Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm editor Candice skips In, joined by staff writer Jane
Speaker 1: the Grass Taylor. Candice, Jane, you near that old proverb
Speaker 1: that great fences make great neighbors. Yeah, I think it's true.
Speaker 1: It's very true. Like that was one of my favorite
Speaker 1: especially if you have a yappy, little dog like idea.
Speaker 1: He likes to knows his way into other people's yards.
Speaker 1: I have a question for you, actually, did you ever
Speaker 1: play the game Rampart video game? Oh, it's a great game.
Speaker 1: It's actually you build like castles and walls to keep
Speaker 1: out the the enemy forces from coming in just and
Speaker 1: burning down your castle. And I think up playing the game,
Speaker 1: the hours that I spent were actually prepared me for
Speaker 1: this podcast. Has gosh, so the idea today things that
Speaker 1: keep people out fences, walls, boundaries. Um uh, the biggest
Speaker 1: wall of all what what kinds to mind? Of course?
Speaker 1: The Great Wall of China. And yeah, there were other
Speaker 1: empires that had big walls before China, Denmark, Korea, and
Speaker 1: the Reman Empire. They all had walls before China. Build it.
Speaker 1: And the funny thing about the wall is that you know,
Speaker 1: when we think about the wall today, we see this
Speaker 1: one big labyrinthine landmarks, and that wasn't always the case. No,
Speaker 1: it was built in section six sections to be exact,
Speaker 1: and they had really nothing to do with each other
Speaker 1: in terms of like they were only for their individual
Speaker 1: kingdoms precisely. And not much is known about the wall
Speaker 1: in terms of its length. Ord's with there's not a
Speaker 1: whole lot of standard measurements. Some people think that it's
Speaker 1: about miles long. Other people say it's more like four
Speaker 1: thousand sixty three miles. And it's wider in some places
Speaker 1: and it as in others. And so just get the
Speaker 1: sense that it's not uniform by any stretch of the imagination.
Speaker 1: That's right to give you a point of reference, Like
Speaker 1: they're not even sure how long it is, you know,
Speaker 1: you think by today this would be easy to figure out,
Speaker 1: but they're actually, Uh, it's so difficult because they're section
Speaker 1: of the wall that are buried and and is they're scattered,
Speaker 1: and like you said, there are different pieces and look
Speaker 1: different ways, so it's hard to find out. They're built
Speaker 1: of all different materials. Some are made of brick and
Speaker 1: stone and others are made of earth and other strange materials.
Speaker 1: And you can really get this sense by studying the
Speaker 1: wall that this was a haphazard thing thrown together to
Speaker 1: keep out the Huns and other invaders. And that's exactly
Speaker 1: what it was. It's like, I'm not much of a gamer,
Speaker 1: but Jane, I imagine and rampart. You're doing whatever you can,
Speaker 1: scrambling as fast as possible to keep people. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So whatever you decide your bill to build your wall
Speaker 1: out of, as long as it's there, it's gonna work.
Speaker 1: And well, westerners call it the Great Wall of China.
Speaker 1: The Chinese don't really think of it that way. They're like,
Speaker 1: it's not so great. It's really long, and that's why
Speaker 1: they call it the the long Wall of ten thousand lee.
Speaker 1: That's right, and a lee is about half a kilometer
Speaker 1: to have you a point of reference, and so the
Speaker 1: pe pegs ad at about three thousand miles. But as
Speaker 1: we know, we're not really sure. And so people are
Speaker 1: actually right now on a mission to determine once and
Speaker 1: for all how long the wall is and then think
Speaker 1: it's going to be about a four year track because
Speaker 1: they have to go through mountains and desert and grasslands.
Speaker 1: And this is a study being conducted by the State
Speaker 1: Administration of Cultural Heritage as well as the State Bureau
Speaker 1: of Surveying and Mapping. And they're starting in the east
Speaker 1: by the gebby desert, and they're moving west towards the
Speaker 1: Yellow State. That's right. And what's interesting to me about
Speaker 1: the Great Wall is that it was done in so
Speaker 1: many fits and starts, like even after it was trying
Speaker 1: to be unified, which is back about UM. I want
Speaker 1: to say the third century. Yeah, that's the third century
Speaker 1: Uh where the Chin, which is where China got its
Speaker 1: name originally, the Chin emperor Uh wanted to unify China,
Speaker 1: and so he tore down some walls that didn't make
Speaker 1: sense to him, and he kept up a northern wall
Speaker 1: to keep out barbarians like so not even just to
Speaker 1: to stop them, but maybe just to delay them so
Speaker 1: that when they knew they were coming, you know, the
Speaker 1: people UM could rally their defenses. And so this continued
Speaker 1: for a while, and it acquired the help of everyone
Speaker 1: from commoners to prisoners and criminals and soldiers. Everyone had
Speaker 1: to chip in and build this wall. And we know
Speaker 1: that thousands and thousands of people die during the construction,
Speaker 1: and we also know that some of them are actually
Speaker 1: buried inside the wall. That's right. And it's pretty crazy
Speaker 1: to think that they're actually not only earth, you know,
Speaker 1: packed in but bodies inside the wall. Isn't that wild?
