2. Difficulties in the Growing Empire
• Prosperity
• Order
• Communication
• Protection
3. “The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood
of the enemy’s not attacking but rather on the fact that
we have made our position unassailable.””
- Sun Tzu, The Art of War 8
4.
5.
6.
7. The Great Wall
• About 21,000km long
• In Chinese, its name is Long wall or Long wall of
10,000 li
• 10,000 li = 6,508 km.
• In Chinese, 10,000 figuratively means "infinite“;
the number should not be interpreted literally
but rather as meaning the "infinitely long wall“
• Watchtowers every few hundred meters
communicated with red/blue flags and fires
• All messages were recorded on bamboo strips
8. Construction
• Made up of overlapping walls, trenches and
natural features (such as hills and ravines)
• Emporer Qin first to link parts of wall together
• Construction by 300,000 soldiers, conscripted
labourers and convicts
• Much of Qin’s wall now in poor repair
9.
10.
11. Source A. Extract from modern
Chinese historian Yong Ho (2000).
“Large-scale public construction projects were
made possible by the unification of the country,
when territorial conflicts no longer existed. The
Great Wall is a case in point, Shi Huang did not
build it from scratch; the wall had already
existed in various former states. Shi Huang had
only to link it into a 4,000-mile wall.”
12. Source B. Protest song lyrics from the third century BCE (English
translation by Anne Birrell in New Songs for a Jade Terrace,
1982).
I water my horse at a Long Wall hole,
The water’s chill hurt my horse’s bones.
I go and tell the Long Wall officer,
‘Mind you don’t keep us Taiyuan men for good!’
‘Corvée has a set time to run!
Swing your sledge! Lend your voice!’
‘We men would rather die fighting!
Why are we bored to death building the Long Wall?
Dead men’s skeletons prop each other up?’
13. Source C. Extract from the website of TravelChinaGuide, the
largest online tour company in China, 2013.
“In the year 221 BC, Emperor Qin Shihuang defeated all his
enemies and unified China for the first time in its history. During
his reign, the Huns from the north were a constant threat, often
coming down to the Yellow River Basin and taking land from
people in the Hetao Area, located at the top of the Great Bend
of the Yellow River. To protect his people and safeguard his
political power, the Emperor ordered General Meng Tian,
commanding 300,000 soldiers, to defeat the enemy force. To
prevent further attacks by the Huns, he decided to consolidate
and extend the Great Wall of China.”
Editor's Notes
Recent archaeological survey (2012) has found wall is twice as long as previously thought. See http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/great-wall-china-long-120607.htm
A satellite image of a section of the Great Wall in northern Shanxi, running diagonally from lower left to upper right (not to be confused with the much more prominent river running from upper left to lower right). The region pictured is 12 by 12 kilometres (7.5 mi × 7.5 mi).
