Page 32 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - March 2012

The Great Wall(s) of China The Great Wall(s) of Mongolia. * How much would it cost to build And with that, modern China began to China take its present shape, and the Great Wall was today? $260 billion - about half the cost of all annual construction in the U.S. Continued from Page 31 no longer a necessity. As had happened so many * Only an estimated 30% of the Great times in the past, the Wall began to fall into ruin Wall is still intact. as sections were ransacked for building * The Wall averages 25 feet high; it’s 15 Sentries were stationed on the top of the towers to communicate impending dangers up materials. It would be another 500 years before - 30 feet thick at the base. * If the Great Wall began on Florida and and down the Wall. Burning straw and dung, the Chinese government would return its ran due north,it’s so long that it would end at the attention to the Great Wall: In 1937 the they sent signals to the soldiers by fire at night Japanese army attacked four sections of the North Pole. and smoke by day: A single fire or smoke plume Wall, leaving it in further ruins. The Wall * There are enough bricks in the Great meant 100 enemies were coming; two signals languished after the war, as the Communists Wall to build a wall five feet high and three feet denoted 500; three warned of over 1,000 (which was not uncommon). Even more elaborate consolidated their grip on the country. Then, thick around the world at the equator. when China began to re-open its doors to the * Participants in the annual Great Wall signals - flags, clappers, drums, bells and later West in the early 1970s, the wall was saved by Marathon run 26 miles on top of and alongside gunpowder - could communicate exactly where along the Great Wall the danger was coming an invasion of another kind. the Wall, traveling, ascending and descending more than 3,700 steps (soe four feet high) and from. In only a matter of hours, every single THE GREAT WALL TODAY then running on top of uneven stone next to general along the 4,000 miles of the Wall could Where the Great Walls of China’s past sheer cliffs. [] be alerted to an invasion and know whether - were designed primarily to keep people out, and where - they would need to send reinforcements. today’s Wall has the opposite goal: to draw in tourists. Hundreds of thousands of visitors a year marvel at the dragon-like beauty of the CORRODING FROM WITHIN This defense, though impressive,wasn’t world’s largest manmade structure, The Chinese enough to keep the Ming Dynasty’s enemies at people refer to it as Wan-Li-Qang-Qeng, or bay. But it wasn’t the Wall’s fault - it was “10,000-Li Long Wall” (a li is about a third of a mile). because of the growing disillusionment of the The years haven’t been kind to the Great Chinese people, both civilian and military, who believed the government was putting too much Wall, though. Entire sections have been turned into roads or housing developments, others have of the nation’s resources into the Great Wall. eroded off steep mountainsides, and much of What would happen if, instead of constantly what does remain has been vandalized. It wasn’t fighting off the Manchus, the Ming Dynasty just until 1961 that the chinese government took accepted them into the country? The question was answered in 1644, steps to protect the Great Wall, declaring it a when a border general named Wu SanGui historic site and outlawing any vandalism or graffiti. In 1987 it was given another boost opened up the gates of the Wall at an important when the United Nations included it in the List outpost near Beiping. The city was being if World Heritage sites. In the years since, a currently attacked by a small army of angry rebels who wanted to end the Ming’s reign. So massive tourist industry has sprung up, bringing much-needed revenue to the nation. For the first Wu - accepting a promise of a leadership time in five centuries, many of the crumbling positions from a Manchurian general - allowed sections are being rebuilt, keeping alive one of thousands of troops to march into Beiping, humanity’s most enduring and important where they seized the rebels and also quickly achievements. wiped out the last vestiges of the Ming Dynasty, which finally accepted the northern states into GRAT WALL OF FACTS China, extending its borders all the way north to