China - The Great Wall. Note: This video is hosted on: Guba.com The Great Wall is a popular name for a semi-legendary wall built to protect China's northern border in the 3rd century bc, and for impressive stone and earthen fortifications built along a different northern border in the 15th and 16th centuries ad, long after the ancient structure had mostly disappeared. Ruins of the later wall are found today along former border areas from Bo Hai (a gulf of the Yellow Sea) in the east to Gansu Province in the west. The Great Wall is visited often near Beijing, at a site called Ju-yong-guan, and at its eastern and western extremes.
The Great Wall is probably China's best-known monument and one of its most popular tourist destinations. In 1987 it was designated a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The Great Wall is not a single, continuous structure. Rather, it consists of a network of walls and towers that leaves the frontier open in places. Estimates of the total length of the monument vary, depending on which sections are included and how they are measured. The Great Wall is about 2,400 km (about 1,500 mi) long, according to conservative estimates. Other estimates cite a length of 6,400 km (4,000 mi), or even longer. Some long-standing myths about the wall have been dispelled in recent decades. The existing wall is not several thousand years old, nor is it, as has been widely asserted, visible with the naked eye from outer space. (Astronauts have confirmed this. However, some of the wall is discernible in special radar images taken by satellites.)
Neither the Qin wall nor the Ming fortifications were called the "Great Wall of China" by their Chinese contemporaries. That label, and the myths that have come with it, appear to have originated in the West. Europeans who visited China in the 17th and 18th centuries confused the Ming fortifications with the Qin wall or walls mentioned in dynastic histories. They also assumed incorrectly that impressive masonry walls like those surrounding Beijing at the time also extended far to the west. As a result, a description developed in the West of a vast wall that had secured peace for the civilized Chinese for thousands of years by excluding the nomads. This idea captured the imagination of Westerners, and by the late 19th century a visit to the 'Great Wall of China' had become a staple of the Western tourist's itinerary.
In the 20th century the Chinese also began to adopt the idea of the Great Wall, despite the evidence presented by their own historical records. Revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen, who was instrumental in establishing the Republic of China in 1912, wrote about the wall in glowing terms consistent with the Western myth. Although some Chinese scholars pointed out Sun's errors, they never succeeded in halting the mythâs progress. Patriotic fervor during World War II (1939-1945) popularized the myth of the Great Wall, and some renovation was done to the Ming fortifications in the early 1950s. The tide changed, however, under Communist leader Mao Zedong, who came to power in 1949. In 1966 Mao launched the political campaign known as the Cultural Revolution, during which he appealed to the Chinese people to destroy anything associated with traditional culture. Unappreciated for its historic value, the magnificent wall surrounding Beijing was torn down for quarrying during this period. Other wall ruins were also destroyed.
With the end of the Cultural Revolution and the death of Mao in 1976, the political climate changed in China, evidenced in part by a rise in nationalism. In the years that followed, the myth of the Great Wall was officially propagated throughout the country. In the 1980s the Ming walls began to undergo extensive renovation at their most visited locations. In the 1990s, however, historians in both China and the West began to reestablish the actual history of Chinese wall building and to explore the development of the folklore surrounding the Ming walls.
China, officially the People's Republic of China (Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo), country in East Asia, the world's largest country by population and one of the largest by area, measuring about the same size as the United States. The Chinese call their country Zhongguo, which means Central Country or �Middle Kingdom.� The name China was given to it by foreigners and is probably based on a corruption of Qin (pronounced chin), a Chinese dynasty that ruled during the 3rd century bc.
China proper centers on the agricultural regions drained by three major rivers�the Huang He (Yellow River) in the north, the Yangtze (Chang Jiang) in central China, and the Zhu Jiang (Pearl River) in the south. The country�s varied terrain includes vast deserts, towering mountains, high plateaus, and broad plains. Beijing, located in the north, is China�s capital and its cultural, economic, and communications center. Shanghai, located near the Yangtze, is the most populous urban center, the largest industrial and commercial city, and mainland China�s leading port.
