Hi, good morning.
Thanks for coming again.
How are you?
I hope you're well.
I'm wonderful.
Sorry I didn't get to make a video again last week.
I've been running around getting stressed about things that I don't need to get stressed about.
Never mind.
Today's topic is the Great Wall of China.
By coincidence, over the weekend I watched Matt Damon's movie The Great Wall of China.
Which, although not historically correct, is actually quite interesting.
I rather enjoyed it.
It didn't get excellent ratings, but I kind of enjoyed it.
If you get a chance, go and watch it.
Watching movies is a great way of improving your English.
Watch them without the subtitles and then watch them with the subtitles.
See how much you understood.
Okay.
The Great Wall of China.
I think I can do it in 5 minutes today.
So, I'm going to try and do that.
Don't forget as always if you click on the link in the description below here, you can
find the transcript for this talk.
You can find questions, multiple choice and essay type, and you can also find answers
and you can download the MP3.
Have a go.
It will help you understand the talk and it will help your English.
In fact, do it right now.
Pause this video.
Click on the link below here.
Open up the questions in a separate window, right next to me, and watch me while you look
at the questions.
In fact, do it right now.
Go!
Did you do it?
All right.
Let's try.
Okay.
Five minutes about the Great Wall of China.
Here we go.
3 2 1 go.
Okay, the Great Wall of China.
In English, of course, it's called The Great Wall of China.
In Chinese, I think it's called "ban li".
In Japanese I know it's called "ban li no chyojyo", which means 10,000 li long castle.
10,000 ... well "ban" is 10,000.
"Li" is a Chinese mile, which is about 500 meters.
So, "ban li" 10,000 Chinese miles is 10,000 times 5000 which is ... quick calculation
... 5 million miles, which is about 5,000 kilometers.
In the beginning, when it was given the name, that's actually how long it was, although,
now of course, it's much much longer.
The wall at its greatest extent reached 21,196 kilometers, which is a lot further than 5,000km.
Okay.
The Great Wall started thousands of years ago.
It started with natural fortifications as most defensive walls do.
When you have two peoples fighting each other, people with the higher ground tend to win.
So, people tend to build castles, forts and walls across the tops of hills or along rivers
or anywhere where there are natural fortifications.
And that of course is how the Great Wall started.
There are a lot of individual states in China.
And they were all fighting each other and they all started to build small walls.
Those walls slowly increased.
After the natural fortifications, the next step were walls made of rammed earth.
Rammed earth is something that people still use today.
They are very very strong.
With rammed earth ... well ram means to ram something ... with rammed earth what you do
is you get a shape, you sift soil or earth into the mold, you moisten it, you compress it,
you ram it, you compress it on all sides, and then you leave it to dry.
Once it is dry, it is extremely strong.
Sometimes even stronger than concrete.
And pieces of rammed earth wall from thousands of years ago still exist today.
And some countries even use rammed earth to this day.
In fact, a lot of Western countries are starting to re-find ... to reuse rammed earth because
it's much ... it's much better for the environment than other materials and it's also a very
good insulator: it keeps your house warm in the winter and cold ... cool in the summer.
So, rammed earth is making a comeback.
I'm already halfway through.
Okay.
This might be a 10-minute talk.
I'm sorry.
So, after the rammed Earth wall, of course, the next step ... the next logical step in
the wall's evolution is a rock wall.
This begins with loose pieces of rock and gradually becomes shaped pieces of rock, until
you get the final wall, which is made entirely of brick.
Okay, so who is really responsible for the wall that we have today?
Well, the state of Qin.
I think it's pronounced "chin" in English, it's spelled Q-I-N, but it's pronounced "chin".
The Qin Dynasty is actually where we get the name China from in English.
The Qin people became China.
So, in 481 BC to 221 BC China has its Warring States period.
Basically, seven states are fighting against each other.
These seven states are, and if you can tell I'm reading this from a piece of paper, these
seven states are the Qin, the Han, the Wei, the Zhou, the Qi, the Chu, and the Yan.
Now, these seven states ... these seven tribes ... these seven groups of people are fighting
each other and some win and some lose and some take over others.
Over time, gradually, the Qin dynasty ... the Qin tribe ... the Qin State defeat all of
the other states and become the first real unified China.
It's much smaller than the China we know today, but that's the first real unified China.
So, the first emperor of China is Qin Shi Huang.
My Chinese pronunciation is terrible, I know.
He was the first emperor of China.
He unified the wall.
He took all these pieces that the different tribes had made and he joined them together.
