THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA

Now, a symbol of national pride this improsing massives stones and buried bones
is a monument to the this link between vision and paranoia. Between
industriousness and madness. Now a wonder of the ancient and the modern world
The great wall of China.
The great wall of China became the unofficial symbol of the Chinese nation
in 1972 when the President, Richard Nixon Walked upon it during his tour making
US diplomatic recognition of China. The Chinese themselves have not always
taken such pride in the Great wall. It raises where the mountains meet the sea at
Shanhai Guan. And snakes its way across northern China. To the edge of the Gobi
dessert. Formiing the spine of the system of so called long walls that sparwl over
thousand of miles of the Chinese landscape. Estimates of its lengh range
between 1500 and 4000milesand its grandeur has been widely celebrated in myth
and legend. Yet theeixistance of the great wall remained unknown to the western
world for more than 1500 years. Incredibly, it was never depicted in classical
Chinese paintings of the period. Nor did the marcopolo mention it in writing about
his travels in China in the 13th century. In fact, the Chinese didn't even rever to a
great wall of China until 20th century. After the capited gave it a name.
In 1908 , author and adventurer William Edgard Geil became the first American to
travel the lenght of great wall his observations were more enthusiastic than
illuminating and some of his infamous pronouncements have been repeated well
into the modern age. The great wall of china cannot be seen from the moon. The
biggest myth about the great wall of China is that there is the great wall of China it
is doubtful that the great wall ever axisted at all as an continous, homogenous
barrier across nothern China rather it is discontinous series of walls built at differnt
times by different people for different reasons joined together, allowed to decay,
rebuilt and extended over a period of some 2000 years for all its massize and solid
dimensions the great wall of china remains a mysterious peresence it has never
been completely surveyed and even today no one can be sure of its exact lenght or
route. The history of the great wall that has come down to us. as a curious mixture
of reality and imagination. A little solid information interwoven with vast amounts
of myth and tradition and its virtualy impossible to separate the two.

No othe civilization seems to have adopted wall building as enthusiastically as the

Chinese the first settlements of neolithic times were surounded by barriers of
pounded earth the cornestone of society was the walled city indeed the Chinese
world for city 'qang' also means 'wall'. They surounded their houses and temples
with walls and projected their wall consciousness beyond the realm of the mortal
world into the kingdoms of the gods. The gods of wall and moats also had the
power over the boundaries between life and death being apponted to inform dying
of their fates.

Source : Modern Marvel, History Channel