More than one-fifth of the world's population 1.3 billion people live in China. More than 90 percent of these are ethnic Han Chinese, but China also recognizes 55 national minorities, including Tibetans, Mongols, Uighurs, Zhuang, Miao, Yi, and many smaller groups. Even among the ethnic Han, there are regional linguistic differences. Although a common language called Putonghua is taught in schools and used by the mass media, local spoken languages are often mutually incomprehensible. However, the logographic writing system, which uses characters that represent words rather than pronunciation, makes it possible for all Chinese dialects to be written in the same way; this greatly aids communication across China.
In ancient times, China was East Asia's dominant civilization. Other societies�notably the Japanese, Koreans, Tibetans, and Vietnamese�were strongly influenced by China, adopting features of Chinese art, food, material culture, philosophy, government, technology, and written language. For many centuries, especially from the 7th through the 14th century ad, China had the world�s most advanced civilization. Inventions such as paper, printing, gunpowder, porcelain, silk, and the compass originated in China and then spread to other parts of the world.
China's political strength became threatened when European empires expanded into East Asia. Macao, a small territory on China's southeastern coast, came under Portuguese control in the mid-16th century, and Hong Kong, nearby, became a British dependency in the 1840s. In the 19th century internal revolts and foreign encroachment weakened China's last dynasty, the Qing, which was finally overthrown by Chinese Nationalists in 1911. Over the course of several decades, the country was torn apart by warlords, Japanese invasion, and a civil war between the Communists and the Nationalist regime of the Kuomintang, which established the Republic of China in 1928.
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The walls comprising the Great Wall of China follow the mountainous contours of China�s northern frontier, stretching from the gulf of Bo Hai in the east to Gansu Province in the west. In some stretches, the walls' builders placed watchtowers between which alarm signals could be passed in case of attack. Along the top of the walls, the builders created space for soldiers to march.
In 1949 the Chinese Communist Party won the civil war and established the People's Republic of China (PRC) on the mainland. The Kuomintang fled to the island province of Taiwan, where it reestablished the Nationalist government. The Nationalist government controlled only Taiwan and a few outlying islands but initially retained wide international recognition as the rightful government of all of China. Today, most countries recognize the PRC on the mainland as the official government of China. However, Taiwan and mainland China remain separated by different administrations and economies. Therefore, Taiwan is treated separately in Encarta Encyclopedia. In general, statistics in this article apply only to the area under the control of the PRC.
After coming to power in 1949, the Communist government began placing agriculture and industry under state control. Beginning in the late 1970s, however, the government implemented economic reforms that reversed some of the earlier policies and encouraged foreign investment. Although China remains a poor country by world standards, the economy has grown dramatically as a result of the reforms of the 1980s and 1990s.
The Great Wall of China, a combination of many walls, extends for 1,500 miles and winds across Northern China from Gansu Province to Hebei Province on the Yellow Sea and was constructed as a defence against the northern nomads. Although it was to be of little military significance, the Great Wall is a monument to human Endeavour and relentless achievement, a meandering Man made structure that seems to connect all of China's endless horizons and cloak them in the mystique of an unseen invader struggling to overcome an invisible force in a land of inscrutable colour, diversity, culture and very real militaristic might.
Tiananmen Square is a large, open area adjacent to Beijing�s Forbidden City, the former home of the Chinese emperors. In the 1950s the square was enlarged to accommodate large public parades and ceremonies. Important structures on the square include the Museum of China's History and Revolution, the Monument to the Heroes of the People, and the Hall of the People where the national legislature of China meets. In the center of the square is the tomb of Mao Zedong, the founder of the Chinese communist government. In 1997 Hong Kong was transferred from Britain to China under an agreement that gave the region considerable autonomy. Portugal recognized Macao as Chinese territory in the late 1970s and later negotiated the transfer of Macao�s administration from Portugal to China. Macao, too, was guaranteed a special degree of autonomy.
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