The Great Wall of China

Chairman Mao has a saying: “If you haven’t been to the Great Wall, you are not a real man”. Great Wall is a must-see scenic spot for all the people home and abroad. The Great Wall, symbolizing China’s ancient civilization, is one of the world’s most renowned projects. It is a distance of 75 kilometers northwest of Beijing. Its highest point at Badaling is some 800 meters above sea level. The Great Wall is the only man-made structure that can be seen from the moon.

There’re SIX sections of the Great wall opened to the visitors in Beijing. Among them, the Badaling is the most popular one. At the same time, the Mutianyu is considered as the most beautiful section in Beijng. The other four all have its own special landscape.
it is eatimated that more than 400 foreign state leaders had Ascended The Great Wall,including Former U.S. President Richard Nixon,Ronald Reagan,Queen Elizabeth II,Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka.

This fortifications, c.1,500 mi (2,400 km) long, winding across N China from Gansu prov. to Hebei prov. on the Yellow Sea. The wall, running mostly along the southern edge of the Mongolian plain, was erected to protect China from northern nomads. It is an amalgamation of many walls built in ancient times; the first unified wall was built in the 3d cent. B.C. by the Ch’in dynasty. Laborers were conscripted from all over China to build it, and many of them died during the project. The wall’s present form dates substantially from the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), and wall building was particularly intense in the late Ming period. The wall averages 25 ft (7.6 m) in height and is 15 to 30 ft (4.6–9.1 m) thick at the base, sloping to 12 ft (3.7 m) at the top. Guard stations and watchtowers are placed at regular intervals. The eastern part of the wall is earth and stone faced with brick, but in the west it is merely a tamped earth mound. Successive invasions of China from the north demonstrated that the Great Wall had little military utility. The Ch’ing (Manchu) dynasty (1644–1912) did not use the wall and largely abandoned it. Since 1949 two sections N of Beijing have been reconstructed and are open to visitors.

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Vocabulary

长城    chánɡchénɡ    chang-cheng the Great wall     n.