Talk:Great Wall of China

Headline text

thanks for having this topic Michelle Santuyo Alvarado of Zamboanga Philippines

Emperor Tony X. Liu

I am not sure, but the Wall is kind of old, is it not? How come they had color photos and flashlights back then? I mean the photo of the emperor who build this. Someones trying to fool us, or? (Chris)

I think you are very confused--Emperor Tony X. Liu 11:38, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Cannons, firelances, grenades, mines, and rockets

A recent series on the history channel stated that the Chinese had more than 3,000 bronze cannons mounted on -intranetusa 09:55, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism

Someone wrote this:

"

Watchtower interior

jessssssssssssss is a defensive wall on the northern border was built and maintained by several dynasties at different times in Chinese history."

Corrected.

-intranetusa 09:55, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Archers?

I heard in my class on MChina that the archers on the great wall were pointed inwards, as if they were controlling the Chinese people more than keeping barbarians out. I find this hard to believe...is it true?

Probably not. -- Миборовский 01:12, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Map Showing Location

Afer reading the whole article, I now see that the exact location of the wall remains hard to grasp by someone I sent to Wikipedia to research it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:China-Beijing.png

There is a good link to another photo showing the exact location of Beijing. Perhaps a similar map of China with a line representing the wall would be nice to add.

Ruling Dynasty Links

there should be link to some Chinese ruling dynasties during which it was being built.

Added. --Menchi 08:54 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)

How Manchus Defeated the Wall

Added how the Manchus defeated the wall. They got a general to defect and let them in. This General was Wu Sangui. Charged with defending Shanhaiguan pass against the Manchus during a major peasant rebellion led by the rebel Li Zicheng, Wu suddenly found himself between a rock and hard place when Li captured Beijing in 1644. With Li to the west and the Manchus to the northeast, Wu was persuaded to throw his lot in with Dorgon, half-brother to the deceased Manchu emperor Hong Taiji. Their combined forces retook Beijing from Li. As part of his reward for helping to defeat Li and the remaining Ming princes, Wu Sangui was granted control of Yunnan and Guizhou provinces, as well as parts of Hunan and Sichuan. In 1673, Wu Sangui led a rebellion against the Qing emperor Kangxi, until he died of dysentry in 1678.

That is an interesting read, where did you get that from? Don't tell me it came to you in your head. Also sign your post. Yongke 05:31, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Wall Length

There's a bit of a length problem, in that sources vary wildly from 3,000 to 6,000. See fr:Discuter:Grande Muraille de Chine -- Tarquin 08:48 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)

It's like counting WP articles, you can be very strict or not. Some walls are only bare remains now and cannot be walked now without structural damage, or danger to the walker. These are probably excluded in the strict count. Although I'm not exactly sure how the number could double... --Menchi 08:53 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Well, the wall isn't completely connected, you know. There are actually unconnected parts that are long.Conquest1970 00:03, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Therefore the article deserves a whole subsection on it's length with as much as information as possible described to the best of possibilities.

I saw a news item the other day to the effect that the Chinese government has started a project to measure and map the wall – they don’t actually know for certain how long it is, or where all the bits are. -Ahruman 12:02, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Article is misleading about wall length

This article very is misleading about the length of the Wall (and I've been mislead by it). It claims that it is 6,352 km long. This exact number suggests that the Wall is an exactly measurable connected structure. Someone inserted "this is NOT a mistake" in the article source, but no sources are cited. Where does this number come from? How much of the wall is standing today? How long has it been when most of it has been standing?

Encarta says:

"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." [1]

Britannica says:

" ... running (with all its branches) about 4,500 miles (7,300 km) east to west from Shanhai Pass near the Bo Hai (Gulf of Chihli) to Jiayu Pass (in modern Gansu province). Without its branches and other secondary sections, the wall extends for some 4,160 miles (6,700 km) ..." [2]

So this number of 6,352 km is certainly a mistake, because the article does not say what is exactly 6,352 km long.

