Great Wall of China :: Chinese China History

Great Wall of China In the year 221 B.C.E., there was a great ruler over the Ch'in kingdom in China, named Shih Huang Ti. Shih was power hungry and wanted more land so he gathered his army and captured the surrounding kingdoms. As the ruler of so many kingdoms he became "the first emperor" of China. Shih showed his tyranny when he burned all history books to insure that his people and future generations would only remember him and none of the earlier rulers. He had a strong army but the fierce tribes north of China, the Mongols and the Huns, were stronger. These nomadic tribes would come into China and steal crops and animals and then destroy everything left behind. Shih was very disturbed with these invasions, so in the year 214 B.C.E. he freed prisoners and gathered workers and herds of animals. He gave all this to Meng T'ien, his loyal general. Meng and the men and animals were sent north to fortify Shih's kingdoms from invading armies. Shih planned to make a great wall by extending and enlarging preexisting walls made by previous rulers. This "great" wall would serve as a barricade to keep out all tribes that wanted to invade China. It also served to separate the civilized acts of the farmers in China to the barbaric acts of the nomadic tribes. What Shih did not know was that the construction would cause many deaths and much suffering to the builders of the wall. The wall which Meng and his men created had watchtowers, forty feet tall, every two hundred yards. The purpose of these towers was to alert the defending soldiers of approaching, attacking tribes. The soldiers at the towers signalled to each other by day using smoke signals, ! wavin g flags, blowing horns, and ringing bells; by night by lighting firework-like objects in the sky. The wall, itself, was approximately fifteen hundred miles long, thirty feet high and, at the base, twenty-five feet thick. It was made of the core of earth and gravel. Actually, it was two walls aligned with each other and then filled in with a stone base pounded smooth. The wall traveled over mountains and through valleys. It went from Liatun, on the coast near Korea, westward to the northern end on the Yellow River, southward to Lint'ao to close off the north west area of the empire from the Huns.