Welcome to Great Wall China

The Great Wall Stretches for ten thousand mile. It comes down from mountain to rivers. If we call the Chinese people the children of the dragon, then the Great Wall of China is the remarkable symbol of grand China.

The Great Wall is like the dragon spine and passed through to today, 21th century. The Wall is also the geography spine in China. Great Wall China symbolizes the Chinese wisdom and power. It is well known as 'Wan Li Chang Cheng'(spelling in Chinese words). Originally, the Great Wall was built to defence the enemies from Huns. Also It is more than a wall for defence. Each stone and block has created the history of The Great Wall and even China.

Great Wall lies in the first place among the famous China Attractions. Every year, it attracts more and more Chinese and foreigners to visit. The wall we see today most were rebuilt in Ming Dynasty. To the west it stretches to the wide desert, and to the east is the vast sea and river. The Great Wall is beyond the Green Forest. Sly Valley symbols more life live because of the Wall, and mountain leaves become more thick for Great Wall China. The China Great Wall is to defense huns, which is the main season for the building of Great Wall. The wall defeating enemies is now protecting the space of modern war.

In the long history of China, Great Wall plays an effective and important role on defence. However the Great Wall that time was not the same as we see today.

For a long time, we are willing to create a website about Great Wall of China. In order to let you make a better understanding about Great Wall in China.

Sections: Great Wall crosses over nine provinces and cities, including Gansu, Ningxia, Shaanxi, Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Hebei, Beijing, Tianjin, and Liaoning.

History: Great Wall of Zhou Dynasty   Great Wall of Qin Dynasty   Great Wall of Han Dynasty   Great Wall of Jin Dynasty   Great Wall of Northern & Southern Dynasties   Great Wall of Sui Dynasty   Great Wall of Ming Dynasty

Discovery & Research: Protection of China Great Wall   Stories of Great Wall   Great Wall Paintings   Calligraphies of Great Wall   Stamps of Great Wall   Song of Great Wall   Video of Great Wall   Poetries of Great Wall

FAQ: Answer questions like "How Long is the Great Wall of China?" "why did they build the Great Wall of China?", and so on;

Great Wall Travel: Introduce useful travel guide and tips when walk the Great Wall of China.

Pictures: Show the beauty of the Great Wall from old to today.

Beijing Great Wall

The well preserved sections of wall in Beijing is the most popular tourist site in China. The main sections include Badaling Great Wall   Mutianyu Great Wall   Juyongguan Great Wall   Simatai Great Wall   Jinshanling Great Wall   Gubeikou Great Wall   Huanghuacheng Great Wall   Jiankou Great Wall   Shuiguan Great Wall. You will really see it, amazing and wonderful to be once in a life of extraordinary scenes. But ask yourself what you want to see looking package, do not forget the outlook depends on the section you visit.

Great Wall Construction

Beacon Towers   Construction Material   Fortifications of Great Wall   Great Wall Passes   Labor Force   Principle and Method   Terrain & Structure   Walls

Visibility from the moon

One of the earliest known references to this myth appears in a letter written in 1754 by the English antiquary William Stukeley. Stukeley wrote that, "This mighty wall of four score miles in length (Hadrian's Wall) is only exceeded by the Chinese Wall, which makes a considerable figure upon the terrestrial globe, and may be discerned at the moon."The claim was also mentioned by Henry Norman in 1895 where he states "besides its age it enjoys the reputation of being the only work of human hands on the globe visible from the moon." The issue of "canals" on Mars was prominent in the late 19th century and may have led to the belief that long, thin objects were visible from space.The claim that the Great Wall is visible also appears in a 1932 Ripley's Believe it or Not cartoon and in Richard Halliburton's 1938 book Second Book of Marvels.

The claim the Great Wall is visible has been debunked many times, but is still ingrained in popular culture. The wall is a maximum 9.1 m (30 ft) wide, and is about the same color as the soil surrounding it. Based on the optics of resolving power (distance versus the width of the iris: a few millimeters for the human eye, meters for large telescopes) only an object of reasonable contrast to its surroundings which is 70 mi (110 km) or more in diameter (1 arc-minute) would be visible to the unaided eye from the moon, whose average distance from Earth is 384,393 km (238,851 mi). The apparent width of the Great Wall from the moon is the same as that of a human hair viewed from 2 miles away. To see the wall from the moon would require spatial resolution 17,000 times better than normal (20/20) vision. Unsurprisingly, no lunar astronaut has ever claimed to have seen the Great Wall from the moon.

Visibility from low earth orbit

A more controversial question is whether the Wall is visible from low earth orbit (an altitude of as little as 100 miles (160 km)). NASA claims that it is barely visible, and only under nearly perfect conditions; it is no more conspicuous than many other man-made objects.Other authors have argued that due to limitations of the optics of the eye and the spacing of photoreceptors on the retina, it is impossible to see the wall with the naked eye, even from low orbit, and would require visual acuity of 20/3 (7.7 times better than normal).

Anecdotal reports

Astronaut William Pogue thought he had seen it from Skylab but discovered he was actually looking at the Grand Canal of China near Beijing. He spotted the Great Wall with binoculars, but said that "it wasn't visible to the unaided eye." U.S. Senator Jake Garn claimed to be able to see the Great Wall with the naked eye from a space shuttle orbit in the early 1980s, but his claim has been disputed by several U.S. astronauts. Veteran U.S. astronaut Gene Cernan has stated: "At Earth orbit of 100 miles (160 km) to 200 miles (320 km) high, the Great Wall of China is, indeed, visible to the naked eye." Ed Lu, Expedition 7 Science Officer aboard the International Space Station, adds that, "it's less visible than a lot of other objects. And you have to know where to look."

In 2001, Neil Armstrong stated about the view from Apollo 11: "I do not believe that, at least with my eyes, there would be any man-made object that I could see. I have not yet found somebody who has told me they've seen the Wall of China from Earth orbit. ...I've asked various people, particularly Shuttle guys, that have been many orbits around China in the daytime, and the ones I've talked to didn't see it."

In October 2003, Chinese astronaut Yang Liwei stated that he had not been able to see the Great Wall of China. In response, the European Space Agency (ESA) issued a press release reporting that from an orbit between 160 and 320 km, the Great Wall is visible to the naked eye. In an attempt to further clarify things, the ESA published a picture of a part of the “Great Wall” photographed from Space. However, in a press release a week later (no longer available in the ESA’s website), they acknowledged that the "Great Wall" in the picture was actually a river.

Leroy Chiao, a Chinese-American astronaut, took a photograph from the International Space Station that shows the wall. It was so indistinct that the photographer was not certain he had actually captured it. Based on the photograph, the China Daily later reported that the Great Wall can be seen from space with the naked eye, under favorable viewing conditions, if one knows exactly where to look. However, the resolution of a camera can be much higher than the human visual system, and the optics much better, rendering photographic evidence irrelevant to the issue of whether it is visible to the naked eye.