Speaker 1: And I'm sure that it's it's bones if even how
Speaker 1: long it takes bones to finally disintegrate. But there you
Speaker 1: have it. So the Chin dynasty left off around the
Speaker 1: third century, and then it didn't really get as um
Speaker 1: to be huge of a project until the main dynasty,
Speaker 1: and that was around thirteen sixty eight when that dynasty began,
Speaker 1: it's right, and they wanted to defend themselves from the
Speaker 1: Mongols by that time, and to the same principle again,
Speaker 1: you you keep adding length and which the wall to
Speaker 1: keep out the invaders. And they had special passes like
Speaker 1: they obviously be in order to um have people come
Speaker 1: in and out that were like trade et cetera, that
Speaker 1: kept the country moving. They had things called passes, but
Speaker 1: they had to be heavily guarded by men to make sure,
Speaker 1: you know, you kept out the unwanted invaders. Uh So,
Speaker 1: but they also what was really cool about by this time,
Speaker 1: the wall had a signal towers and as you know,
Speaker 1: they didn't have walkie talkies at that time, so in
Speaker 1: order and so in order to signal to each other
Speaker 1: like hey, there's you know, barbarians on the way sort
Speaker 1: of thing. Uh, they would use anything from smoked signals
Speaker 1: to banners in the daytime, but at night they had
Speaker 1: to use things like lanterns, clappers, or gunfire. And that's
Speaker 1: what's so interesting about the Main dynasty because not only
Speaker 1: did they add girth to the wall, sometimes double and
Speaker 1: triple the wit the width that it had been previously,
Speaker 1: they started reinforcing it with military personnel. And so they
Speaker 1: had guard towers, and they had beak ends, and they
Speaker 1: had all of these extra human reinforcements to make sure
Speaker 1: that the invaders stayed out. But it wasn't always successful
Speaker 1: because the guards could be pretty easily bribed. Yeah, that's true,
Speaker 1: and it it caused some problems, it really did. And
Speaker 1: so the Mongols finally, I'm sorry, not the Mongols, the
Speaker 1: man Churions. They finally overtook the Main dynasty, and that
Speaker 1: was about the seventeenth century. And because they were more
Speaker 1: into appeasing the neighboring kingdoms, they weren't as interested in
Speaker 1: in a wall, so they basically let it fall into
Speaker 1: disrepair exactly. And I think also part of their philosophy was, well,
Speaker 1: it couldn't keep us out. Who you're not going to
Speaker 1: keep out. It's a pretty useless and you can imagine
Speaker 1: that a wall of that size and length, even though
Speaker 1: today we talked about about it being in disrepair and ruin,
Speaker 1: it would have taken a lot of manpower to keep
Speaker 1: it up. And so they decided now it's it's just
Speaker 1: not worth it. And so a wall that had been
Speaker 1: developing for some two thousand years, it just stopped and
Speaker 1: and stood. And that's when things like earthquakes and snow
Speaker 1: and wind and rain really exacted their fury on the wall.
Speaker 1: But today that natural um, the natural threats aren't as
Speaker 1: great as the human threats, that's true. And as time
Speaker 1: went on and people actually would would take pieces away,
Speaker 1: whether it's to build houses or whatever. Similar thing happened
Speaker 1: to the Colisseum. I remember learning Um, where people, you know,
Speaker 1: they would just take bricks away. And this wall is
Speaker 1: there's a point of pride for China that now you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's a point of tourism. Uh so that they
Speaker 1: want to keep it up and so um they want
Speaker 1: to stop these these things that are destroying it. And
Speaker 1: it's worth mentioning too that Chairman Mal was a pretty
Speaker 1: gung of advocate of the people taking part of the
Speaker 1: wall to build their own homes. You know, progress at
Speaker 1: what cost? Well, nothing really, because you're building materials are
Speaker 1: coming from something that's already extant um. But as far
Speaker 1: as threats from tourism, those are really really serious because
Speaker 1: you know, when the Berlin Wall came down, people took
Speaker 1: pieces away, but that was fine and dandy because no
Speaker 1: one wanted that wall. But the Chinese do want their wall,
Speaker 1: and so in tourists came. Even if they're just chipping
Speaker 1: away a little brick or a little piece of earth,
Speaker 1: it's causing a lot of damage because on average the
Speaker 1: wall gets around ten million visitors per year. That's right.
Speaker 1: It's kind of ironic because it brings in money for
Speaker 1: the country obviously, but it's also causing. It's taking its
Speaker 1: own toll in the wall itself, it really is, and
Speaker 1: not just from outsiders but insiders too, because finders and
Speaker 1: herders will take their livestock there to Gray's or else.