BarroColorado 13:22, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, after checking older version of the page I noticed that the note ("this is NOT a mistake") in the source refers to something else. -- BarroColorado

Here's a better map: [3]. This might prove useful. A straight line from the starting point to the end point it's roughly 2000-2500 km. Of course the wall may be much longer when all the little curves are taken into account (it's quite zig-zaggy on the photos). Perhaps this is the one of the reasons why it is so difficult to estimate the full length? -- BarroColorado 16:16, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Here's a news article that puts the length at 6,300 km.[4] NYCDA 17:23, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Pass

I can upload a pic of the wall at Shanhaiguan that I took last month if anyone's interested? It was interesting to stumble upon the supposedly historic 'first gate under heaven' under (re)construction. I was able to climb up the scaffolding for a great view though, and the pic's passable, though not brilliant. I'll see if I can't put it up shortly and add a link here. --Pratyeka 05:13, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Add it if you like! --Pratyeka 05:21, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Added. So is a pass basically a fortress? About how many gates does a pass have? --Menchi 05:37, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Come to think of it I didn't get the best look at the overall structure (I was more interested in my fiancee at the time ;) .. but if you imagine walls like '田', then the part I photographed was the bottom side of the bottom-left section. once you enter (upward), you turn right, and pass through another gate. After that, you keep going forward, and pass through another gate. Actually the 'tian' analogy isn't too good at all. Here's some ASCII art of the part I saw. (excuse the speed/dodginess)

||||.--------
||||I   I   X
||||I   X   I
||||--X-----'--------------.
|||| OX                  O I
||||--X-. -------------.v. I
||||    I >>>          IvI I 
||||    `----           vI I
||||                     I I
||||        key: double-thickness wall: the main wall.  X = gate.  I/- = wall.
||||             > or v : ramp down the wall.  O = watchtower

Whare are the ||||? And what is the orientation of the ASCII art? Are we looking at bird's-eye-view? --Menchi 22:35, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Visible from "low earth orbit?'

With regards to the Wall's visibility from space, wasn't this completely disproved by Yang Liwei, the taikonaut? From what I recall, he was asked if he could see the wall while he was orbiting and he simply replied "No." --Darac Marjal 13:14, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Indeed. As I read the news story, it seemed to be saying that the Great Wall cannot be seen from space at all. Liwei was presumably in "low earth orbit," since I don't think humans have been sent farther than that recently. But just how high was he?

However, the argument that it is "only a few meters wide" isn't necessarily all that convincing since it is well known that the eye can detect extended linear features that would, on the basis of their thickness, be expected to be well below the eye's resolution. One minute = .0003 radians, so one meter subtends one minute at 1/.0003 meters = 3.4 kilometers. If "a few meters" means five meters, a five-meter object should just be visible at 17 kilometers. "Low earth orbit" seems to mean 100-500 miles = 160 to 1400 kilometers. I am almost certain that the eye can detect linear features that are ten times smaller than the nominal visual acuity. This would seem to put the Great Wall just within the range of visibility for the lowest of low earth orbits.

Undoubtedly the visibility would depend on lighting conditions. Many features on the Moon are invisible even with a small telescope much of the time, but leap out at you even in binoculars when they are near the terminator. Are there portions of the Great Wall that are oriented roughly north/south? Are any of them on relatively flat terrain? In the late afternoon or early morning it could be casting a contrasty shadow, and the width of that shadow could be several times the height of the Great Wall. Dpbsmith 12:39, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I've done a bit of Googling on visibility of the Great Wall from space and have summarized the results in the article. Dpbsmith 20:57, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Mulad improved this section. But he added the statement about visibility from the moon not only becoming an urban legend but "sometimes entering textbooks." I won't remove it, but his summary remark on the edit, "heck, I think I saw this in a textbook in the U.S." strikes me as not meeting the very highest and best standard of scholarship....  :-)

Brooding more about this, the original Halliburton statement was to the effect that (unnamed) "astronomers" said it was visible from the moon. This suggests that possibly the original intended meaning was not that it could be seen from the moon with the naked eye, but that it ought to be visible from the moon using the best 1938 telescopes. This is worth fussing over, but it seems to me quite possible, judging from what spy satellites can do, that the wall could be seen from the moon with the eye looking through a big, traditional optical telescope. However, if so, obviously it would not be the only manmade structure that would be visible. Since the point of the original remark was to claim superlative magnitude the structure—to imply that it was the greatest or biggest or most impressive bit of human civil engineering in history, eclipsing the Pyramids, the creation of the Dutch polders, the U. S. Interstate highway system, etc. And it doesn't seem that it is. Dpbsmith 15:31, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

There is significantly more pollution in China than there was 10 years ago, or 30 (in the case of Apollo). The fact that the Great Wall cannot be seen from space now but could be seen 15 years ago shouldn't surprise anyone.

