The Great Wall
The Great Wall is an ancient Chinese fortification, built to protect the Empire of China since the 3rd century BC against the raids of “barbarians” from Mongolia and Manchuria. The main purpose of the Wall was not to prevent people from crossing but rather to prevent them from bringing their horses.
The Wall was built during the reign of The First Emperor, the main leader of the short-lived Qin Dynasty. However, on the one hand the Wall was not built out of the blueprint, but created by the joining of several local walls built by the Warring States; on the other hand it has been renovated and extended by several later dynasties, and it got most of its current shape during the Ming Dynasty. The Wall stretches over a formidable 6,400 km from the boundary with Korea on the Yalu River to the Gobi desert. There have been four major discrete (constructions and renovations of the Great Wall: the Qin Dynasty, the Han Dynasty, the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period, the Ming Dynasty).
The Ming Dynasty Great Wall starts on the eastern end at Shanhai Pass, Qinghuangdao, in Hebei province next to Bohai Gulf. Spanning nine provinces and 100 counties, it ends on the western end at Jiayu Pass located in northwest Gansu Province. Jiayu Pass was intended to greet traveler along the Silk Road.
Even though the Great Wall ends at Jiayu Pass, there are beacon towers extending beyond Jiayu Pass along the Silk Road. These towers communicated by smoke to signal invasion.
The Manchus crossed the Great Wall by convincing a crucial general Wu Sangui to open the gates of Shanhai Pass and allow the Manchus to cross. After they conquered inland China, the Wall was of no strategic value as the people who the Wall was intended to keep out were ruling the country.
The Forbidden City
The biggest and most complete ancient building complex is the former Imperial Palace (also known as the Forbidden City) in Beijing. It was the imperial palace of both the Ming and the Qing dynasties. It was first completed in 1420, covering an area of 720,000 square meters.
Lying in the center of Beijing, the Forbidden City (literal meaning: Purple Forbidden City) was the imperial palace during the Ming and the Qing dynasties. Now known as the Palace Museum, it is to the north of Tiananmen Square.
Although no longer occupied by royalty, the Forbidden City remains a symbol of Chinese sovereignty. The Forbidden City appears on the face of the seal of the People’s Republic of China.
The construction of the city started in 1406, and it took 14 years and an estimated 300,000 men to build it.
Rectangular in shape, it is the world’s largest palace complex. Surrounded by a six-meter-deep moat and a ten-meter- high wall are 9,999 buildings. The wall has a gate on each side. Opposite the Tiananmen Gate, to the north is the Gate of Divine Might, which faces Jingshan Park. The distance between these two gates is 960 meters, while the distance between the gates in the east and west walls is 750 meters. The walls are thick and squat and were specifically designed to withstand attack by cannons. There are unique and delicately structured towers on each of the four corners of the curtain wall. These afford views over both the palace and the city outside.
The Forbidden City ceased being the political center of China in 1911 with the abdication of the last Emperor of China. However, the last emperor was allowed (and in fact required) to live within the Forbidden City until a coup in 1924. Until then fourteen emperors of the Ming Dynasty and ten emperors of the Qing Dynasty had reigned here.
Having been the imperial palace for some five centuries, it houses numerous rare treasures and curiosities.
The Terracotta Army
The Terracotta Army (Soldier and Horse Figures), inside the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor, was discovered in March 1974 during the sinking of wells for farmland irrigation construction near Xi’an, Shaanxi Province. Professional excavation of the vaults started soon thereafter.
The army consists of more than 8,000 life-size tomb terracotta figures of warriors and horses buried in 210-209 BC with the self- proclaimed First Emperor of Qin (Qin Shi Huang).
With their burial, it was believed that the Emperor would still have troops at his command. The Terracotta Army was buried in battle formation in 3 vaults, 1.5 kilometers east of the tomb of the Emperor, which is 33 kilometers east of Xi’an. The three vaults, measuring 4-8 meters deep, have been excavated and a museum set up on the ruins, called Xi’an First Qin Emperor’s Terracotta Army Museum. Vault One was opened to the public in 1979, and the whole museum was completed in 1994. All the figures are displayed as first unearthed.
In 1980 two painted bronze chariots were discovered 20 meters west of the tomb of the Emperor. Consisting of 3,000 parts, each of the chariots is driven by an imperial charioteer and drawn by 4 horses. The bridles (and saddles) of the horses are inlaid with gold and silver designs and the body of the NO. 2 chariot has its sliding windows hollow cut . Both are half life size and are now displayed in the Museum.
In 1987, UNESCO added the Terracotta Army and the Tomb of the First Qin Emperor to the list of the World Heritage Sites.
The burial site covers 56.25 square kilometers. Inside a covered area, visitors can see the clay soldiers and watch the archaeologists at work. Only three sections of the site have been dug up. The Emperor’s grave remains untouched.
The terra-cotta soldiers give us a window to the past. Thanks to this discovery, we can better understand China’s ancient history.
The First Emperor of China got his wish. He will not be forgotten.
China’s World Records: A Land of Wonders
- The Giant Panda of China is one of the rarest animals in the world. Giant pandas live in remote high mountains in Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces and eat bamboo. They are a surviving species of the Fourth Ice Age and are known as a “living fossil”. They are regarded as China’s national treasure.
- The oldest tree in the world is China’s gingko, which first appeared during the Jurassic Age, some 160 million years ago.
- The greatest canyon in the world is China’s Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon, 504.6 kilometers long and 6,009 meters deep at its deepest point. Its average depth is 2,268 meters.
- The highest plateau in the world is China’s Qinghai-Tibet Plateau with an average height of 4,500 meters above sea level. The Himalayan Mountain is located in southern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and its highest peak, Mount Qomolangma (or Mount Everest) is 8,848.13 meters above sea level. It is the highest peak in the world.
- The Chinese language is the language that has the largest number of speakers, more than 1.3 billion, throughout the world.
- The biggest and earliest encyclopedia in the world is the Yongle Encyclopedia (complied between 1403Ñ1408 in the Ming Dynasty by more than 2,000 scholars). It consists of 22,877 volumes.
- The largest public square in the world is Tiananmen Square in Beijing. It covers an area of 40 hectares.
- The earliest and longest man-made canal in the world is the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal. The canal was first built in the 5th century BC and was substantially extended twice during the Sui and Yuan dynasties. The canal begins at Tongxian County in Beijing in the north and ends in Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province in the south and is 1,801 kilometers in length.
- The biggest and most complete ancient building complex is the former Imperial Palace (also known as the Forbidden City) in Beijing. It was the imperial palace of both the Ming and Qing dynasties. It was first completed in 1420 and covers an area of 720,000 square meters.
- The longest man-made architecture in the world is the Great Wall in China. It climbs and descends on the ridges of mountains in northern China and has a total length of more than 6,700 kilometers. It was first started during the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States periods.
