50 Fun Facts About Great Wall of China

According to China's 2012 survey, what is the total length of all Great Wall sections and trenches?

The Ming wall alone measures 8,850 km, of which 2,232 km is natural barrier such as hills and rivers.

The Great Wall was built mainly to protect against nomadic groups from which region?

Its other jobs included border control, collecting duties on Silk Road goods and regulating trade.

In which century BC do the first walls date from?

They were joined together under the Qin dynasty in the 3rd century BC.

Which dynasty built the best-known brick-and-stone sections of the wall?

It ruled from 1368 to 1644 and is estimated to have built up to 25,000 watchtowers.

The Chinese name Wanli Changcheng literally means what?

"Ten thousand" is figurative here, meaning innumerable, much like the English word myriad.

Which poetic nickname for the wall appears in Chinese sources alongside "the Earth Dragon"?

After the Qin, later dynasties avoided the term "Long Wall" because of its link to the First Emperor's tyranny.

Sections of wall in the Gobi and Mongolian steppe are sometimes misleadingly named after which conqueror?

He never built any walls or permanent defence lines himself.

Which general did the First Emperor send to build walls linking the Qin, Zhao and Yan walls?

Before his forced suicide in 210 BC he lamented that his walls must have "broken the earth's veins".

What guiding principle of Qin wall-building implied the frontier was never meant to be permanent?

Builders used stone in the mountains and rammed earth on the plains, whatever was local.

The Great Wall of Qi is the oldest surviving Great Wall; bamboo records date its start to when?

The date comes from the Tsinghua bamboo strips, acquired by the university in 2008.

Which dynasty mobilised over a million men for wall-building?

The Tang and Song dynasties largely ignored the frontier walls.

The Ming turned to serious wall-building after which 1449 disaster, in which the emperor was captured?

Over half of the campaigning Chinese army perished and the Ming were on the defensive from then on.

Which Ming general oversaw 1,200 watchtowers built between Shanhai Pass and Changping from 1567 to 1570?

Under his supervision, sections of rammed-earth wall near Beijing were faced with bricks.

Through which lightly held point did Altan Khan pass in 1550 to raid the suburbs of Beijing?

One contemporary source says the raid took more than 60,000 lives; the Ming then closed every gap around the capital.

Who opened the gates of Shanhai Pass to the Manchus in 1644?

He hoped the Manchus would help him expel the rebels who had taken Beijing; instead they took the empire.

Why did the Qing dynasty stop maintaining the Great Wall as a border defence?

They did build the Willow Palisade, meant to keep Han Chinese out of Manchuria.

Which famous 13th-century European visitor to China never mentioned the Great Wall in his account?

Ibn Battuta had heard of it around 1346 but could find no one who had actually seen it.

From which country did Jesuit Bento de Góis travel overland to enter China through the Great Wall in 1605?

He reached the wall's far north-western pass after crossing Central Asia.

Which fortress in Gansu province marks the western end of the Ming Great Wall?

Its fortress was built around 1372 and strengthened over fears of an invasion by Timur, who died on the way.

Legend says the designer of the wall's western fortress calculated he needed how many bricks?

Challenged, he added one more; the single leftover brick is said to still sit loose on one of the gates.

Shanhaiguan, the traditional eastern end of the wall, carries what grand title?

It sits at the edge of the Bohai Gulf, roughly 300 km east of Beijing.

The stretch of wall that runs into the sea at Shanhai Pass is nicknamed what?

Nearby Jiumenkou is the only part of the wall built as a bridge.

Which section near Zhangjiakou was the first opened to the public in the People's Republic and is the most visited?

It saw nearly 10 million visitors in 2018, prompting a daily cap of 65,000 the next year.

In what year did the first restored section of the wall open to tourism under the People's Republic?

It followed scholar Guo Moruo's 1952 proposal, the first modern plan to repair the wall.

Which US president visited the wall on 24 February 1972 during his historic trip to China?