I removed this conclusion from the front page. See attached link for more information. "

Ultimately, the idea that the Great Wall is somehow more visible than any other man-made object of the same size is a myth." [5]

I hate removing paragraphs, but this section really didn't seem to quite fit:

"But Science has proved all enthusiasts wrong.

An average eye can see a 1mm object from 3m.This means that at even on a high plane's height (15km) you will still only be able to see a 5m object with the naked eye. Because the Great Wall is Grey on a greyish mountain background, this means that you can't even see it on a plane voyage. A low orbiting space shuttle is at 300km, so there is no way that you can see the Great wall up there, even if it was 20m wide. In fact, it's a bit like trying to see a fishing line from the top of an office building. No matter how long it is you just can't see it because it's so thin. But just maybe...those entusiasts could have the best vision in the known world..."

In addition to the not-quite-best choice of words, this wasn't sourced and I wasn't able to find a verifiable source online on this claim. I do not know if it's true, but I don't think it should be included without a source. Either way, feel free to rewrite it if verified. --JoeTrumpet 18:23, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

I reckon that the highest height an average experienced eye could see the great wall from is 150km. The human eye can see an object that is 1/60 of a degree in good conditions, and possibly 1/180 of a degree under the best POSSIBLE circumstance. Even this equates to seeing a 1m object at a distance of 9km or a 10m Great Wall width object at 90km. I will admit, though that with experience, this could be extended to, say 150km. Add this to a person with good vision, and they could see the great wall from a space shuttle in low earth orbit. --Tosayit 11:22, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Visible from Google Earth?

A search for "Great Wall of China" on Google Earth produces a location ok, but nothing is discernable. There are still quite a few errors in the GE gazeteer, so that doesn't mean anything. The resolution is also poor, but that might be a fair record of what can be seen from low earth orbit. So this article could do with some latitude and longitude references, please - of the ends, of the thickest part, whatever. Does anybody have these?

Hi. I Google Earthed the coordinates mentioned in the article (33 55 N, 108 31 E), and by going to an oblique angle, it appears the purported wall is at the bottom of a valley and is therefore more likely a river. The European Space Agency made a similar mistake:(http://www.space.com/imageoftheday/image_of_day_040512.html) (Anonymous user, 4/15/2006)

Of course you can see Great wall in google satellite map, as long as you konw where to look. For example, this is the great wall near Badaling[6]. You can see the wall and the watchtowers very clearly. The square complex in the lower left corner of this image is the Juyongguan Pass. Sinolonghai 17:50, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

The Great Wall is just as visible as a narrow road is. All depends on the altitude and the resolution of the image. Try the western end, south-west of Jiayuguan at 39 44' 35"N 98 12'E where you will see a protective coffer dam at the base of a 300' high cliff, atop which is a watchtower. NickyMcLean 02:57, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Non-commercial image

File:WildGreatWallShuiguanBeijing.jpg

Non-commercial use only, not compatible with GFDL and decreed unacceptable by Jimbo.

There were very many images on this page, so I looked into them, too see if something was reduntant or acceptable to remove. I found an image tagged with "noncommercial". Since it has recently been decided that it is not acceptable to use these, I think it's just good to take it out. Comments? [[User:Sverdrup|❝Sverdrup❞]] 01:54, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Please refer me to this decision - I have uploaded several images under this cc-nc, under two general cases.

In one case, some images from china were provided to me by fellow tourist - we exchanged these with each other, I could probably track him down and get a verbal release.

In the other case, the images were of performers Beijing Opera, who charge admission for performances, or models in period dress Peterhof, who expect recompense for their posing in costume. I did not feel that it would be appropriate to release these for commercial use without further release. All of my personal pictures and derivative works of public domain images are cc-sa and others donated for Sundial Bridge by a third party (a commercial artist) are cc-by-sa. Please answer here, I will watch. -- Leonard G. 23:49, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Redirect

Great Wall should redirect here, with a disambig link at the top of this page. Seriously, who's ever heard of the "Great Wall of Galaxies"? --Simetrical 19:56, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Directing Great Wall here is a mistake, IMO. As Wiki gets more international, the plethora of products and companies with the "Great Wall" name that exist in China will need to go somewhere. --Shannonr 06:09, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

