Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Great Wall of China

Starting point is 00:00:00 It's one of the longest and largest structures ever built, and it was designed to defend one of the oldest and greatest civilizations on the planet. And for centuries, it did just that. And for some centuries, it didn't do that at all. Some people have claimed that you can see it from space, and it's one of the most visited tourist attractions on Earth. Learn more about the Great Wall of China, one of the planet's greatest man-made wonders, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Starting point is 00:00:24 Do you ever climb into bed ready to sleep, only to have your mind start racing the moment your head hits the pillow? Thoughts bouncing around, replaying the day or jumping ahead to tomorrow? That is exactly why Catherine Nikolai created Nothing Much Happens. Each episode is a gentle, cozy bedtime story where, well, nothing much happens. No drama, no tension, nothing you need to follow closely. Just soft narration, calming repetition, and soothing sensory details designed to help your mind slow down and your body relax. It's not about entertainment, it's about rest. And millions of listeners around the world use it every night to quiet their thoughts and finally fall asleep. If you've ever struggled to shut your brain off at night, this might be exactly what you've

Starting point is 00:01:16 been missing. You can listen to Nothing Much Happens wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes are every Monday and Thursday. To understand why the Great Wall of China was built, you first have to understand the geography of China. The historic center of China and of Chinese civilization has been in what is today the eastern third of China. This region of China has had the vast majority of China, the vast majority of the population for all of its history. And this region is relatively flat and extremely fertile. The agricultural production of this region is why China has historically had such high

Starting point is 00:01:54 populations and a high population density. Even thousands of years ago, when populations on Earth were much lower, China still usually had the highest population in the world because this region was so productive. China has often been divided by an imaginary line called the Hu line. It stretches from the city of Haihu in the north near the border of Russia, to Teng Chong in the south, which is close to the border of Myanmar. The western side of this line has about two-thirds of the land of modern-day China, but only 6% of the population.

Starting point is 00:02:25 The eastern side of the line has 94% of the population and almost all the agriculture. The eastern side of that line is what the defense of China has always been about. Now, consider how China has historically viewed its defenses. To the east, you have the Pacific Ocean. The only real island off the coast of China is Taiwan, which traditionally never has really been that populated. Japan is further to the north and lies across the sea from Korea and Siberia. The Philippines is further south, but it lies across the sea from Southeast Asia. So the coast of China has never really been a source of threat.

Starting point is 00:02:59 To the south, you have the Himalayan Mountains and the Himalayan foothills. Outside of a small area near the coast on the border of Vietnam, there really hasn't been much threat to China from the south. There have been a war's fault with Vietnam, but it was mostly China invading Vietnam, not the other way around. The Himalayas were, for all practical purposes, impassable, so the major empires in China and Southeast Asia never really posed a threat to China. Despite being two of the largest ancient civilizations, most of the contact between China and India occurred by sea or via the Silk Road, not over the mountains. To the west, you had a region that was mostly desert and unpopulated. What is today the region of Xinjiang contains the Taklimakhan Desert, and beyond that is the Tian Shan Mountains. So basically, you had an enormous region to the east, south, and west where China, for the most part, didn't have to worry about invasion.

Starting point is 00:03:49 The real threat came from the north. For centuries, China was under threat from nomadic peoples from the Eurasian steppes who found China to be a lucrative target for raiding an invasion. You did have the Gobi Desert, but the Gobi wasn't an impassable barrier. So starting about 2,700 to 2,500 years ago, before China became a single unified empire, many of the regional warlords began building walls to stop raiders from coming from the north. Here is where I should probably address the first misconception about the Great Wall of China. There is no single Great Wall of China, as there isn't a single wall that stretches across China. It would be more accurate to say there are Great Walls of China, plural.

Starting point is 00:04:29 If you see a map of the Great Wall of China, you'll see several lines of walls, often hundreds of miles apart from each other. These first walls were built in a piecemeal fashion. They didn't necessarily look like the well-constructed stone and brick structures that you've probably seen photos of. Most of these very early constructions were made with rammed earth, not bricks, or with stones that they found scattered about. The oldest existing segment of the wall is known as the Wall of Shi, which dates back to the year 441 BC. Many of these very early walls were not necessarily facing north to keep out nomadic invaders. Each kingdom would build walls to keep out other kingdoms as well as people from the steps. That all changed when the first Chinese emperor Chinn came to power in 221 BC and established the Qin dynasty.

Starting point is 00:05:15 He did two things with respect to the Great Wall. First, he dismantled all of the walls which were built between the various Chinese states, which prevented easy movement within the new empire. Second, he connected all of the northward-facing walls so it became, one contiguous wall. The wall was never intended to be a permanent border. One of the philosophies of the Chin and later dynasties was build and move on. The wall during this period stretched for about 3,000 miles. After the fall, the Chin dynasty, the wall fell into disrepair. And it went through a series of periods where new sections of the wall would be built, extended, old parts of the wall

Starting point is 00:05:51 would be rebuilt, and then it would be ignored and fall into disrepair again. Different imperial dynasties had totally different approaches to the wall. The Han dynasty in the second century extended the wall to what became its greatest extent, and it was also extensively rebuilt during the Sway dynasty. The Tang and Song dynasties did relatively little with respect to repairing and expanding the wall. The Great Wall eventually failed to serve its primary purpose during the Mongol invasions. The invasion of China by the Mongols, which began with Jingas Khan and was completed by his grandson Kubla Khan, established the Yuan dynasty, which was the first dynasty of foreign rulers of China. The Mongols didn't really care about the wall when they were in power, as they controlled both sides of it.

