GREAT WALL OF CHINA

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXXII, Issue 12538, 27 April 1935, Page 9

GREAT WALL OF CHINA

MOST STUPENDOUS WORK OF .MAN TOTAL OF 2500 -MILES. 0! all the stupendous nehicreme.nl of mail’s hands and contriving, flier i.s nothing in.the world to compare ii magnitude l with the Great. Wall o China. For 1400 miles the (iron Wall ambles leisurely across the. him gry plains, scales precipitous moun tains a mile high, tumbles dowi green valleys, thrusts its wa; through river and desert, in one eon tinuous circuit from the Yellow Sc: to the Gobi Desert. It. has niimer mis branches, too, which bring tin total mileage, to 2500. This moon mental achievement took only 1( years to build; 300,000 men, at tin stroke of the lash, were engaged ii the task; it varies from 20 to 40H in heiglit, is as wide as the averagi street, is surmounted by 25.001 square towers at intervals of severa hundred yards; it contains 0,350,000, 000 cubic feet of material, the equiv ttlent of 25,000,000 tons; it was built 200 years before Christ. Bui such statistics. staggering though they bo, leave one cold when having survived the tortuous experience of travelling in a Chinese train for some 30 odd miles northward from Peiping, one is suddenly confronted by the extraordinary spectacle of this tremendous wall romping over the mountain tops, down into the far valleys; till it disappears beyond the blue horizon like the dragon of old Chinese legend, the fearsome beast that bore the Emperor on his journey to heaven. Now and again, on its lonely way, it describes what appears to he an unnecessary curve, as if pausing to look hack again at. the great purple city, with its yellow, green, and blue-tiled roofs, before pursuing its way through the barbarian regions of the north. “NOW A PATHETIC SHELL." If you are sensible, when you have shaken from j-our cream silk suit the dust and grime of the Chinese train, you will do as I did and hail four lusty Chinese coolies, who for a few cents will bear you aloft in a canopied sedan chair and carry you to the foot of the wall. Apart from the fact that the heat is too iutenso lor walking, it is very pleasant to travel in state like this. .It. makes von feel positively regal, with swarms of olive-eyed child:on following in your train, and decrepit old men. reminiscent of Confucius, muttering pidgin English invitations to “big American gentleman” to buy their Birming-kam-mnde trinkets. Despite all ,tkat, when ultimately von stand on the brick-paved causevay of the wall and survey its grey, vinding trail across the mountains, jroken only by little tower fortresses, each large enough to hold 100 non, you pause and in I’ane.v reach tack 2000 years when this mngnifi:ent work, now hut a. pathetic shell, vas the symbol of a mighty Einper>r’s arrogant genius. His name was illi Hwangi-ti, which moans “the irst ruler of mankind.” It was the Europeanised version of the name ‘Chin,” which gave China its name. This Emperor suffered so seriously rom vanity that ho was determined o pass his name down to posterity is the first Emperor of China. To ichievo this, he killed off all the wise non and scholars, and burnt every listorieal record—all written on pices of bamboo—that he could lay his lands on. ITe rewrote the alphabet, milt magnificent roads and a the-, tro to seat 10,000 people, founded he greatest Empire of ancient times, nd bequeathed to history one of the even wonders of the world, the treat Wall that, guarded China from he Mongolian hordes. BOOKS OF MEMORY. ' Unfortunately for Chinn’s plain, hortly after his death a wise . old ;reybeard appeared who could recite lost of the Chinese history books rom memory, and so the scholars ;ot busy and wrote it all clown again. Jtherwise, perhaps, we should never inve'heard of Confucius. Unfortuntely, too, China’s great masterpiece ailed to keep out the invaders, for ioth Manchus and Mongols succeedd in battering their way through it. )ne of those who penetrated China’s iriek fortification was the great Jhanghiz Khan, who had a habit of oiling his enemies in oil. Strewn bout the top of the wall, you come cross quaint old guns, of iron and irass. They are probably the oldest annou in. the world, though of not he same antiquity as the wall. The Chinese knew about gunpowder cenuries before the rest of the world; u fact, when most European wariors were still using bows and owsPeeping out of the cracks in the Id paved causeway, you see little right splashes of colour against the aellowed blue-grey of the 2',000-vear-ld Chinese bricks. Y-ou stoop down nd discover dainty little Canterbury ells, pink begonias, orchids, and, ;rowing down the sides of the wall, tall and lovely purple irises.