And once the volume of people who want to visit those pages—when they exist, which it bears pointing out they don't—gets to be anywhere near the volume of people who want to visit this one, Great Wall can be converted back to a disambiguation page. This is standard Wikipedia practice for an instance where one meaning of a word is vastly more sought-after than another. Otherwise, we should create a disambiguation page at Sparta for all the places like Sparta, Georgia (population 1,522), don't you think? —Simetrical (talk) 01:13, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Deaths

Is there an agreed upon estimate for the number of deaths which occured during the construction of the wall? --Tothebarricades.tk 01:40, May 13, 2005 (UTC) this link says estimates exceede 1 million, though it doesn't look wholly reliable. It doesn't seem anyone knows for sure the cost in terms of human lives. Citizen Premier 07:46, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

And is there a reason it is mentioned that the people were not buried in the wall? Such a claim seems silly to make unless there are legends concerning it.

Map?

Can anyone add a map that show where the wall exactly is? Kowloonese 23:44, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

Or even better: a Google Earth Path along the wall.

I'm going to add my vote for a map showing the position of the great Wall.--Tiberius47 00:51, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Try the Google Earth Community. There is a project to locate every watchtower along the wall, including along its various branches. NickyMcLean 03:02, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Strategic Value of the Great Wall?

How well did the Great Wall serve the various Dynasties?

I have done some extensive readings on the history of the Mongol empire, and in many accounts, it was stated that Genghis Khan used some kind of particular cunning to break through the fortifications.

However, it appears that during the Genghite invasion, the wall really was not very continuous and Genghis simply had to go around it. It were the descendants of the Genghites (I think they were the 'founders' of the Ming dynasty) who finally made the wall into what it is today. Had it been there at the time of the Genghites, it may have changed the course of history a little.

--Dietwald 18:08, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

I ascribe to the theory put forward by Franz Kafka in his story about the Great Wall [[7]]. He suggests it was a white elephant set up to keep the people occupied, to give them roles to play in society they might not have had otherwise. Politically, it must have been a powerful symbol too, suggesting just by its presence that the outside world was dangerous - the same xenophobia our current politicians use -- after all, as Dietwald points out, it was not much of a physical barrier to the Mongols - so must have had more symbolic than actual value. Is this worth adding to the article? Adambrowne666 04:00, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

The Mongols did not break through the Great Wall. The Great Wall then was useless because China was divided among the Song Dynasty and the Jinn Dynasty (The Jinn Dynasty later destroyed by an alliance of the Mongols and Song, and the Song defeated thereafter). The Great Wall CAN be effectively used, however. An example is the Ming dynasty defence against the Manchus (which would have held on for much longer if Wu Sangui did not defect). Moreover, claiming the founders of the Ming Dynasty are descendants of the Genghites is simply ridiculous. Herunar 06:19, 18 June 2006 (UTC) Whuifdjksnfksdlfj Don't quite understand what you're saying Herunar - are you saying the Wall was useless at first, then became useful later? Adambrowne666 00:11, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

IMO, the white elephant theory displays a considerable degree of naivite, or perhaps just unfamiliarity with Chinese history (and plus, I don't think Kafka is meant to be understood literally...). The Great Wall did serve strategic purposes at various points in Chinese history. For example, Nurhachi, founder of the Qing Dynasty, was killed while trying to attack the wall at the end of the Ming Dynasty.

However, the strongest wall is useless if you don't have the political or economic system to back it up. Thus, for example, at the end of the Ming Dynasty, the Qing armies crossed the wall because the gates were opened for them by Wu Sangui; for a different example, the Song Dynasty was so weak that it never got to use the wall.

When the Mongols invaded, they were facing three separate states in China: the Jin in the north east, the Xixia in the north west, and the Song in the south. The Great Wall did not trouble them at all because (1) it had not been properly maintained at that point for several hundred years, and (2) having taken Xixia, they just came in from the West and avoided the wall.

A further point is that, effective as the wall may be, there were more effective ways of pacifying one's borders. In the Qing Dynasty, the government realised that promoting harmonious relationships with border peoples was more effective than building a big wall. Likewise, during the Tang Dynasty, the empire was powerful enough and cosmopolitan enough that a wall was not needed. --Sumple (Talk) 22:04, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Source for Qin Shi Huang moon legend?

A very interesting paragraph was recently added, beginning:

"Legend says the First Emperor (Qin Shi Huang) once dreamed his soul traveled to the moon...."

That might explain how the legend of its being visible from the moon arose.

