Must See China - Great Wall

Also known to the Chinese as the '10,000 Li Wall', the Great Wall (Changcheng) stretches from its scattered remains in Liaoning province to Jiayuguan in the Gobi Desert. Standard histories emphasise the unity of the wall; the 'original' wall was begun over 2000 years ago during the Qin dynasty (221-207 BC), when China was unified under Emperor Qin Shihuang.

Separate walls, constructed by independent kingdoms to keep out marauding nomads, were linked together. The effort required hundreds of thousands of workers, many of them political prisoners, and 10 years of hard labour under General Meng Tian. An estimated 180 million cubic metres of rammed earth were used to form the core of the original wall, and legend has it that one of the building materials used was the bones of deceased workers.

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• architectural highlight