Great Wall

1243 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The great wall of china grade 2 essay

Great Wall

Everything can be linked to everything! This is the ultimate anthropological truth.

What drew my to the Great Wall is that the Great Wall isn’t only a physical thing but it is also something that has stood for a culture. From a physical barrier to something that established safe caravan routes, the Great Wall has stood for it all. It represents China, in the current and in the past. This draws me to The Great Wall of China. The three dynasties that constructed the wall were the Qin, the Han, and the Ming.

Chin Shi Huang, the originator of the wall and who the great country gets its name after probably wouldn’t of ever expected the wall to be a 4,500 mile long masterpiece that would have turned out to be one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World! The Qin wall was built to keep people out, and to keep people in.

The Han wall was built as a cultural icon and a physical force. It was also the longest dynasty, lasting four hundred and twenty two years. The Han are the ones that restored the Confucian literature to China, established a strong central government, and set up the first public school system! The Han, being the builders of the second portion of the Great Wall extended and restored the Qin wall 300 miles into the Gobi desert.

(www.discovery.com) By extending the Great Wall they opened China up to great expansion of trade. Trade of ideas, knowledge, and physical goods.

The Ming wall was the last section to be built. It was built in an age when China would become a world economic power. This wall took an estimated 200 years to complete. The Ming portion of the wall contained individual forts that at one time held and estimated one million soldiers! An economic power is something that is not attained in one day but over time through careful planning and excellent leadership.

The Great Wall of China is something that has stood for a culture for over two thousand years! It is a magnificent physical structure and cultural icon that represents an immense undertaking that shows a culture to the world.

What I find is the most interesting about the Great Wall is that it is an anthropologist’s dream. Physically, culturally, politically, economically, and militaristic, the list goes on and on.

Physically, the wall is a 4,500-mile long structure that covers land from the Gobi desert to the mount...

... middle of paper ...

.... But this wall must be passable; it must have an opening that anyone can pass through. But the only people that will find the door through are the ones that are willing to be open themselves!” There are so many views, ideas, and aspects of wall due to its extreme complexity, culturally and archeologically. Everything can be linked to everything! This is the ultimate anthropological truth. The Great Wall is truly great.

Internet sources

Rause, Vince 1999 Secrets of the Great Wall. www.discovery.com

Chinavista.com 1996-2000 www.chinavista.com/travel/greatwall/greatwall.html

National Gallery of Art Washington, D.C. 2000 www.nga.gov/exhibitions/chbro_imp.htm

Chang, Kwang-chih 1968 The Archeology of Ancient China Yale University Press, New Haven & London

Clark, Grover 1935 The Great Wall Crumbles The MacMillan Company, New York

Feinman, Gary & Price, Douglas T. 1997 Images of the Past University of Wisconsin, Madison Mayfield Publishing Company Mountain View California, London, Toronto

Geil, William Edgar 1909 The Great Wall of China New York: Sturgis & Walton Company

Nai, Hsai Peking 1974 New Archeological Finds in China Foreign Languages Press

Show More
Related

  • Qin Shi Huang Tomb

    379 Words  | 1 Pages

    Discovered in 1974 a group of farmers digging wells near Xi'an, China stumbled upon the tomb of Qin Shi Huang which is located 22 miles east of Xian Shi Huangdi. (259 BC - 210 BC), the first emperor of China, inherited the throne at the age of 13, when construction of his tomb began. He was responsible for several immense construction projects built by his people, including the Great Wall of China. The laborers came from three groups of people, craftsmen, prisoners and people who were repaying a debt. Sima Qian, a great historian who wrote in early Han dynasty, offered archeologists great insight on the mausoleum's construction. We learned from him that the tomb is huge. Moreover, booby traps with automatic-shooting arrows and crossbow booby traps were

