39 anecdotes on the Wall of China

Everything you need to know about the Wall of China before going to visit it: Through 39 anecdotes, you will know about everything on the Wall of China!

Great Wall of China , one of the largest monuments in the world, was registered with UNESCO in 1987. Like a gigantic dragon, the Great Wall winds through the deserts, meadows, mountains and plateaus, and extends over 8,851.8 kilometers east to the west of the China . With a history of more than 2,000 years, some sections are in ruins or disappeared. However, the Wall of China is still one of the most interesting attractions of our world due to its architectural and historical grandeur. Here is a list of facts and anecdotes to know before visit the Great Wall of China .

In your opinion, can we really see the Wall from the Moon?

1. While the Great Wall of China is not part of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, it is generally included in the Seven New Wonders of the World .

2. In 1987, UNESCO placed the Great Wall of China on the list of major national and historical sites in the world.

3. Unlike the myth we can believe, the Great Wall is not a single continuous wall built in one time. In reality, the wall is a discontinuous network of segments built by different dynasties to protect the northern border of China.

4. During its construction, the Great Wall was called the "longest graveyard on earth" because many people died by building it. According to the testimonies, she cost life to over a million people.

5. The Great Wall of China is also known as Wanli Changcheng or literally "the long wall" of 10,000 Li (a li is a distance measurement of about 500 m). The main wall is approximately 3,460 km long with a supplement of 2,860 km of sections and foothills.

6. The Great Wall of China is the longest man-made work in the world.

7. The most visited section of the Great Wall is in Badaling, near Beijing. This part was built during the Ming Dynasty. It was the first section of the wall to open to tourists in 1957. This is where U.S. President Nixon visited, and it is also here that there was the arrival of a cycling course at the 2008 Summer Olympic Games.

8. From the seventh century before Jesus Christ, a number of small walls that served as fortifications and watch towers had been built around the country. At the beginning, each state (Chu, Qi, Wei, Han, Zhao Yan, and Qin) which then united in the first Chinese empire had their own individual wall.

9. The length of all Chinese defence walls built over the last 2,000 years is about 50,000 km. Earth's circumference is 40,075 km.

10. The first "long" walls were built by Qin Shi Huang (260-210 BC), from the Qin Dynasty, which unified China's first, but it is more famous for its Mausolée de l’empereur Qin which is dedicated to him. It is from the Qin dynasty (pronounced “chin”) that the modern word “China” is derived. Few of these first walls remain...

11. Because the Great Wall was discontinuous, the Mongolian invaders led by Gengis Khan (the “universal sovereign”) had no problem passing through the wall and then conquered most of the north of China between the years 1211 and 1223. They ruled all of China until 1368 when the Ming defeated the Mongols.

12. The dynasties after the Qin, which reconstructed and continued the wall, were the Han (206 BC-220 AD), Sui (581-618 AD), Jin (1115-1234) and, most famously, Ming (1368-1644). What one can see and visit again today are the brick stones and walls mainly of the Ming Dynasty.

13. Unlike common belief, the Great Wall of China cannot be seen from the moon without help. This widespread myth seems to have begun in 1893 in American magazine The Century then resurfaced in 1932, when Robert Ripley de Ripley’s Believe It or Not Claims that the Great Wall can be seen from the moon, while the first space flight would arrive decades later. It is indeed difficult to see the Wall of China from an orbit close only to the naked eye.

14. It is common to hear that the mortar used to seal the stones was made from human bones or that men are buried inside the Great Wall to strengthen it. However, mortar was actually made from rice flour and not from human bones or other.

15. According to the legend, a serviable dragon traced the route of the Great Wall for the work. The builders then followed the tracks of the dragon.

16. A popular legend on the Great Wall is the story of Meng Jiang Nu, the wife of a farmer who was forced to work on the wall during the Qin Dynasty. When she heard the death of her husband, she cried until the wall collapsed, revealing her bones so that she could bury them.

17. At some time, family members of those who died working on the Great Wall had to carry the coffin to the top of the wall where there was a white cock in a cage. The rooster’s song was supposed to keep the spirit of the deceased awake until they crossed the Wall, because the family feared that the spirit escaped and wandered forever along the Wall.

18. Uranus, or Tian Wang, who was Paradise personification, is often portrayed on the reliefs found in strategic locations and passages on the Great Wall.

19. Historian Arthur Walden has established that the popular concept of a Great Wall, and even the name itself, has not entered Chinese consciousness directly from the Chinese tradition, but rather from European sources that idealized the wall. In fact, the wall rarely appears in Chinese art before the twentieth century.

20. Voltaire (1694-1778) examined the Great Wall several times, but he has always remained undecided on what the real subject was. He thought, for example, that the pyramids of Egypt were “children” compared to the Wall, which he was an “excellent work”. Then at another time he calls the Wall a "mass to fear"...

21. Franz Kafka (1883-1924) welcomed the Great Wall as a great feat of human engineering. He even wrote a short article entitled "The Great Wall of China".

22. During the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-1978), the Great Wall was considered a sign of despotism, and people were encouraged to take bricks from the Wall and use them for their farms or houses.

23. The visit of President Nixon to China in 1972 developed tourism on the Great Wall. With the increase in tourism, wall sections were restored, and after the death of Mao Zedong, the Chinese government recognized the wall as a unifying symbol of the nation.

24. The Great Wall has often been compared to a dragon. In China, the dragon is a protective deity and is synonymous with spring and vital energy. The Chinese believed the Earth was full of dragons that gave shape to the mountains.

25. During the Ming Dynasty, almost a million soldiers defended the Great Wall of the "barbarians" and non-Chinese.

26. The labour force to build the Great Wall came from the border guards, peasants, unemployed intellectuals, disgraced nobles, and detained. In fact, there was a special sentence during the Qin and Han dynasties under which convicted criminals were forced to work on the Wall.

27. Before the Ming Dynasty, the wall was built with beaten earth, adobe and stones. About 70% is made up of beaten land and teenager. Bricks were used after the Ming Dynasty.

28. The Chinese invented the wheelbarrow and used it intensively in the construction of the Great Wall.

29. A section of the Great Wall in the Gansu province can disappear in the next 20 years due to erosion.

30. The watch towers were built at regular intervals along the Great Wall and could reach more than 12 meters high. They were used as vigies and fortresses or to house troops and store supplies. They were also used as a signal post, where fire torches or flags were used for messages. They also represented a wide variety of architectural styles.

31. The western part of the Great Wall, with a long chain of watch towers, served as a defense for those travelling on the Silk Road.

32. Parts of the Great Wall were surrounded by defensive doves, which were either filled with water or left as ditches.

33. To defend the Great Wall, the Chinese used sophisticated weapons such as axes, masses, lances, crossbows, hallebardes, and a local invention: gunpowder.

34. The last battle of the Great Wall took place in 1938 during the Sino-Japanese war. Traces of bullets are still visible in the Wall in Gubeikou.

35. Many temples were built along the Great Wall for the worship of the god of war, Guandi.

36. The Great Wall of China is 7.6 m high in some places and varies between 4.5 to 9 meters wide.

37. The highest point of the Great Wall is in Beijing at Heita Mountain (1 534 meters). The lowest point is in Laolongtou (sea level).

38. About 15 to 16 million people visit the Wall of China every year. The government limited the number of visitors to 16 million to preserve the structure.

39. While the Great Wall is currently a symbol of national pride, China is discussing how to manage and protect the Wall while controlling the development of mass tourism to it. Two organizations, the China Great Wall Society and the International Friends of the Great Wall are dedicated to preserving it.

Have you visited the Great Wall? If you go to Beijing, will you go to visit her?