Great Wall of China

The Rise and F all of mainland chinaw bes expectant argue The rise and fall of Chinas long palisade the race to save a world treasure particular(prenominal) Report Current Events, Sept 27, 2002 Save a personal model of this article and quickly find it again with Furl. net. Its free Save it. do OF BRICK, STONE, and dirt, the enormous ring twists and turns crosswise Chinas landscape like a colossus dragon. It shoot the breezems to rise out of the sea at Bo Hal gulf, a place k instantly to local anaesthetic people as Laolongtou, or the old dragons head. The fence in harmonisely stretches across the plains, crawls along the sides of mountains and scales their peaks as it spans the Asian countryside.This ancient wonder, built solely by hand, of hug drug overwhelms visitors. On a trip to the wall in 1909, French scholar Auguste Gilbert de Voisins said, Nothing stops it, nothing gets in its way seeing it at this point, one king believe it to be eternal. Today, however, neglect, misuse, and modernization threaten the giant dragon. Although the wall in one case stretched nearly 4,000 miles across Chinas northern border, only about 1,500 miles of Chinas considerable Wall remain. The rest has locomote apart and disappeared. This year, the World Monuments Fund placed the Great Wall on its list of 100 Most Endangered Sites.The group hopes to protect whats left over(p) of the wall and to encourage the Chinese government and others to save the historic structure. match to a World Monuments Fund report, The wall was built to protect China now China must protect it. The Great Wall of Qin Chinas Great Wall didnt start out so great. Begun nearly 2,300 years ago, the structure was a series of small fortifications. As early as 600 B. C. , people in China built small walls virtually their homes and cities for protection. Soldiers guarded the gates around the city walls during the day and swung the gates shut at night.During the Warring States item (475-22 1 B. C. ), leaders struggling for control of China built walls around stainless kingdoms. Soldiers occupied forts and towers on the wall and fought to protect the borders of the independent states. In 221 B. C. , Qin Shi Huangdi matching the kingdoms and became the send-off emperor of China. Qin Shi Huangdi gave orders to frame of reference the chang cheng, or long wall, to protect China from northern nomads who were trying to engage China. Laborers built the wall by connection walls constructed earlier and extending the length of the wall to nearly 3,100 miles.With the help of Gen durationl Meng Tian, Qin Shi Huangdi lucid 800,000 mensoldiers, prisoners, and peasantsto build the wall. Where stones were plentiful, workers used stones to build parts of the wall. Where stones were scarce, workers used dirt. To build the wall, laborers dug up large amounts of dirt and carried it to the wall. The workers therefore piled dirt into woody frames about 6 inches deep. They used woode n instruments to pound the dirt until it became a solid mass. This process was repeated until the wall reached a desired height.Workers then moved the wooden frames to the next section of the wall and began the process again. gibe to legend, Qin Shi Huangdi condemned workers to remainder for making the slightest construction errors. Today, few traces of the Qin wall remain. After Qin Shi Huangdis death in 210 B. C. , workers abandoned the wall and it eventually crumbled into ruins. The Ming Fortress Nearly all of Qin Shi Huangdis successors built walls along Chinas northern frontier. The fortifications, however, never fully protected China from invasion.During the early 13th century, Genghis Khan, leader of the Mongols, a nomad group from the north, united several(prenominal) nomad armies and conquered a lot of Asia. In 1279, Genghis Khans grandson, Kubilai Khan, overthrew the Chinese emperor and established the kwai dynasty (1279-1368). The Yuan emperors did not maintain the old wall or build a new one, so the wall began to fall into ruins. After Khan died in 1227, a Chinese farmer named Zu Yuanzhang led a rebel armament and helped overthrow the last Yuan emperor. When Zu Yuanzhang seized power, he established the Ming dynasty (1368-1644).Zu and his successors decided to remodel Chinas Great Wall, which lay to the highest degreely in ruins, to keep the Mongols from returning to recapture China. For nearly 200 years, thousands of workers toiled away on the Ming wallreinforcing the Great Wall with bricks and stone. The Ming wall eventually blocked mountain passes that Mongol soldiers had used to invade China. When Mongol tribes attacked the wall, Chinese soldiers alerted others by lighting betoken fires. When guards from a signal tower saw the fire, they built another fire, passing the warning along the wall.The number of smoke plumes and open firenon shots fired indicated to Chinese soldiers how many confrontation soldiers were approaching. The Ming government taxed the people of China heavily to pay for construction of the Great Wall. In 1644, the Manchus, a nomad tribe from northeast of Peking, helped rebels overthrow the Ming rulers and started the next era in Chinese historythe Qing dynasty. During the Qing dynasty, Manchu forces drove out Mongol invaders and broad Chinas border farther north beyond the Great Wall. The wall no longer protected Chinas border, so construction stopped and soldiers abandoned the fortresses.The Wall At Risk Today, Chinese officials warn that the Great Wall is once again under attack. But this time the wall is not in danger from invaders. Instead local people and tourists alike threaten the wall. ring Yaohui, head of the Great Wall Society of China, recently persuaded a local government to levy a fine on residents in a small village after they demolished part of the wall to curb bricks for new houses. And in 1999, officials in the autonomous region of Nei Monggol (once called Inner Mongolia) plough through the Great Wall to build a highway. Nature has excessively taken its toll.At the walls western end, desert sandstorms realize worn down much of Chinas great wonder. Dong Yaohui said, Saving the Great Wall is now the most urgent t assume facing our country. Its splendor must be rebuilt. Preservationists also argue that commercial developers are destroying the aesthetic beauty of Chinas Great Wall. Developers have got turned parts of the wall into a tourist destination. Visitors to the wall at the Badaling section near capital of Red China can take one of basketball team cable cars to the top of the wall, bungee-jump off a section of the wall, paraglide along the wall, or ride a toboggan down the mountain.William Lindesay, an Englishman living in China, organised a group to protect and preserve what is left of the wall. Lindesays group, the International Friends of the Great Wall, works with local villagers to pick up garbage along the wall and make sure the wall is protected from vandals. The wall is in gruelling, grave danger, Lindesay said. The Chinese government also hopes to protect the national treasure. Officials in Beijing are considering legislation that, if passed, would convict anyone caught littering or defacing the Great Wall to a jail term of up to seven years.Arthur Waldron, a historian, wrote, Whatever the incoming brings, the image of the wall as a symbol of China seems butt to endure. Get Talking Ask students why do you think the Great Wall of China was built? What is the approximate length of the wall? What might have been some of the challenges faced by the walls builders? What might the wall be threatened today? Background The Great Wall is among the most customary tourist destinations in China, along with the Forbidden City in Beijing, and the Terra Cotta Warriors at Xian.Qin Shi Huangdi (the first emperor of China) unified the nation of China and built the first Great Wall. After Qin Shi Huandi died, he was buri ed in a tomb with an army of terra cotta warriors and horses at Xian. In 1974, Qin Ski Huangdis tomb was discovered by a group of archaeologists. During the Qin Dynastywhen the first Great Wall was builtworkers toiled for ten years to build the wall, at a rate of about 25 miles per month. Portions of the wall have been rebuilt during the past centuryincluding the section of the wall at Badaling, near Chinas capital of Beijing. Many myths surround Chinas Great Wall.One of the most normal is that the Great Wall is the only man-made structure visible from the Moon. However, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), The Great Wall can barely be seen from the Shuttle, so it would not be possible to see it from the Moon with the naked eye. Doing More After students have read the story, ask them to research other sites listed as endangered by the World Monuments Fund. What are the biggest threats to those sites? Why are the sites considered important? When s tudents have finished gathering the information, have them present their findings to the class.