China, a millenary country, is visited annually by multitudes of tourists. We cannot give you an exact number of people who travel to China per year as leisure and pleasure, but what we can tell you is an approximate figure of how many visits one of its great hallmarks receives: The Great Wall of China. According to the China Tourism Bureau, the big Wall receive daily, on average, 50.533 visitors. This, dividing the sum of all annual visitors in the 365 calendar days. Impressive!
But that's not all, China has a lot to see and is one of the most unique countries that you will visit in your life, if you do, but in addition to the Great Wall and those other places to see that you surely have on that list of much desired trip, there is the Terracotta Army or also known as the "terracotta warriors". Both in this article and in the one that we will publish tomorrow, we are going to tell you about the Great Wall and the terracotta army, two great visits in China that you should visit if you are lucky enough to step on Asian soil one day.
The Great Wall: its construction
“In ancient times, the Zhou ordered Nan Zhong to build a wall in that northern region. Prince Lingwu and Qin Shi Huangdi built the Great Wall. The reason heroic sovereigns undertook these difficult tasks was not their lack of tactical capacity and political intelligence, nor their military weakness, but rather they responded to the principle that it is eminently important to take precautionary measures against barbarians. For this reason a Great Wall must now be built to protect against the barbarians from the north. Although it will take effort and hard work for some time, afterwards we can also enjoy the benefit of a long peace of mind.
This previous text, where the need for construction was reasoned, constitutes a historical document on the birth of the Great Wall, one of the greatest engineering works ever carried out, built to protect the country from invasions from the steppes. The job, started in 221 BC by Meng Tien, it included two phases: on the one hand, to unite the existing sections in the northern borders and, on the other, to complete them to reinforce its military effectiveness.
The materials employed in the construction of the wall were earth, stone, wood and ceramics, with which a wall of 6800 kilometers long, between 7 and 8 meters high and with a 5,5 meter wide crenellated walkway; counting its branches and secondary constructions, it is calculated that it has 21 196 kilometers long.
El "Great wall of ten thousand li" As it is called in the annals of Chinese history, it is the largest military work ever carried out in the history of mankind. Thousands of people participated in this construction, mostly slaves, prisoners of war and inmates to redeem their sentences. Many of which died in said construction.
Fun Facts About The Great Wall of China
- El January 1, October 2014, a public holiday for the National Day of the People's Republic of China, attended the Great Wall, nothing more, and nothing less, than 8 million people. That day was Wednesday.
- The Chinese themselves visit the wall as an act of relaxation, recreational tourism, and even in pilgrimage as a national symbol.
- Europeans did not know of its existence until the seventeenth century. The Chinese government jealously guarded its borders, and it was not until 1605 that the Jesuit explorer was allowed to pass Góis Bento. The Portuguese then became the first European visitor to set foot on the great wall.
- In total there were more than 800.000 people who participated in its construction and it took more than 2000 years to finish his work.
- La last battle disputed on the wall was in 1938, during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
- In the 1987 UNESCO declared the Great Wall of China a World Heritage Site.
- It was commented at the time that the Great Wall of China could be view from space. This claim was later denied and it was said to be a river.
- More than 2.000 kilometers of the wall that had been buried for hundreds of years were recently discovered.
If you liked to know a little more about the Great Wall and want to do the same about the Terracotta Army, you cannot miss the second article that follows. In it we talk about the second part of this double article. Enjoy it!