The Really Great Wall Of China 3

Jiayuguan Fort

It really is a sight to savour the first time you see it.

Yeah, the Great Wall of China is pretty great.

It happens to be the largest and longest man made object ever built. And it's not just one wall, but a series of fortifications, ramparts and walls, which protected various Chinese kingdoms from invaders from the north, northeast and northwest.

In its entirety, the wall structures are an incredible 22,000km long.

For comparison purposes, that would be the same as building a wall between Sydney and Perth a whole 5 times over, or between Paris and Istanbul 8 times. That's one helluva Mongol-proof fence.

It's history began when a number of walls and fortifications were unified into a single defensive line by the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang in the 2nd Century BC. Over the various subsequent dynasties the wall was greatly lengthened and strengthened, with Emperors sometimes utilising up to a million labourers at once to make it all happen.

Imagine the pub on a Friday night.

The Ming dynasty were the ones who built the highest, thickest, and most widely known parts of the wall, and because they used mainly bricks and stone, huge lengths of their wall still remain today.

The wall basically runs along geographical lines, where the fertile plains of China meet the northern and western steppe regions and deserts of Mongolia, Xinjiang and Central Asia. Because of these huge geographical differences, China became an agricultural society of farms and cities, while the northern and northwestern peoples were generally nomadic herders. This resulted in hugely different cultural and historical development.

Overall, you'd have to say that the Great Wall was a Great Success. In its illustrious 2,500 year long history it wasn't properly been breached very often, although when it was it was pretty disastrous for the Chinese kingdoms.

The Monguls, ruled by Kublai Khan, who was the grandson of Genghis Khan, were engaged in constant battles with Chinese forces, and at the Juyong Pass, very close to Beijing, rather than bothering to try and breach the wall, they just tricked the Chinese army into an ambush outside the wall, and then rode right in through the open gates while they weren't looking.

Cheeky buggers.

Once on the fertile Chinese plains, the Mongols were very hard to defend against, and by the mid 1200s had become the first non-Han dynasty to rule all of China.

That only lasted for about a hundred years though, which is not that long in historical terms (but bloody ages if you've been invaded by medieval Mongols). The new Ming Dynasty managed to kick them all out by 1368, and then spent a fortune on expanding the Great Wall, and making sure his generals didn't fall for the same sneaky trick again.

When I first arrived at Jiayuguan Fort, the westernmost barricade of the whole wall, the great Emperor tried to get me to look in the other direction so he could steal my chips. But I wasn't falling for that one, no way. I was way too hungry, plus I was too busy marvelling at what he'd created.

Well, more accurately, what he kindly asked his architects and builders and artisans and slaves to create.

You walk through a beautiful scenic reserve to get there. It's very beautiful, scenic, and reserved.

Breaching the first gate, in the outer wall.

Looking at the outie from the innie.

The fort here is not just a fort, but includes lots of other buildings, ancient temples and halls, and various parade and jousting grounds.

Friendly (and chatty) school group from Lanzhou.

At the parade ground the troops were still practising their fighting skills, just in case the Mongols come back. The weird thing was, they were doing their routine to a soundtrack of the theme from The Pirates of the Caribbean, the "He's A Pirate" song. Pretty trippy.

They wore interesting armoury in those days in this part of the world. It wasn't all bulky and heavy like those unfortunate Christian knights way out west. You could still jump and spin and do all your Kung Fu tricks in this gear.

Looking west, with a plastic warrior

I visited the Bactrians outside the wall, the double-humped camels, they were very chilled. One was crashed out, maybe from carrying heavy tourists.

Of course the fort had all sorts of tricky obstacles for potential invaders. This double-gated corridor was designed to trap enemy troops so they could be massacred easily.