The Great Wall

Today I stood sentry in a 700 year-old watch tower with my back to China and my eyes to Inner Mongolia.  The intact yet dilapidated walls of Watch Tower 10 were the only protection I had against Mongol hordes.  I placed both hands against the wall and gazed out the window at the Badaling Mountains.  I imagined what it would look like to see a wave of Mongolians on horseback charging the Chinese border.  Next to me was a signal beacon, in which, the sentries would light a fire if there was an attack.  Each tower was equipped to house four to ten sentries for months at a time, and the wall lined with cannons spaced out about every 200 feet.  The Great Wall is a tactical masterpiece and it is hard to appreciate its grandeur just from my photos.  The wall extends further than the eye can see and every spot on the wall is the highest vantage point along the mountains.  It was constructed this way, of course, to serve as a defense strategy for maximum enemy detection range.  I admit great strides in strategic defense have been made since the Ming Dynasty.  We can now minimize pulse repetition frequency and increase antennae aperture to increase detection range for RADAR, which sounds impressive for our generation, but you have to understand that the Great Wall was equally impressive and regarded as a technological supremacy at the time of the Ming.

I do not think anyone realizes the distance you must walk to get to the wall.  I would say I climbed at least 1,000 steps just to get to the fork that allowed me to go to Tower 8 or 10.  After my decision to see 10, I climbed another 1,000 stairs and finally I was on the wall.  This was the first time I have been able to breathe air that did not smell like it came from the exhaust of a car.  The air was so thin and pure in the Badalings.  I appreciate Beijing, but if I could choose to live anywhere in China I would pick a nice rural area like the Mutianyu area I visited.  I have never been more impressed with engineering than I was today.  The fact that this part of the wall was built in 1300 epitomizes the strength of Chinese ingenuity and labor.  (On a side note, however, what is not shown on the History Channel and printed in books about China are the current engineering feats happening every day.  There is a giant construction crane on every block erecting some type of high rise that would rival the Melon Building in Pittsburgh.  These cranes are so abundant that I joke that they are the “National Bird” of China.)…back to the wall… 

I hope these pictures are able to capture some of awe inspiring sights of the Great Wall.  Driving back on the bus I tried to think of the words to describe what I just saw and I think I can sum today up in a short paragraph…

Words and pictures only do this masterpiece injustice, so I will not patronize it and pretend that I can recapture the opulence I saw today.  Never in the history of mankind has something so impressive, so magnificent been formed by human hands.  One cannot truly respect the show of man power until walking the Great Wall.  The wall not only represents the slog of millions, but embodies the truth that we all too often forget…nothing is impossible because with direction man can do any task, and we are only constrained by our own fears.