He slowly started to expand the length of the wall and he starts to surround his new
China.
So, this is where the modern wall comes from.
Okay.
So, as China goes through its history, different dynasties rise and fall, and the wall shrinks
and grows, and shrinks and grows, and over time it gradually grows until the Ming Dynasty
1368-1644.
The Ming Dynasty built the wall to its greatest extent.
And the greatest extent was, as I said at the start, 21,196 kilometers.
That was the greatest extent of the wall.
It stretches from the sea, which is called the dragon's head, all the way across China,
as it was then.
For 21,196 kilometers.
Ah ... time's about to go.
All right, I'm sorry.
Now, the Ming Dynasty ... after the Qin dynasty, the following dynasties start to make changes
to the wall and a few of the things they do are ... let's keep going ... to strengthen
the wall.
They make it much thicker and much stronger.
They use molded brick of course, which is held together with mortar and they make a
very strong very thick wall.
Also, they come up with the system of watchtowers.
Along the wall they have 25,000 watchtowers.
What is a watch tower?
Well, obviously it's a tower you can watch from, but more than that,
it's a system of warning.
What you can do, if a certain part of the wall is attacked, you can set a bonfire on
top of that watchtower which releases a lot of smoke.
Then the next Watchtower, which was within sight of the first watchtower, will see that
and they will like their bonfire, their warning fire, and the next watchtower will see that
and light their fire in response, and so on.
And this series of fires ... this series of smoke signals will go all down the wall until
it reaches a point where it can be relayed to an army base or a barracks or place where
people are ... soldiers are staying, and the soldiers can then go and reinforce that part
of the wall.
So, it was not just a defensive wall, it was also an early system of warning, which was
very very useful.
If you watch Matt Damon's movie "The Great Wall of China", you can actually see these
beacons being used.
I fact "Mulan" as well, the Disney movie "Mulan", they light these beacons as well when they are
attacked by the Mongols, which is interesting.
Okay.
So, 21,196 kilometers, the Great Wall reaches its longest extent.
After the Ming Dynasty, China of course expands for a while and then it goes through a period
of ... a few periods of ... a few problems.
Well England, my country of course, attacks China and destabilizes China, and in fact
harms China significantly with both Opium Wars and the treaties that were enforced upon
China, but after that, of course, China goes through its revolution in 1912, and the system
of dynasties is done away with and the Great Wall was left to basically fall apart.
And since its greatest extent, 22% of the wall has actually disappeared, has collapsed, fallen
apart and just gone.
However, of course the Great Wall of China has become the symbol of China.
It's become China's ... the symbol of China's history ... of China's civilization ... of
China's thousands of years of civilization and it's become a huge tourist attraction
as well.
So, recently, the Chinese government has been trying to repair and redo the Great Wall of
China sometimes with great success.
If you look at some of the areas near Beijing, they are absolutely wonderful.
Very very well restored.
However, sometimes with less success.
There was a story in the news a few years ago about how some people in China, some workers
in China concreted a huge section of the Great Wall of China.
So, rather than rebuild it they just covered it in concrete.
I'll put a picture here.
As you can see, it's not that nice.
So, they've restored it with some mistakes.
But, generally, they're trying to do their best.
So, the wall is being repaired.
Okay to finish up with, there is a myth about the Great Wall of China, that it can be seen
from space.
Is that true or not?
Well, have a look at this picture.
This is a picture of that area of China from space.
Can you see the Great Wall of China on this picture?
Your eye is probably drawn to a line that runs across this map.
Well, that is of course not the Great Wall of China.
That is a huge river.
The Great Wall of China is too small to see from space.
If I show you where it is, here, maybe now you can see some points of it, but, generally,
you cannot see the Great Wall of China from space because it is too narrow.
It's narrower than most roads and you can't see roads from space, of course.
So, that myth is obviously not true.
However, The Great Wall of China was a huge accomplishment.
It took thousands ... millions of people over thousands of years to produce.
It is a symbol of China.
It is symbol of China's long-lasting history and culture and all of the inventions and
industries that China has provided to the world.
In fact, I should do a talk one day about all of the inventions from China, although
that would take days because there are simply thousands of them.
We just don't realize they came from.
Anyway, finished.
That is the Great Wall of China.
I'm sorry it took me slightly longer than five minutes, but never mind.
Thank you.
Again, as I said before, if you have a look in the description down there, you can find
the transcript of this talk.
You can find questions.
You can find answers and you can find the MP3.
Please try the questions.
Even if you didn't like this talk try the questions.
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