Seven Wonders III: The Great Wall of China

The Great Wall. Photo (cc) Bernard Goldbach.

I think this is another obvious choice for any Seven Wonders list, so I’m a bit baffled as to why it isn’t one of the New 7 Wonders. A lot of people think it was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, but this isn’t the case. The original list was based around the eastern Mediterranean. Another problem is that an awful lot of the wall isn’t ancient. The Qin and Han period parts of the wall are ancient, dating from the last few centuries BC, but the building of the Wall continued into the Ming period which is almost Early Modern. Despite this it’s still amazing, so why was it overlooked? One possible reason is that it’s too big to see. It’s not so big you can see it from the Moon as some claim, but it’s far too big to see when you’re standing next to it. The Chinese name for it is the 10,000 Li Wall, which roughly means the same as the Infinite Wall. Because of the mountains and the curvature of the Earth, an infinite wall could be indistinguishable from one just a few miles long in places.

Another reason to overlook it is that it sounds like a really bad idea. If you want to keep barbarians out it makes no sense. You have to defend the entire wall, while the barbarians can pick and choose the weakest point to hit and then hit it with their whole army. The Great Wall is thousands of miles long. A lot of reinforcements will simply be too far away to be any help. The cleverness of the wall is only apparent when you think about the tactics of a hit ‘n’ run attack. Hitting is easy, you get inside the empire and grab the loot. Then you run. Except you have a wall to cross and this time there’s pressure. The wall is an excellent spine for communications, so an army can be mobilised to engage your army. Now you have a wall to cross, which will take time, and the enemy coming at you. They know where you are and they want to make sure you don’t have the luxury of time. It takes a kind of genius to turn a wall into an offensive weapon.

That’s why you have to have the Great Wall in the list. China, for a European, is an enigma and the Wall shows both the power and radically different view of the world which China historically had. If I knew of an affordable and accessible course in Mandarin, then I’d be giving serious thought to studying Chinese archaeology seriously. I suspect it’s a bottomless source of surprises.

There’s a VR tour of the Wall at Beijing Guide, but you’ll want to kill the music when it loads.