Talk:Great Wall of China

Contents

1 Ruling Dynasty Links 2 How Manchus Defeated the Wall 3 Wall Length 4 Pass 5 Visible from "low earth orbit?' 6 Non-commercial image 7 Redirect 8 Deaths 9 Map?

Ruling Dynasty Links

there should be link to some Chinese ruling dynasties during which it was being built.

Added. --Menchi 08:54 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)

How Manchus Defeated the Wall

Added how the Manchus defeated the wall. They got a general to defect and let them in. This General was Wu Sangui. Charged with defending Shanhaiguan pass against the Manchus during a major peasant rebellion led by the rebel Li Zicheng, Wu suddenly found himself between a rock and hard place when Li captured Beijing in 1644. With Li to the west and the Manchus to the northeast, Wu was persuaded to throw his lot in with Dorgon, half-brother to the deceased Manchu emperor Hong Taiji. Their combined forces retook Beijing from Li. As part of his reward for helping to defeat Li and the remaining Ming princes, Wu Sangui was granted control of Yunnan and Guizhou provinces, as well as parts of Hunan and Sichuan. In 1673, Wu Sangui led a rebellion against the Qing emperor Kangxi, until he died of dysentry in 1678.

Wall Length

There's a bit of a length problem, in that sources vary wildly from 3,000 to 6,000. See fr:Discuter:Grande Muraille de Chine -- Tarquin 08:48 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)

It's like counting WP articles, you can be very strict or not. Some walls are only bare remains now and cannot be walked now without structural damage, or danger to the walker. These are probably excluded in the strict count. Although I'm not exactly sure how the number could double... --Menchi 08:53 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Pass

I can upload a pic of the wall at Shanhaiguan that I took last month if anyone's interested? It was interesting to stumble upon the supposedly historic 'first gate under heaven' under (re)construction. I was able to climb up the scaffolding for a great view though, and the pic's passable, though not brilliant. I'll see if I can't put it up shortly and add a link here. --Pratyeka 05:13, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Add it if you like! --Pratyeka 05:21, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Added. So is a pass basically a fortress? About how many gates does a pass have? --Menchi 05:37, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Come to think of it I didn't get the best look at the overall structure (I was more interested in my fiancee at the time ;) .. but if you imagine walls like '田', then the part I photographed was the bottom side of the bottom-left section. once you enter (upward), you turn right, and pass through another gate. After that, you keep going forward, and pass through another gate. Actually the 'tian' analogy isn't too good at all. Here's some ASCII art of the part I saw. (excuse the speed/dodginess)

||||.--------
||||I   I   X
||||I   X   I
||||--X-----'--------------.
|||| OX                  O I
||||--X-. -------------.v. I
||||    I >>>          IvI I 
||||    `----           vI I
||||                     I I
||||        key: double-thickness wall: the main wall.  X = gate.  I/- = wall.
||||             > or v : ramp down the wall.  O = watchtower

Whare are the ||||? And what is the orientation of the ASCII art? Are we looking at bird's-eye-view? --Menchi 22:35, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Visible from "low earth orbit?'

With regards to the Wall's visibility from space, wasn't this completely disproved by Yang Liwei, the taikonaut? From what I recall, he was asked if he could see the wall while he was orbiting and he simply replied "No." --Darac Marjal 13:14, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Indeed. As I read the news story, it seemed to be saying that the Great Wall cannot be seen from space at all. Liwei was presumably in "low earth orbit," since I don't think humans have been sent farther than that recently. But just how high was he?

However, the argument that it is "only a few meters wide" isn't necessarily all that convincing since it is well known that the eye can detect extended linear features that would, on the basis of their thickness, be expected to be well below the eye's resolution. One minute = .0003 radians, so one meter subtends one minute at 1/.0003 meters = 3.4 kilometers. If "a few meters" means five meters, a five-meter object should just be visible at 17 kilometers. "Low earth orbit" seems to mean 100-500 miles = 160 to 1400 kilometers. I am almost certain that the eye can detect linear features that are ten times smaller than the nominal visual acuity. This would seem to put the Great Wall just within the range of visibility for the lowest of low earth orbits.

