Now if you have traveled to China for a vacation holiday or on a business trip, people will inevitably ask you whether you have visited The Great Wall of China? Why is this tourist attraction in China so attractive? It is because if you have not gone sightseeing at the Great Wall of China, then your China vacation is missing out a great deal. Here is why.
There are many watch towers, which were actually barracks for soldiers and warehouses for arms and were spaced close enough that soldiers from one barracks could quickly come to the aid of a besieged group at another watchtower.
I don’t know how long their tours of duty lasted, but it must have played hob with family life. I sometimes wonder how China got to be so overpopulated with all the famines, wars, and military tours of duty.
The Great Wall has crenellations as are found in European castle walls. Soldiers could survey the countryside through them, then shoot at invaders through the embrasures below.
A communications system grew up with signal towers spreading across the countryside. Fuel was stored—animal dung being a favorite because it smokes like crazy—to be lit when an enemy was approaching. Seeing the smoke and fire, the watchman at the next signal tower then lit his dung heap and so on, passing the word to the city and villages in the enemy’s path. This was quick and effective in the days before radio, telephones, and internet. Ingenious.
Reflecting the multi-culturalism of early China, the section of wall at Juyong Pass (30 miles from downtown Beijing) has a marble platform with bas-relief sculptures of the four Heavenly Kings, with Buddhist incantations in Sanskrit, Tibetan, Mongolian, Uygur, Han, and Xixia. Niches in the wall contain 2,000 Buddhist sculptures. Genghis Khan fought a major battle in this area, and I’d like to see it. Next trip, maybe.
Much of the roadway on top of the wall is now overgrown with bushes and even trees making passage difficult. The Bedaling section is nicely restored and free of vegetation, however, awaiting visitors. A couple of men in our group hiked to the end of the restoration and said it ended abruptly in a drop-off. I’ll take their word for it.
Scott, ever the champion of the people (See China: Tiananmen Square) told us the wall was built using clay and rice as a binder. If you’ve ever clogged your kitchen sink drain by washing out your rice pot, you know how gummy rice can be. Scott said the wall was built at great cost to human life at a time when rice was scarce and many peasants were starving.
We asked about the rumor we’d heard that bodies of workmen were entombed in the wall. He said, “Of course. The workmen were overworked and underfed and thousands died. What were they going to do with the bodies? It’s logical they would become part of the structure.” It gave us an eerie feeling as we gazed at the magnificent wall. I was glad we were there in the daytime.
In the days before modern weapons, the wall did a good job of defending China. I’d heard that the enemy just did an end run around it, but that’s not entirely true . According to the website of Travel China Guide, China fell to the Mongols due to weak government and poverty of the peasants.
Then again, in 1644 AD, the Manchus crossed the wall by convincing (threats? bribes?) a Chinese guard to open the gates of Shanhai Pass. Legend has it that it took three whole days for the Manchu army to enter. And that was the end of the Ming Dynasty.