Later visitors included Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.

The Mutianyu section was first built in the mid-6th century under which dynasty?

That makes it older than the more famous section to its west; the present wall was rebuilt in 1569.

How many watchtowers stand on the 2,250-metre Mutianyu stretch?

Its pass has a rare structure of three connected watchtowers standing on one terrace.

Wangjing Lou, one of Jinshanling's 67 watchtowers, stands at what elevation?

The Jinshanling section runs 11 km and climbs some extremely steep slopes.

Which mortar was extensively used to hold the Ming wall's bricks together?

No human bones were ever built into the wall, whatever the urban legend says.

How were signals sent between garrisons along the wall?

Signal towers were built on hilltops for visibility so reinforcements could be summoned quickly.

How high is the wall near Juyong Pass, the section that guarded the approach to Beijing?

It is about 5 m wide and built from stone and bricks quarried in the surrounding hills.

What did a 2012 report say had happened to 22% of the Ming Great Wall, some 1,961 km?

Sandstorm erosion alone threatened more than 60 km in Gansu, and inscribed bricks were being sold for up to 50 yuan.

Why did Red Guards deliberately dismantle stretches of wall during the Cultural Revolution?

Quarrying machines and even dynamite were used, and the materials went into construction.

Which leader launched the 1980s "Love our China and restore our Great Wall" campaign?

Tourism boomed, though National Geographic said some restored stretches looked "like a Hollywood set".

Mao Zedong's 1935 poem "Mount Liupan" contains which line, now carved in stone at the site?

He wrote it near the end of the Long March.

In what year was the Great Wall inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site?

In 2007 it was also voted one of the New 7 Wonders of the World.

Can the Great Wall be seen with the naked eye from the Moon?

From the Moon its apparent width would match a human hair viewed from 3 km away.

Which English antiquary's 1754 letter made one of the earliest claims the wall could be seen from the Moon?

He was comparing it favourably with Hadrian's Wall; Ripley's Believe It or Not! repeated the myth in 1932.

China's first astronaut, Yang Liwei, said what about seeing the wall from orbit?

NASA says it is barely visible even under near-perfect conditions and no more conspicuous than other structures.

The ESA press image supposedly showing the Great Wall from orbit was actually of what?

Astronaut Leroy Chiao later took an ISS photo so indistinct he was not sure he had captured it.

In the legend of Lady Meng Jiang, what happens when she weeps at the wall for her dead husband?

It is one of China's Four Great Folktales, and the toppled section is identified as the Great Wall of Qi in Shandong.

The Great Wall Marathon, first run in 1999, is held on which section east of Beijing?

The course includes more than 20,000 stone steps and about 30 km on the wall itself.

What is evangelist William Edgar Geil believed to have been the first American to do, per his 1908 book?

He also visited China's Five Sacred Mountains and lectured with lantern slides.

Four reporters in which city concocted the 1899 Great Wall demolition hoax?

A 1939 urban legend falsely claimed the story sparked the Boxer Rebellion.

What did Ibn Battuta link the Great Wall to when he wrote of it in the 1340s?

He wrote it lay "sixty days' travel" from Quanzhou but never found anyone who had seen it.

Roughly what share of Great Wall sites lie in Inner Mongolia and Hebei together?

Inner Mongolia holds 31% and Hebei 19%.

Where does the Han dynasty wall begin in the far west?

Ruins of the remotest Han border posts are at Mamitu, "horses losing their way".

How were 180 km of previously unknown Ming wall sections discovered in 2009?

In 2015 nine more sections totalling over 10 km turned up on the Ningxia-Gansu border.

In 2023 a section of wall in Shanxi was badly damaged by workers who widened a gap for what purpose?

Police called it irreversible damage to the safety of the cultural relics.

The mid-15th-century Liaodong Wall against the Jurchens was mostly what kind of structure?

Stones and tiles were sometimes used, but it was far simpler than the walls near Beijing.