But I'd be happier if a source for this legend were cited. Does anybody know one? I've also left a note on User_talk:66.17.105.226 asking about this. Dpbsmith (talk) 22:14, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, I hate to sound ungrateful, but I'm not too happy about the source, http://www.indexa.fr/ConfigNav/test.pdf, which 66.17.105.226 has provided. It seems to be an ad for a CD-ROM "edutainment" title, so if someone has that title it might be possible to dig further. The problem for me is that the article opens:

What’s the only man-made artifact visible from the moon? The Great Wall of China. You probably knew that, but we bet you didn’t know that this fact is prefigured in a Chinese legend dating back to the third century B.C.

Since the Great Wall of China is not even close to being visible from the moon, this doesn't give me much confidence in the accuracy of the source.

I would suggest removing the text. Even most native Chinese don't know such a "legend". --137.189.4.1 15:03, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Legend [8] says the First Emperor (Qin Shi Huang) once dreamed his soul traveled to the moon. From here, he was dismayed to see his entire kingdom amounted to nothing more than a tiny dot. The story says at that moment he decided to build a mighty wall stretching along his kingdom's northern border and beyond, in hopes of expanding his kingdom (and its wall) to the point of visibility even from the moon.

Okay I moved the text here until a more trustable source is given. --Lorenzarius 12:13, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

why was the wall built if the people were against it and it didnt serve its purpose

Time of Building

The wall started being built around 200BC, while the Ming Dynasty version in this article is from the 14th century to the 16th. Conquest1980 01:51, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

what categories?

I'm unsure of the rules of categories, but I figured that I could link from Hadrian's Wall to this via Category:Fortification but instead found that the on one in common is Category:Walls, not that I know the difference between the two. Mulp 17:49, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Regarding the foreign language in this article

I think this article might be better improved with information from the Chinese language Wikipedia, not Arabic language Wikipedia.

Need sources for this assertion

This needs to be sources.

The last great wall of the Ming really was a military fortification of some strength. However, military historians are generally dismissive of the net value of this great wall. It was astonishingly expensive to build, maintain and garrison. The money the Ming spent on the wall could have been spent on other military capabilities such as European style artillery or muskets. The fact remains that the great wall was of no help at all in preventing the Ming Dynasty's fall.

Rabbits

The Great Wall of China was originally built to keep rabbits out of China. It was considered that there was too many rabbits in China.

Uh? Is this vandalism or were the Chinese really worried about the rabbit population? And I might add: was it out of whim or need? --A Sunshade Lust 14:38, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvlWQyvEI38

This isn't vandalisim per se, it's a bunch of Australians making a reference to an Advertising campaign ran in Australia by Telstra [9]. These users are going to keep editing it until there's a reference in the article to it which will just keep causing the page to be revised and changed by the Anti Vandal bot and other senior users. I have placed a new section within the article titled advertising references which make appropriate reference to the issue and should be enough to keep users who wish to muck with the page at bey for the moment at least. --Thewinchester 13:09, 12 August 2006 (UTC -0800)

It is important to ensure all information about the wall is included in the article so the unmistakably massive influence of rabbit's in the creation of world's first instance of a Rabbit Proof Fence should remain. They actually measured the length in rabbit hops instead of kilometres or miles (4,567,964,001 hops).

Ha ha, boy, you're a really clever person, you know that? Ha ha ha. Thanks for sharing. - DavidWBrooks

Thankyou David, you are too kind. Also, remember that it was the emperor Nasi Goreng who commisioned the creation of the Great Rabbit Proof Fence of China. TaTaForNow! Don't forget History is what we make it. It normally has very little to do with the truth, especially when its the history of a war. To the victors goes the truth.

Too many links to photos

I would like to kill all the external links to collections of Great Wall photos. They are proliferating like the rabbits that the wall kept out of China - no, wait, that was a vandalism - and are incredibly easy to find via Google, anyway; they add nothing to this article. - DavidWBrooks 16:26, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

There are definitely too many photos. Wikipedia is not a place for site-seeing. Wang ty87916 16:30, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

It's part of a Bigpond (www.bigpond.com) ad. A kid asks his dad "dad, why was the great wall of China built?" ... answer: "to keep the rabbits out..." Quite funny.58.162.18.184 06:29, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

verification

i just read on BBC that they found more peices to the wall, making it around 7,200km long/ THE LINK IS http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1184306.stm CAN SOMEONE VERIFY THIS? i am no good with things like this(verification)

by the way, can someone tell me exactly how many people visit the great wall yearly? the info would be much appreciated Oldmansnake99 18:51, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I doubt we can get a number that means anything, if the length and geographic distribution of the components are not completely known. Fehrgo 16:12, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Opened to Tourism... when?

