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The Wall stretches over a formidable 6,700 km, from Shanhai Pass on the Bohai Gulf in the east, at the limit between China proper and Manchuria, to Jiayu Pass (嘉峪关) in western GansuGansu ( Simplified: , Traditional: , Pinyin: Gnsu, Wade-Giles: Kan-su, or modified as Kan-suh) is a province located in the northwest of the People's Republic of China. It lies between Qingzang, Inner Mongolia, and the Huangtu Plateaus, and borders Mongol province in the west, at the limit of the Gobi DesertThe Gobi is a large desert region in northern China and southern Mongolia. The desert basins of the Gobi are bounded by the Altai mountains and the grasslands and steppes of Mongolia on the north, by the Tibetan Plateau to the southwest, and by the North and the oases of the Silk RoadThe Silk Road ( Traditional Chinese: ; Simplified Chinese: ; pinyin: si chou zhi lu) was an interconnected series of routes through Southern Asia traversed by caravan and ocean vessel, and connecting Chang'an, China with Antioch, Syria, as well as other p.
The first major wall was built during the reign of The First EmperorQin Shi Huang (November or December 260 BC September 10, 210 BC), personal name Zheng was king of the Chinese State of Qin from 247 BC to 221 BC, and then the first emperor of a unified China from 221 BC to 210 BC, ruling under the name First Emperor ., the main emperor of the short-lived Qin dynasty. This wall was not constructed as a single endeavor, but rather was created by the joining of several regional walls built by the Warring States. It was located much more north than the current Great Wall, and very little remains of it. A defensive wall on the northern border was built and maintained by several dynasties at different times along Chinese history. The Great Wall that can still be seen today was built during the Ming Dynasty, on a much larger scale and with longer lasting materials (solid stone used for the sides and the top of the Wall) than any wall that had been built before. The primary purpose of the wall was not to keep out people, who could scale the wall, but to insure that semi-nomadic people on the outside of the wall could not cross with their horses or return easily with stolen property.
There have been four major walls:
The Ming Dynasty Great Wall starts on the eastern end at Shanhai Pass, near Qinhuangdao, in Hebei Province, next to Bohai Gulf. Spanning nine provinces and 100 counties, it ends on the western end at Jiayu Pass located in northwest Gansu Province. Jiayu Pass was intended to greet travelers along the Silk Road. Even though The Great Wall ends at Jiayu Pass, there are watchtowers (烽火台 feng huǒ tái) extending beyond Jiayu Pass along the Silk Road. These towers communicated by smoke to signal invasion.
The Manchus crossed the Wall by convincing a crucial general Wu Sangui to open the gates of Shahai Pass and allow the Manchus to cross. Legend has it that they took three days for the Manchu armies to pass. After they conquered China, the Wall was of no strategic value as the people who the Wall was intended to keep out were ruling the country (becoming the Qing Dynasty).
The government ordered people to work on the wall, and workers were under constant danger of being attacked by brigands. Because many people died while building the wall, it is often called the "longest cemetery on Earth".