Speaker 1: Business people will set up a little vendor stands and
Speaker 1: things like that in front of the wall, and it's
Speaker 1: just it's damaging not only the structural integrity but also
Speaker 1: the aesthetic appeal of the wall. That's right. So today
Speaker 1: they try to advise the tourists who don't bring anything,
Speaker 1: don't like leave it and and don't take anything away either, right.
Speaker 1: And one of the biggest problems they have, or a
Speaker 1: couple of the biggest problems driving along the wall in
Speaker 1: some places it says, why do you can drive a
Speaker 1: car on it? And speaking of that, they've actually cut
Speaker 1: roads through the wall itself. So they've taken down sections
Speaker 1: of the of the walls so that they can put
Speaker 1: roads through, which I can understand, like obviously it would
Speaker 1: probably cost a lot of much more money to build
Speaker 1: a road that goes over the wall. But but still
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty said. Well, it's strange to think about too,
Speaker 1: because I think that attitudes towards the wall are shifting,
Speaker 1: or at least they have been. If Chairman Mao is
Speaker 1: encouraging people to take apart the wall, you can imagine
Speaker 1: that for the sake of bolstering infrastructure, people would support
Speaker 1: the idea of just knocking through it if necessary. But
Speaker 1: now people are starting to acknowledge it more as a
Speaker 1: world landmark, and it's actually one of the few landmarks
Speaker 1: that cartographers put on maps. And despite what people say,
Speaker 1: you cannot see it from space. Yeah, And that's it's
Speaker 1: an interesting actually myth that you bring up about not
Speaker 1: seeing it from space, because the Chinese are actually kind
Speaker 1: of proud of this claim. They're like, oh, yeah, our
Speaker 1: landmark can be seen from space. But this, this myth
Speaker 1: actually dates back to a cartoon, uh from Ripley's Believe
Speaker 1: It or Not, and it the cartoon claimed that this
Speaker 1: is the mightiest work of man, the only one that
Speaker 1: could be visible to the human human eye from the moon,
Speaker 1: and this myth persisted throughout the space age, even um,
Speaker 1: so that you know, Apollo astronauts would like, look for
Speaker 1: the Great Wall or whatever. But actually, um, there are
Speaker 1: shades of truth. Even though the Great Wall is definitely
Speaker 1: not visible from the moon. You know, no structure really
Speaker 1: is from the moon, but from space you can actually, um,
Speaker 1: some astronauts say you can barely see it. Um. But
Speaker 1: what's interesting about this is that you can see other
Speaker 1: man made structures much much better, whether they be um
Speaker 1: highways or you know, the Pyramids even can be seen
Speaker 1: a little bit better than the Great Wall. So it's
Speaker 1: shades of truth. But don't believe everything you hear. But
Speaker 1: as far as I guess that the permanence and the
Speaker 1: honor that the wall brings, I mean, you're right that
Speaker 1: that would be a really honorable claim to fame, that
Speaker 1: you can see the wall from space, even if it's
Speaker 1: not true. So I can understand hanging onto that. But
Speaker 1: to know that about the wall is on is in
Speaker 1: ruins and only it is in reasonable condition, that's you know,
Speaker 1: it's been a real source of hurt for people who
Speaker 1: are starting to recognize it as a link to their past.
Speaker 1: And so in two thousand seven, when it was chosen
Speaker 1: as one of the new Wonders of the World, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of commissions and organizations were they had
Speaker 1: fuel added to their fire of keep preservation. And back
Speaker 1: in two thousand three, Beijing was one of the first
Speaker 1: places that the wall covers to enact regulations for keeping
Speaker 1: up the wall and to impose fines on people who
Speaker 1: drove on it or and they must have one of
Speaker 1: the worst problems with it, since it's such a bustling city, right,
Speaker 1: and one of the biggest problems they have, I think
Speaker 1: is raves people having races on the wall, which to
Speaker 1: me is just inconceivable. But then a couple of years later,
Speaker 1: or contemporary to Beijing's policies actually going into law, China
Speaker 1: enacted a national policy against desecration of the wall, so
Speaker 1: no ray of no carving, no driving, and if you do,
Speaker 1: and you're a member of an organization or a group,
Speaker 1: you're gonna pay upwards to around sixty tho U S dollars.
Speaker 1: And if you're an individual dessec crediting the wall, I
Speaker 1: think it's around six thousand US. Of course that's harder
Speaker 1: to enforce around the rural areas, it is, and that's
Speaker 1: one of the biggest problems with the wall is that
Speaker 1: in the rural areas, you know, you're having problems with
Speaker 1: the herders and livestock damaging the wall. Not as many
Speaker 1: prize uh. And you can find out more about all
Speaker 1: different kinds of subjects from the history of China to
Speaker 1: Beijing to the Olympics at how stuff works dot com
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