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The Great Wall of China

The Great Wall of China is the only man-made construction that can be seen from space. It is 6,000 kilometres long. It runs along China’s northern border and has an unusual shape. It looks as if its architects did not have any specific plans. It looks like a snake or a long road. Nobody knows why its shape is like this but legend states that it was built to imitate the movements of a dragon — a popular religious symbol of China.

The section of the Wall visited by most tourists is at Badaling Pass near Beijing. Here, the building material is grey granite blocks, 6 metres high. On both sides of its roof there are low walls which protect you from falling off the Wall. In the middle, there is a road which is wide enough for five horses running side by side. Other sections of the Great Wall are built of various materials, often of poor quality, for example of wood or sand depending on whether the wall crossed deserts, plains or the country.

The people who were forced to build the Great Wall were often those who could not pay their taxes, prisoners of war and criminals. There were about one million slaves working on the wall. They lived in poor conditions , in places called work camps. They worked without clothes during the summer and they wore only animal skins in the winter. They often died of disease and hunger. Those who died were often buried in foundations, making the Wall the «world’s longest cemetery».

There are still many of the original 25,000 towers left. They are about 12 metres high and th distance between two neighbouring towers is over 200 metres. The army usually lived in these towers. In the period of the Wall’s glory almost a million men stayed there.

Today the Great Wall is one of China’s tourist attractions. Where else in the world can you see something built by man over twenty-two centuries ago? (WORLD OF ENGLISH)