Starting point is 00:06:32 It served absolutely no purpose when they ruled China. The only thing they used it for were some military outposts along the wall, which stationed troops that guarded the Silk Road. Oddly enough, none of the European visitors who traveled to China during this period, and there were many, mentioned the Great Wall. After the Mongols fell from power, they were replaced by the Ming Dynasty in the late 14th century. The Ming's, having just lived through a century of Mongol rule, and still engaging in military conflict with the Mongols, set to wall building like no dynasty since the Han, over a thousand years earlier. Their wall building began in earnest in 1474. The Ming Dynasty wall was by far the best version of the wall which had been built.

Starting point is 00:07:12 If you ever visit China today and go see the Great Wall of China, you will almost be certainly visiting a section which was built during the Ming dynasty. The Ming were more concerned about defense than they were about expansion, and the wall was a big part of their strategy. This wall was built with brick instead of rammed earth and stones. They built a network of 25,000 guard towers along the wall, which were manned and evenly spaced along the wall. They also created six gates in the wall in major passes for trade and commerce to pass through. All the gates were heavily fortified with major military installations. Despite all the effort that the Ming Dynasty put into the wall, ultimately it was armies from Manchuria which came through the wall to cause

Starting point is 00:07:51 the fall of the dynasty. They established the Qing dynasty in the mid-16th century. From here, the era of wall building was mostly over. The primary purpose of the wall for the Qing dynasty wasn't keeping the Mongols out of China so much as it was keeping the Han Chinese out of Manchuria. With the advent of more powerful artillery and mechanized warfare, the Great Wall of China became as obsolete as a defensive structure as other city walls and castles were around the world. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Great Wall became a symbol of China, became one of the top things to see for people who were visiting the country, especially the region around Beijing.

Starting point is 00:08:26 In 1933, a military event called the Defense of the Great Wall, also known as the First Battle of Hopay, was fought between the Republic of China and the Imperial Japanese Army. It was a precursor to the Second World War, which would start in China just four years later. Parts of the wall around Beijing were repaired in the 1950s, which is the place that most tourists visit. However, large sections of the wall were destroyed in the 1960s as people used the wall as material for building or tore it down to build roads and other structures.

Starting point is 00:08:55 However, by the 1980s, the wall was once again protected and repaired as its value as a tourist attraction and as a symbol of national pride was once again recognized. Today, the Great Wall of China gets over 50 million visitors per year, both foreign and domestic. Nonetheless, over a third of the wall has been completely destroyed. The wall varies greatly in quality depending on the location. In some parts, it's very well preserved, and in others it's become completely overgrown with grass, and it looks like a long snaking hill. Today, you can visit the point where the Great Wall of China meets the sea in the town of La Longtu. It's not the easternmost point of the wall per se, however, as there are segments which go northeast of that point.

Starting point is 00:09:34 The westernmost point of the Great Wall is found in Jaiu Pass, which is out in the western desert. There were sections of the Han Dynasty Wall which went even further west, but those are long gone. The wall near Jaiyu Pass just abruptly ends, and it's rather odd because anyone at that point could easily just go around it. You might have heard that the Great Wall of China was the only man-made object which is visible from space. This has been proven to be mostly false. While the wall is very long, it's far too narrow to be seen in most places. There are, however, a few sections of the wall that are straight that stick out from the surroundings that can be seen. However, you need to know exactly where to look. There are also many such roads and other

Starting point is 00:10:15 man-made structures which can be seen from orbit if you also know exactly where to look. In its totality, all of the walls which make up the Great Wall of China, built over a period of about 2,500 years, made by over a million people over that time period, constitutes the largest structure ever created by humanity. Regardless if it's measured by length, total mass of building material, or the time it took to build, there is nothing in the world that is quite like the Great Wall of China. Everything Everywhere Daily is an Airwave Media podcast. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. Today's review comes from listener Ness Bogg over at Apple Podcasts in the UK. They write, The gloss on top of the cherry on top of the cake. The most informative yet catchy podcast out there,

Starting point is 00:11:05 bite-sized episodes that will give you exactly the amount of information you need on any topic to be that person at the dinner, or house party. Absolutely love it. P.S., listening on Spotify, but they don't have a review system yet. Well, thank you very much, Ness Bog. Actually, Spotify did just release a review system a few weeks ago. It's only a star-based system, so you can't actually write out a full review like this one, but you can at least express your support to the powers that be at Spotify. Remember, if you leave a review or send in a question, you two can have it read on the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Great Wall of China

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.