Undoubtedly the visibility would depend on lighting conditions. Many features on the Moon are invisible even with a small telescope much of the time, but leap out at you even in binoculars when they are near the terminator. Are there portions of the Great Wall that are oriented roughly north/south? Are any of them on relatively flat terrain? In the late afternoon or early morning it could be casting a contrasty shadow, and the width of that shadow could be several times the height of the Great Wall. Dpbsmith 12:39, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I've done a bit of Googling on visibility of the Great Wall from space and have summarized the results in the article. Dpbsmith 20:57, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Mulad improved this section. But he added the statement about visibility from the moon not only becoming an urban legend but "sometimes entering textbooks." I won't remove it, but his summary remark on the edit, "heck, I think I saw this in a textbook in the U.S." strikes me as not meeting the very highest and best standard of scholarship....  :-)

Brooding more about this, the original Halliburton statement was to the effect that (unnamed) "astronomers" said it was visible from the moon. This suggests that possibly the original intended meaning was not that it could be seen from the moon with the naked eye, but that it ought to be visible from the moon using the best 1938 telescopes. This is worth fussing over, but it seems to me quite possible, judging from what spy satellites can do, that the wall could be seen from the moon with the eye looking through a big, traditional optical telescope. However, if so, obviously it would not be the only manmade structure that would be visible. Since the point of the original remark was to claim superlative magnitude the structure—to imply that it was the greatest or biggest or most impressive bit of human civil engineering in history, eclipsing the Pyramids, the creation of the Dutch polders, the U. S. Interstate highway system, etc. And it doesn't seem that it is. Dpbsmith 15:31, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

There is significantly more pollution in China than there was 10 years ago, or 30 (in the case of Apollo). The fact that the Great Wall cannot be seen from space now but could be seen 15 years ago shouldn't surprise anyone.

I removed this conclusion from the front page. See attached link for more information. "

Ultimately, the idea that the Great Wall is somehow more visible than any other man-made object of the same size is a myth." [1] (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4459311.stm)

Non-commercial image

There were very many images on this page, so I looked into them, too see if something was reduntant or acceptable to remove. I found an image tagged with "noncommercial". Since it has recently been decided that it is not acceptable to use these, I think it's just good to take it out. Comments? [[User:Sverdrup|✏ Sverdrup]] 01:54, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Please refer me to this decision - I have uploaded several images under this cc-nc, under two general cases.

In one case, some images from china were provided to me by fellow tourist - we exchanged these with each other, I could probably track him down and get a verbal release.

In the other case, the images were of performers Beijing Opera, who charge admission for performances, or models in period dress Peterhof, who expect recompense for their posing in costume. I did not feel that it would be appropriate to release these for commercial use without further release. All of my personal pictures and derivative works of public domain images are cc-sa and others donated for Sundial Bridge by a third party (a commercial artist) are cc-by-sa. Please answer here, I will watch. -- Leonard G. 23:49, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Redirect

Great Wall should redirect here, with a disambig link at the top of this page. Seriously, who's ever heard of the "Great Wall of Galaxies"? --Simetrical 19:56, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Directing Great Wall here is a mistake, IMO. As Wiki gets more international, the plethora of products and companies with the "Great Wall" name that exist in China will need to go somewhere. --Shannonr 06:09, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

And once the volume of people who want to visit those pages—when they exist, which it bears pointing out they don't—gets to be anywhere near the volume of people who want to visit this one, Great Wall can be converted back to a disambiguation page. This is standard Wikipedia practice for an instance where one meaning of a word is vastly more sought-after than another. Otherwise, we should create a disambiguation page at Sparta for all the places like Sparta, Georgia (population 1,522), don't you think? —Simetrical (talk) 01:13, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Deaths

Is there an agreed upon estimate for the number of deaths which occured during the construction of the wall? --Tothebarricades.tk 01:40, May 13, 2005 (UTC)

Map?

Can anyone add a map that show where the wall exactly is? Kowloonese 23:44, May 25, 2005 (UTC)