Great Wall | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

The best-known work of Chinese civil engineering is the Great Wall, a line of fortifications extending for more than 6,324 kilometers, if all the branch walls are counted, and 3,460 kilometers, if the main line alone is measured. As was customary, the wall was built with rubble foundations without binding material and with thin layers of bamboo stems spread between blocks to speed drying. Granite blocks as large as 4.3 meters by 0.9 meters were used in the foundation, and apparently only the simplest of tools were used, though on a vast scale. Reinforcements of wood and iron were used in some sections of the wall. Despite this, during periods of neglect, parts of it collapsed. After the third century CE, there was very little maintenance, though reconstruction was undertaken in later periods, particularly under the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). The wall was not a single massive engineering project, but was the connection of various walls that had been built in previous periods to protect northern Chinese regimes from attacks by the Mongols from the north. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, with China open to visitors from the West, the Great Wall has become a major tourist attraction, with sections reconstructed for that purpose.

Paul Forage

This complete Great Wall contains 232 words. This article contains 285 words (approx. 1 page at 300 words per page).