    Read More

  • Changes And Continuities In The Shang Dynasty

    1657 Words  | 4 Pages

    The founder of the Qin dynasty was Qin Shi Huangdi, a title meaning “First Emperor.” He was a brutal ruler, but he brought about many changes. However, in addition to all the new, some old ideas were continued from the Zhou, such as the emphasis on the wheat and rice staple foods, and the philosophies, Confucianism and Daoism. The old continuities tended to have been deeply embraced by China, and, just as the Zhou did, the Qin would create some ideas that lasted, and some that did not. Qin Shi Huangdi enforced a tough autocratic rule and, as a result, opposed formal culture that could make people counter his rule. This meant that he burned many books and attacked Confucian ideas in order to keep the people from generating rebellious ideas. When the Qin dynasty fell, so too did the opposition towards education, because it took away from the civilization culturally. Despite the fact that the Qin dynasty was very short and had little time to fully develop its systems and ideas, it did pump out a vast quantity of new and lasting concepts, such as the Great Wall and a central government. One of the biggest contenders for the most well-known feature of the Qin dynasty is the Great Wall. This architectural masterpiece extends over 3,000 miles, and was mainly a

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast The Han And Roman Empires

    563 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Han Dynasty and Roman Empire existed around the same time period and both lasted around 400 years. They each had large populations (around 50 million), conquered enemies they felt as a threat, wanted to spread their boundaries and had strong militaries. The Han Dynasty, located in China, was built on other dynasties such as the Qin and Zhou. The Great Wall of China was built during

    Read More

  • Changes And Continuities In China From 100 CE To 600 CE

    677 Words  | 2 Pages

    Around 220 CE the Han dynasty that rules China starts many attacks on the northern nomads. The Han have conquered and received new territories. Then repairs and builds about 10,000 kilometers of walls. This is the first time the Chinese are extending far west through the Gobi Desert. The Great Wall then takes on a new role which is protecting the Silk Road trade routes that connect China and the West.

    Read More

  • Empress Wu and Buddhism: A Symbiotic Relationship

    2294 Words  | 5 Pages

    Smarr, Janet. “Emperor Wu”. Making of the Modern World 12. Ledden Auditorium, La Jolla, CA. 17 Feb. 2012. Lecture.

    Read More

  • The Three Empires

    952 Words  | 2 Pages

    As in terms of economics, China grew prosperous through trade, military expansion, invention of tools and other means of convenience and through the market economy. From the Han Dynasty China began to build again. The Sui Dynasty constructed the Grand Canal. The Grand Canal was an artificial canal that extended 1,240 miles. It enabled merchants and farmers to travel by water, selling an abundance of rice and other crops. This canal was extremely expensive but throughout the years paid itself off by providing travel routes north and south of China. The Sui Dynasty also built palaces, granarie...

    Read More

  • Overview and History of the Great Wall of China

    2923 Words  | 6 Pages

    The China’s Great Wall is one of the most spectacular and lasting structural feat ever conceived by the human mind. It is considered as the monument to the Chinese civilization constructed at extreme costs and under myriad sacrifices including loss of lives from hard labor for a worthy cause. The Great Wall, which is translated in Chinese as Chang Cheng was originally constructed to provide protection to the Chinese farmers from the marauding nomadic raiders who raided villages for food. The topics that follows attempt to elaborate the history of the Great Wall; the motives behind its construction; the design, materials, methods as well as the processes and labor that were applied in its construction.

    Read More

  • Marco Polo Book Report

    1707 Words  | 4 Pages

    A professor named Hans Vogel explained that "The original wall had long since disintegrated, while the present structure — a product of the Ming Dynasty — was yet to be erected,"* The Great Wall of China we know today was constructed during the 14th century and that the original wall was long

    Read More

  • A Brief History of the Berlin Wall

    881 Words  | 2 Pages

    Walls are one of man’s oldest defenses; physical barriers that are erected to keep people out, or, in some cases, to keep them in. Walls are physical fortifications that create tension and distain among people on both sides. This is what the Berlin Wall, or der Mauer in German, was; a physical barrier created in Berlin, Germany during the Cold War. It was created by the East Germans in an attempt to stop East German citizens from immigrating to Western Germany. However, the Berlin wall was a crude attempt to separate the political and social variances in Germany during the Cold War, because, while it created a physical barrier, it still was unable separate people in an ethic manor.

    Read More

  • Oppression Of Women In Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita

    2004 Words  | 5 Pages

    ...ever anything more satisfying? Furthermore, why does he remain chasing women when he sees his emotional state and sensual desires being fragmented by increasingly more damaging relationships? The answer is domination. He has to control what he desires, and he has to be superior in everything: including the defeat other sexually competence males. He must conquest the heart of any female whether he desires her or not. He even has to persuade, with literary aptitude, the opinionated dispositions of the jury. But all of these, in essence, are only additions to Humbert’s unattainable yearning to win over his own destiny, which he does so by murdering Quilty. He sees his world full of plight, of distraught, and discontent, and he battles frantically to dominate that world, and if he is capable of doing so, then he becomes the superior man over all, but especially himself.