There should be some little trivia bit on when this was opened to the public for tourisim.

WiiWillieWiki 14:17, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

"largest"

>The Great Wall is the world's largest man-made structure

I'm not debating this, but I suggest that this might want to be clarified in the article intro? Largest meaning? longest? largest volume of space? largest area of land covered? spanning the largest range of land? etc.

Chinese translation

I thought "Great Wall" translates to 长城, and 万里长城 is simply an idiom/tourism slogan? I have never seen it referred to as "万里长城" in any pre-modern text, and I'm pretty sure it's referred to as 长城 in official documents (e.g. by UNESCO or by the PRC government). --Sumple (Talk) 05:17, 27 November 2006 (UTC) some people need this info so stop putting stupid comments.!

What's with the repeated "hi"

Yeah, I went to look up the article on the "Great Wall Of China" However, all I found when I clicked was the word "hi" repeated over and over again. I belive this counts as vandalism since, last time I checked, saying "hi" over again was a form of SPAM (No, not the meat, the e-mail/internet kind of SPAM) and not information about an important historical wall.24.111.137.236 18:05, 5 January 2007 (UTC)anonymous

Adult supervision

It's scarcely worth editing here unless this gets semi-protection. Text has eroded just in the last month, and scribbles are embedded in it. Would any administrator care to take this on? It's off my Watchlist as of now.--Wetman 23:41, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Condition

"After one of the many runs for charity along the Great Wall, H.J.P Arnold questioned several runners about the status of the wall. A typical response was "The wall was clearly discernible and only moderately eroded along 22% of the run. The Wall was usually discernible but frequently broken/eroded 41% of the run, and scarcely discernible and almost totally eroded 37% of the run."

I intend to remove this paragraph as it strikes me as very suspect for the following reasons: 1. Charity runs / walks concentrate on areas where the wall is still visible, so their observations are of little relevance 2. Such events only cover a few miles - out of many thousands of mile of wall and invariably concentrate on the area north of Beijing 3. Who determines what a typical comment is? 4. The percentages in the alleged quote are absurdly precise and the language very formal. I conclude it cannot have come from one speaker as the entry suggests. It has probably been invented. 5. Who is HJP Arnold and why he is the definitive source on the Great Wall?

Overall then, I do not think the paragraph is helpful.

--John Price 17:50, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Outer Space Rambling?

Is it me or is this kind of too much information?

The Great Wall is a maximum 30 feet wide and is about the same color as the soil surrounding it. Based on the optics of resolving power (distance versus the width of the iris: a few millimetres for the human eye, metres for large telescopes) an object of reasonable contrast to its surroundings some four thousand miles in diameter (such as the Australian land mass) would be visible to the unaided eye from the moon. But the Great Wall is of course not a disc but more like a thread, and a thread a foot long would not be visible from a hundred yards away, even though a human head is. Not surprisingly, no lunar astronaunt has ever claimed he could see the Great Wall from the moon.

A different question is whether it is visible form near-Earth orbit i.e at an altiude of less than 500 km - 0.1% of the distance of the moon. The consensus here is that it is barely visible, and only under nearly perfect conditions; it is no more conspicuous than many other manmade objects.

I mean... do we really need that first paragraph at all? It seems more relevant to an optics article really, if at all anything.

It is a bit detailed, but I think it is worth making the point that the visability from the moon idea is demonstrably absurd.

--217.43.17.58 21:30, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

long city wall?

hello,i have a question about the opening statement in the artical: "The Great Wall of China (Traditional Chinese: 長城; Simplified Chinese: 长城; pinyin: Chángchéng; literally "long city wall")" Doesn't chang cheng mean long city, where is wall coming from? Sir LoseALot 19:01, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

It's a bit more complicated. Chang is long, but cheng has a wider range of meaning. Originally it did sort of mean wall or fortification, but as cities were walled, it gradually came to mean city. Right now, I'm looking at an Oxford Chinese-English dictionary that lists the primary meaning of cheng as "city" and the second as "city wall; wall: chang ~ the Great Wall." I agree that "long city wall" is off, but it's tricky trying to decide what the "literal meaning" of any given character by itself is. It's like trying to decide on the "literal meaning" of the first syllable of a word in English. (For example, chang2cheng2 has its own entry as a word under the character "chang2").

