I’m testing a new way of going through vocabulary: I’ve started using my iPad Pencil to write out characters in the Pleco App using the handwriting recognition feature. I find that this a neat way of practicing and I can then switch to the Pleco dictionary entry for background, usage, example sentences, or to double-check the stroke order.
I was going through HSK-4 vocabulary. 长城 came up. The dictionary entry for 长城 includes some basic historical background.
I know about the Great Wall and have visited parts of it. The short paragraph makes me want to revisit what I know (very little) and think about what I’ve missed.
长城
An ancient military defence structure, made up of strategic passes, walls, and beacon towers. Walls were already built for defence purposes in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods. Parts of the wall were consolidated during the Qin Dynasty to prevent invasion from the Xiongnu (匈奴) from the north. There were constant consolidations and additions by later generations, particularly during the Ming Dynasty, and most of what remains dates from this period. Today, the wall stretches from Jiayuguan (嘉峪关) in Gansu Province to Shanhaiguan (山海关) in Hebei Province, an overall length of over 6,000 kms. For visitors, the most famous part of the wall is at Badaling (八达岭) in the north-west part of Beijing. The wall is often referred to as the ‘ten-thousand-li’ Great Wall, and a common saying has it that ‘you are not a man unless you’ve climbed the Great Wall’(不到长城非好汉). The Great Wall was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in1987.Pleco (OCC) Entry
My first encounter with a part of the wall was in 2011: 玉门关 on the way to Dunhuang. More recently the Southern Great wall (江南长城) in Linhai.
Franz Kafka wrote about the scale and the discontinuity of the walls: prompts for kafkesque reflections on the smallness of an individual within a world that is capable of developing such structure.
But how can protection be provided by a wall which is not built continuously? In fact, not only can such a wall not protect, but the structure itself is in constant danger. Those parts of the wall left standing abandoned in deserted regions could always be destroyed easily by the nomads, especially by those back then who, worried about the building of the wall, changed their place of residence with incredible speed, like grasshoppers, and thus perhaps had an even better overall view of how the construction was proceeding than we did, the people who built it.1
In the GoEast dialogue for the HSK-4 lesson featuring 长城,王小麦 suggests Beijing and the Great Wall (he must mean 八达岭) as a suitable destination for a company outing over the weekend: 我们去北京吧?我从来没去过长城。His colleague 刘爱丽 is not convinced: 北京的空气污染太严重了,而且去长城的人肯定很多。
I’m not sure about the idea of going on a company trip over a weekend. That aside I’m with 刘爱丽. Pictures suggest that it gets a bit crowded. It’s strange how a very small part of something can come to represent the whole. The iconic view distorts the bigger picture.
I look forward to visiting sections of the wall over time, collecting and connecting them as memories.
https://johnstoniatexts.x10host.com/kafka/greatwallofchinahtml.html