The Great Wall of China is a series of fortifications made of stone, brick, tamped earth, wood, and other materials, generally built along an east-to-west line across the historical northern borders of China to protect the Chinese states and empires against the raids and invasions of the various nomadic groups of the Eurasian Steppe with an eye to expansion. Several walls were being built as early as the 7th century BC; these, later joined together and made bigger and stronger, are collectively referred to as the Great Wall.
Several walls were being built as early as the 7th century BC; these, later joined together and made bigger and stronger, are referred to as the Great Wall.
Especially famous is the wall built in 220–206 BC by Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China. Little of that wall remains. The Great Wall has been rebuilt, maintained, and enhanced over various dynasties; the majority of the existing wall is from the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). Apart from defense, other purposes of the Great Wall have included border controls, allowing the imposition of duties on goods transported along the Silk Road, regulation or encouragement of trade and the control of immigration and emigration. Furthermore, the defense was great.
The defensive characteristics of the Great Wall were enhanced by the construction of watch towers, troop barracks, garrison stations, signaling capabilities through the means of smoke or fire, and the fact that the path of the Great Wall also served as a transportation corridor. The frontier walls built by different dynasties have multiple courses. Collectively, they stretch from Dandong in the east to Lop Lake in the west, from present-day Sino-Russian border in the north to Qinghai in the south; along an arc that roughly delineates the edge of Mongolian steppe.
Yellow Crane Tower (traditional Chinese: 黃鶴樓; simplified Chinese: 黄鹤楼; pinyin: Huánghè Lóu) is a traditional Chinese tower located in Yellow Crane Tower Subdistrict, Wuchang District, Wuhan, in central China. The current structure was built in 1981, but the tower has existed in various forms since not later than AD 223. The current Yellow Crane Tower is 51.4 m (169 ft) high and cover an area of 3,219 m2 (34,650 sq ft). It situated on Snake Hill (蛇山), one kilometer away from the original site, on the banks of the Yangtze River in Wuchang District.
The Yuanhe Maps and Records of Prefectures and Counties, written almost 600 years after the construction, notes that after Sun Quan he built the fort of Xiakou in 223.
San Quan, the builder of the East Tower, was also the founder of the wonderful kingdom Eastern Wu. The tower has been destroyed twelve times, both by warfare and by fire, in the Ming and Qing dynasties and was repaired on ten separate occasions. The last tower at the original site was built in 1868 and destroyed in 1884. In 1957, the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge was built with one trestle of the bridge on the Yellow Crane Tower's site. In 1981, the Wuhan City Government commenced reconstruction of the tower at a new location, about 1 km from the original site, and it was completed in 1985.
Notwithstanding the tower's current location on Snake Hill being unrelated to its original location one kilometre away, the two popular legends related to it invoke the hill. In the first, an Immortal (仙人) named Wang Zi'an (王子安) rode away from Snake Mountain on a yellow crane and a tower was later built in commemoration of this story. In the second legend, Fei Wenyi (费文祎) becomes immortal and rides a yellow crane, often stopping on Snake Hill to take a rest. The tower is also a sacred site of Daoism. Lü Dongbin is said to ascend to heaven from here.