For now, I'm going to change wall to just "wall" as that would seem to make more sense given the entymology of the word, though I'm not entirely comfortable with that, either. Theotherkg 08:33, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

See Chinese city wall for an explanation of cheng and other terms for walls in Chinese. --Sumple (Talk) 08:40, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Cool, thanks. Just to make sure -- changing "long city wall" (what is was before) to "long wall" is acceptable? Theotherkg 08:57, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Yep, change looks good to me! --Sumple (Talk) 08:58, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Please fix

one of the existing megastructure -> megastructures —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 83.67.217.254 (talk) 17:21, 18 March 2007 (UTC).

Characteristics -- materials

Several years back, while visiting the wall, I read some local literature that spoke of the mortar used between blocks during construction (not sure exactly what period of construction). It mentioned a glutinous rice and at times egg white combination. When I walked the wall, and got off the re-constructed visitor section (I went beyond the barrier), I picked up a piece of white morter that was clearly (to me) "petrified rice mush". I found this very interesting. A few years ago I added a note on this Wiki in the Characteristics section, noting the use of glutinous rice and eggwhite as mortar for parts of the construction. It is no longer in the article. I would propose adding this info back in, but I'm not an expert on either the Wall or on Wikis, so I write this note in hopes that others find this piece of information interesting, accurate, and worth re-including in the Great Wall article -- especially if someone could verify this info as factual. 144.15.18.210 15:21, 12 April 2007 (UTC)ImRoscoe

Mao Ze Dong quote translation

I saw that the english translastion for Mao's quote used the word "climb". The chinese has nothing mentioning or hinting at climbing, or even walking along. It is simply translated as "going to". So the quote should be translated literally as: "not been to the great wall, (means that one is) not a good chinese." or transliterated as "If one hasn't been to the great wall one is not a good Chinese." I don't like the use of "one" in this sentence (or "you" for that matter), but english demands a subject.

Jon the d 16:34, 23 April 2007 (UTC)Jon_the_D

Location confused

Article contains "Under the military command of Yuan Chonghuan, the Ming army held off the Manchus at the heavily fortified Shanhai Pass, thus preventing the Manchus from entering the Liaodong Peninsula and the Chinese heartland"- in fact Shanhai Pass is located to the southwest of the Liaodong peninsula- the Manchus controlled the Liaodong penisula before passing through Shanhai Pass. Put another way, the Great Wall ends at the Hebei coast at Shanhai Pass and did not cut off the Liaodong Peninsula from the Manchu homeland. Please delete the words the Liaodong Peninsula and. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 218.168.214.216 (talk) 08:59, 6 May 2007 (UTC).

New Seven Wonders of the World

I've been adding links for the candidates of the New Seven Wonders of the World contest. The Great Wall of China is one of them. Would it be possible to add such a link?

• Vote for the Great Wall of China as one of the New Seven Wonders of the World

(like this... :-) ) Cryptonym 17:16, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Even the informational pdf linked to that page does not have as much info as the Wikipedia article. In that sense, it doesn't contribute anything in terms of information to the article - making it a bad link under WP:EL. The contest seems non-notable and adding the links to all of the relevant articles in Wikipedia seems more like a promotion of the contest than supplementing encyclopedic content. I'd recommend against not linking and removing the links placed in other articles. Nposs 18:56, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Please clarify "the most famous"

"...the most famous being the one built between 220 BC and 200 BC by the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang. That wall was much further north than the current wall, built during the Ming Dynasty, and little of it remains." Surely, the current standing wall is the "most famous"...? Afabbro 02:11, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

i builder of great wall

why i not on article. i build very big wall china and i emperor! please include me in article as builder of wall--Emperor Tony X. Liu 10:33, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Someone please get this lunatic's photo off the article.

reliable source: http://www.wereallneighbours.co.uk/idlechat/message.php?id=19306&start= --Emperor Tony X. Liu 19:47, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

It's not a reliable source. Stop adding this "fact" to the article. Shadow1 (talk) 19:49, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

It is a reliable source, so I am going to add it back to the article. FACT- you are trying to cover up a conspiracy and you are using every wikipedia tactic available to "legitimately" revert my good faith edits--Emperor Tony X. Liu 11:40, 18 June 2007 (UTC)