1073. China - # 6 - Jade Factory and the GREAT WALL!

 We were on the 16th floor, but the restaurant where we ate breakfast, and some dinners, was on the 38th floor!  This is looking out a window on the 38th floor -- mostly high rises!

 Our day began visiting a Jade factory, where many colors of Jade were crafted into many different objects! At the Jade Factory we learned there are many colors of Jade, and they are found all over China.  The dull green shade seems to be most popular, but the beautiful bowl the lady is holding below, was that beautiful orange-red color! She explained about those two statues of a male and female dragons!  She said they needed to be sold together!  Very expensive!   There was a show room with beautiful jewelry of all shades of Jade!  And many other figures, etc. all made of Jade!

 More Chinese figures all made of various colors of Jade.  These were 2 to 3 feet tall.You can tell how large these figures were behind me!     The dragon is a popular figure in all of China!

   

     

      

The statue of Jade is depicting 4 horses, was about 3 feet tall. The price in Chinese dollars wasn't much like our money, so it was hard to figure how much these would be in American dollars.This beautiful piece of Jade, of a ship, was about $17,000 in U.S. dollars.  And a beautiful red tea pot of Jade!

 We then drove an hour or two and came to the valley where the Great Wall began.  This is on a hill opposite where the wall begins.  You can see a type of fortress built there also.There were many tour buses there, and are every day!

The Great Wall of China is a series of fortifications made of stone, brick, tamped earth, wood, and other materials, generally built along an east-to-west line across the historical northern borders of China to protect the Chinese states and empires against the raids and invasions of the various nomadic groups of the Eurasian Steppe with an eye to expansion. Several walls were being built as early as the 7th century BC; these, later joined together and made bigger and stronger, are collectively referred to as the Great Wall.^[3] Especially famous is the wall built in 220–206 BC by Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China. Little of that wall remains. The Great Wall has been rebuilt, maintained, and enhanced over various dynasties; the majority of the existing wall is from the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644).

This is part of the fortresses on the opposite side of the valley also. More buildings with the pointed roofs. They are unique!

 

   

Part of the official Great Wall -- along the top of a strategic mountain! This was a cluster of buildings at the base of the Great Wall.

This was going up a couple of flights of steps.  The steps, below, were actually hard to climb, because some were like 10 inches between each step, some 8 inches, some 12 inches, etc.   Hard to climb.  That level above is as far as I climbed.  They had a number for each place with a large look-out.  I went to about the second.  Some in our group made it up to 9, and even 11 ! 

  

 Two sweet ladies from Indonesia came and wanted a picture taken with me.  The only word they could say that I could understand was "Indonesia"! 

When Was the Great Wall of China Built?

It’s hard to say precisely when the Great Wall of China was built, as so many dynasties and rulers contributed to its construction. It’s thought that the first lengths of the wall were built as early as 770 B.C., though official work didn’t begin until 221 B.C., during the reign of Emperor Qin Shi Huang. Most of what remains today — that 5,500-mile stretch — was built during the Ming dynasty, between 1368 and 1644.

Why Was the Great Wall of China Built?

Originally built as a wartime defense, the Great Wall of China features many towers and passes. When Emperor Qin Shi Huang first proposed the so-called Long Wall, it was meant to defend the Chinese states against nomadic tribes from the north.

During the Han Dynasty, (between 206 B.C. and 220 A.D.) the Great Wall was extended to protect the Silk Road trade. The Ming Dynasty, which “took a largely defensive stance,” according to History.com, is known for not only extending the Great Wall, but also repairing and reinforcing existing structures.

How Was the Great Wall of China Built?

Despite its name, the Great Wall is actually a collection of fortifications, some of which run parallel to one another, while others are circular or side walls. There are even portions of the Great Wall that are natural barriers, like rivers or high mountains.

Hundreds of years before any official construction on the Great Wall began, individual Chinese states built fortifications against one another, using mostly earth, wood, and stones. Construction during the Ming Dynasty made use of bricks rather than cut stone, which appears largely in the foundation and gateways.

According to History.com, Qin Shi Huang had a labor force of nearly 300,000 soldiers, commoners, and prisoners. Hundreds of thousands of men died while working on the wall, which required them to carry heavy materials on their backs up to the top of the ridgelines.

Much of the work on the oldest sections of the Great Wall were built by hand, though primitive technology — wheel barrows, ropes, basket-and-pulley-systems, and horse or oxen-drawn carts — was also used.

This picture shows some of the wall in a very remote area!

Next blog will be my last about China.  It will cover the Pearl Factory, the Forbidden City, and the Hutong tour -- which is an area in Beijing where people lived before the high rise buildings!  It is very interesting, and the place we had a ride in a bicycle-pedaled rickshaw!  It is a fascinating country!