All three astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell and Jim Irwin agreed they could not see the Great Wall in China from the moon. But, over 41.8 million foreign visitors to China saw this great structure in 2004.
Tourism to the Great Wall increased because of President Nixon’s visit to China in 1972 and with this increase in tourism sections of the Wall were restored. The Chinese government recognized the Wall as a unifying symbol of their nation after the death of Mao Zedong.
The men who designed this wall once were kids themselves and I wonder if they had building block toys to play with. You may have a future engineer in your family right now. Someday he/she may design and build a new wonder of the world. Help his/her creativity bloom with cardboard building blocks. The set pictured has both construction cinder blocks and timber blocks. Schools can order bulk quantity building block toys.
Promoting open-ended play time for your children with building block toys will be one of the best ways to enhance their learning and increase their fine motor skills.
There is a legend, that a helpful dragon traced out the course of the Great Wall for the workforce and the builders subsequently followed the tracks of the dragon ( Jan, Michael. 2001. The Great Wall of China. New York, NY: Abberville Publishing Group) but more likely is the fact that it was probably men who were once children playing with blocks.
The Great Wall has often been compared to a dragon. In China, the dragon is a protective divinity and is synonymous with springtime and vital energy. The Chinese believed the earth was filled with dragons which gave shape to the mountains and formed the sinew of the land.
During the Ming dynasty, nearly one million soldiers were said to defend the Great Wall from “barbarians” and non-Chinese.
The manpower to build the Great Wall came from frontier guards, peasants, unemployed intellectuals, disgraced noblemen, and convicts. In fact, there existed a special penalty during the Qin and Han dynasties under which convicted criminals were made to work on the Wall.
Before the Ming dynasty, the wall was built with rammed earth, adobe, and stone. About 70% is made from rammed earth and adobe. Bricks were used after the Ming dynasty.
The Chinese invented the wheelbarrow and used it extensively in building the Great Wall.
A section of the Great Wall in the Gansu province may disappear in the next 20 years due to erosion.
The information for this article came from: http://facts.randomhistory.com/2009/04/18_great-wall.html. See this website for more information and read their Reference section for the books where these facts came from.
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