Great Wall of China

The Great Wall of China is a series of fortifications that were built across the historical northern borders of ancient Chinese states and Imperial China. Collectively, they stretch from Liaodong in the east to Lop Lake in the west, from the present-day Sino–Russian border in the north to Tao River in the south. The wall was built to protect against nomadic groups from the Eurasian Steppe.

About Great Wall of China in brief

The Great Wall of China is a series of fortifications that were built across the historical northern borders of ancient Chinese states and Imperial China. The most well-known sections of the wall were built by the Ming dynasty. Apart from defense, other purposes of the Great Wall have included border controls, allowing the imposition of duties on goods transported along the Silk Road, regulation or encouragement of trade and the control of immigration and emigration. Collectively, they stretch from Liaodong in the east to Lop Lake in the west, from the present-day Sino–Russian border in the north to Tao River in the south; along an arc that roughly delineates the edge of the Mongolian steppe. Today, the defensive system of theGreat Wall is generally recognized as one of the most impressive architectural feats in history. It has historically had a number of different names in both Chinese and English. The current English name evolved from accounts of early modern Chinese travelers from early modern European travelers, although other European languages such as German continue to refer to the wall as ‘the Great Wall’ and ‘the Earth Dragon’ The Chinese character 城, meaning city or fortress, is a phono-semantic compound of the \”earth\” radical and phonetic 成. It originally referred to the rampart which surrounded traditional Chinese cities and was used by extension for these walls around their respective states; today, however, it is much more often the Chinese word for ‘city’ The longer Chinese name ‘Ten-Thousand Mile Long Wall’ came from Sima Qian’s description of it in the Records, though he did not name the walls as such.

The AD 493 Book of Song quotes the frontier general Tan Daoji referring to ‘the long wall of 10,000 miles’ closer to the modern name, but the name rarely features in pre-modern times otherwise. The traditional Chinese mile was an often irregular distance that was intended to show the length of a standard village and varied with terrain but was usually standardized at distances around a third of an English mile. Since China’s metrication in 1930, it has been exactly equivalent to 500 metres or 1,600 feet, which would make the wall’s name describe a distance of 5,000 km. However, this use of ‘ten-thousand’ is figurative in a similar manner to the Greek and English myriad and simply means ‘innumerable’ or ‘immeasurable’. Only during the Qing dynasty did the term ‘Long Wall‘ become the catch-all term to mean the many border walls regardless of their location or regardless of the location or their location. During this time, the Chinese were already familiar with the techniques of wall-building by the time of the 8th and 5th centuries of the Spring and Autumn period between the Warring States and Autumn Spring of the 5th century BC. The wall was built to protect against nomadic groups from the Eurasian Steppe.

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