Name:
The Great Wall
Country:
China
Type:
Fortification
Size:
21,196.18 km
(13,170.70 mi)
Opened:
220 BC
2. The Great Wall is not a continuous line: there are side walls, circular walls, parallel walls, and sections with no wall (high mountains or rivers form a barrier instead).
3. In the Qin Dynasty (221—206 BC), glutinous rice flour was used to bind the Great Wall bricks.
4. The Gubeikou Section of the Great Wall has bullet holes in it, evidence of the last battle fought at the Great Wall.
5. During the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), many Great Wall bricks were used in building homes, farms, or reservoirs.
6. The northwestern Great Wall sections are likely to disappear in 20 years, due to desertification and change in human land use.
7. The official length is 21,196.18 km (13,170.7 mi).
8. The Great Wall is more than 2,300 years old.
9. The Ming Great Wall crosses 9 provinces and municipalities: Liaoning, Hebei, Tianjin, Beijing, Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Ningxia, Gansu.
10. Badaling is the most visited section (63,000,000 visitors in 2001). And in the first week of May and October, the visitor flow can be up to 70,000 per day.
11. The average height of the Great Wall at Badaling and Juyong Pass is 7.88 meters, and the highest place is 14 meters high.
12. Nearly 1/3 of the Great Wall has disappeared without trace.
13. Since 1644, when the Ming Dynasty was overthrown, no further work has been done on the Great Wall.
14. More than 1,000, 000 laborers were recruited for the construction of this huge project.
15. As a must-see in China, it attracts 50 million visitors every year, and had been visited by more than 460 state heads and VIPs from around the world.
16. The toilsome work took many lives. It is estimated that around 400,000 builders were died and some are said to be buried in the long wall. That gives the dreadful saying of the ‘longest cemetery’.
However, no bones have ever been found in the Wall.
17. The most well-known and popular legend of The Great Wall of China is the story of “Men Jiangnu’s Bitter Weeping,” which tells of a woman whose husband was killed building the wall. Her tears were so bitter that the section of the wall collapsed to reveal her husband’s bones so she could bury him.
18. It never stopped an invasion
The Wall was easily overrun or avoided by northern tribes.
19. The most renowned section of the Great Wall of China is known as the Ming Wall. The Ming Great Wall was about 5,500 kilometers long.
20. Each year, over 10,000,000 tourists visit the Great Wall of China.