    Read More

  • The Berlin Wall

    999 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Berlin Wall ferociously slashed through the rights of the people of Germany. People have the right to go and live where they choose. Constructing a wall to trap and limit people was wrong. The people of Germany were oppressed economically and politically.

    Read More

  • Lolita Delusional Love Essay

    928 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita delusional love encourages violent actions. The protagonist Humbert Humbert is infatuated with prepubescent Dolores Haze. This vulgar love is based in possession and control, yet Humbert does not feel that he is in any way hurting young Lolita, also known as Dolores, and he feels that because he loves her there is no wrongdoing. By believing that she loves him back in the same way that he loves her, he is setting himself up for tragedy. When she is taken from him by an unknown predator Humbert embarks on a multi-year long journey in search of his lost nymphet. When he finally finds Dolores, barefoot and pregnant, she tells him of her stay with a relative named Clare Quilty whom she fell in love with. At Dolly’s home Humbert begs for her to return to him. Only when she denies him this he realizes the traumatic effects he has had on the girl because of his delusional love for her. By realizing that he, all along, was the villain of the story, he feels that he needs to murder Quilty in order to do right by Dolly, as a type of twisted

    Read More

  • Transgression In Lolita

    857 Words  | 2 Pages

    Without a doubt, Humbert is a villain, but by empathizing with him, we have subconsciously forgiven him in his wrongdoings. All along, Humbert had deeply loved and long for Lolita and all throughout his time with her, he acknowledges the depth of his immorality. What had triggered our sympathy was his persistency to obtain what he loved most and the disclosure of his guilt, which he claims could never be forgiven. However, we as readers, seeing the he sincerely feels guilty and castigates himself, makes us accept him

    Read More

  • Lolita In Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years

    2129 Words  | 5 Pages

    The interpretation of Lolita still consisted on the ideas of sex and the book as well as the character became a scandal. Nabokov has rebuffed sex themes since the beginning of the book’s publishing. In his famous interview with Playboy, Nabokov rejects the interviewer bringing up America’s sexual mores with “Sex as an institution, sex as a general notion, sex as a problem, sex as a platitude—all this is something I find too tedious for words. Let us skip sex.” (Toffler). His refusal to even talk sex proved how little his tolerance was when it came to humoring the audience about sex themes and sex related questions. In an interview with CBC during the early 1960s, Nabokov is quoted agreeing with an interviewer that believes “sex has become such a cliche, so that people can’t recognize anything else.” (...) which further shows how 1960’s mentalities could see nothing else outside of the realm of sex. In the same CBC interview, Nabokov disputes sex themes more openly and admits that his writing of the book has more to do with Humbert’s artistic nature and how that alienates him and creates unattainable love (...). While Nabokov wrongly uses a young girl’s abuse as a tool of illustrating a man’s “misfortunes” of being an artist, the novel is more than what the 1960’s audience perceived it to be. Nabokov did not intend to write a book about a fetish, nor did he, according to Playboy, wish to satirize American culture. The text included more substinance than what people perceived it to be and as did the character Lolita herself, who was more than a teen temptress. His writing of the book has nothing to do about sex, although his initial theme is flawed and an important example of men’s inability to write books featuring authentic female characters, unless they are being used as tools or over sexualized. And much like Humbert Humbert, no matter how hard Nabokov tried to manipulate the text, feelings of empathy still is evoked

    Read More

  • Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita

    618 Words  | 2 Pages

    The affair, Humbert argues, was made possible because he resembled a movie star to Lolita, and ends when Quilty offers her a chance at Hollywood, something Humbert cannot do. Lolita is perceived by the adults in her life--Humbert, Charlotte, and Quilty--as a star. The novel's consistent invocation of filmic metaphors to describe Lolita invites us to read her as a literary version of Hollywood's child star. Her career is as short-lived as the average child star's: as first Humbert's lover and then Quilty's whore, Lolita's career spans roughly four to five years. Humbert scrupulously remarks throughout the confession that he is working with the wrong medium. He is convinced, and he obviously wants his reader to become so, that Lolita could be forever his, that his seduction would be a complete achievement.

    Read More

More about Great Wall

Open Document