THE GREAT WALL OF CHINANow, a symbol of national pride this improsing massives stones and buried bones is a monument to the this link between vision and paranoia. Between industriousness and madness. Now a wonder of the ancient and the modern world The great wall of China.The great wall of China became the unofficial symbol of the Chinese nation in1972when the President, Richard Nixon Walked upon it during his tour making US diplomatic recognition of China. The Chinese themselves have not always taken such pride in the Great wall. It raises where the mountains meet the sea at Shanhai Guan. And snakes its way across northern China. To the edge of the Gobi dessert. Formiing the spine of the system of so called long walls that sparwl over thousand of miles of the Chinese landscape. Estimates of its lengh range between1500and4000milesand its grandeur has been widely celebrated in myth and legend. Yet theeixistance of the great wall remained unknown to the western world for more than1500years. Incredibly, it was never depicted in classical Chinese paintings of the period. Nor did the marcopolo mention it in writing about his travels in China in the 13th century. In fact, the Chinese didn't even rever to a great wall of China until 20th century. After the capited gave it a name.In1908, author and adventurer William Edgard Geil became the first American to travel the lenght of great wall his observations were more enthusiastic than illuminating and some of his infamous pronouncements have been repeated well into the modern age. The great wall of china cannot be seen from the moon. The biggest myth about the great wall of China is that there is the great wall of China it is doubtful that the great wall ever axisted at all as an continous, homogenous barrier across nothern China rather it is discontinous series of walls built at differnt times by different people for different reasons joined together, allowed to decay, rebuilt and extended over a period of some2000years for all its massize and solid dimensions the great wall of china remains a mysterious peresence it has never been completely surveyed and even today no one can be sure of its exact lenght or route. The history of the great wall that has come down to us. as a curious mixture of reality and imagination. A little solid information interwoven with vast amounts of myth and tradition and its virtualy impossible to separate the two.No othe civilization seems to have adopted wall building as enthusiastically as the Chinese the first settlements of neolithic times were surounded by barriers of pounded earth the cornestone of society was the walled city indeed the Chinese world for city 'qang' also means 'wall'. They surounded their houses and temples with walls and projected their wall consciousness beyond the realm of the mortal world into the kingdoms of the gods. The gods of wall and moats also had the power over the boundaries between life and death being apponted to inform dying of their fates.

Source : Modern Marvel, History Channel