu-
Di began the second large-scale rebuilding.
He extended the Wall three hundred miles
across the Gobi desert. He also built beacon
towers on the wall. When enemy forces
approached, the garrisoned armies would emit
smoke from the towers to warn the rear. The
columns of smoke represented the size of the
forces. The beacon system delivered messages
much faster than riders on horseback.
The last major renovation of the Great Wall
was launched at the beginning of the Ming
Dynasty (1368 -1644). The construction
lasted for two hundred years. Compared to
other dynasties, the length, height,
thickness and decoration of the Ming Wall
were the greatest, pushing construction
technologies to the limit. During this time,
the wall was extended across some of the
most forbidding terrain in China, rising in
places at angles of 70 degrees.
Today, the Great Wall is about 4,160 miles
long and averages 7.6 meters in height. It
is five to nine meters thick at the base and
slopes to 3.7 meters at the top. The United
Nation's Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization added the Wall to the
World Heritage List in 1987. Although the
Wall no longer serves the purpose of
defense, it has become a symbol of the
Chinese civilization to people worldwide and
attracts many visitors every year.
Sources:
Britannica.com
The Columbia Encyclopedia
The Encyclopedia of World Geography
Discovery.Com
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov (NASA)
