The Great Wall: Why It Failed and Why It Still Matters

Stop. Look around. You're at the entrance of the Mutianyu section, about seventy kilometers northeast of central Beijing. This part of the wall was first built in the 6th century AD, during the Northern Qi dynasty, nearly a thousand years before the Ming came and reinforced it with granite and brick. The stones beneath your feet may be 1,500 years old. Today you'll walk 2.25 kilometers across one of the world's best-preserved sections. Twenty-two watchtowers, unique double battlements found nowhere else on the wall, and the marks of a fire-signal system that could relay messages across nort…

You're beside Tower 6. Look at the walls on both sides. The Mutianyu section has something found nowhere else on the entire wall: crenellations on both sides. Both the outer and inner parapets have battlements. What does that mean? It means soldiers could fire in two directions. If the enemy broke through the outer wall, defenders fell back to the top and kept shooting downward from the inner parapet. This system was designed by Ming general Qi Jiguang between 1568 and 1572. He oversaw the construction of 1,200 watchtowers along this section. Each tower could house fifty soldiers with food…

Stop here. Two walls become one. In the 6th century, the Northern Qi dynasty built the original wall at this point. Six hundred years later, Ming general Qi Jiguang raised a new one, taller and wider, over the old foundations. At this junction you can see both eras at once. On the inside, the narrow tamped-earth wall of the Northern Qi. On the outside, the new fired-brick wall of the Ming period. And here's one of Qi Jiguang's most remarkable innovations: rice mortar. When Ming engineers wanted a stronger adhesive for the bricks, they mixed cooked glutinous rice with slaked lime. The resul…

You're at the highest point of Mutianyu. Look north. Those mountains are where the Mongols came from. Let me tell you how they got in. Not by climbing. Not by breaking through. Through the gate. In 1211, Genghis Khan's armies found passes the defenses didn't cover, and bribed or persuaded guards to open the way. In 1644, when rebel Li Zicheng's forces took Beijing, Ming general Wu Sangui voluntarily opened the gates at Shanhai Pass to let the Manchus through. The wall was never taken by direct assault. It was always opened from the inside. Which raises the bigger question: what was it a…

You've arrived at Juyongguan. Fifty kilometers southwest of Mutianyu, this is one of the most strategic passes in all of China: an eighteen-kilometer valley between rock walls that forms the shortest route from the Mongolian steppes to the North China Plain. The name "Juyongguan" dates to the era of Qin Shi Huang, China's first unifying emperor. In 221 BC, he ordered the scattered walls of the warring kingdoms connected into a single northern defense line. To do it, he conscripted hundreds of thousands of workers. Many died on the job, and according to chronicles, their bodies were buried di…

This is the Cloud Platform, the Yuntai. Built in 1342, during the Yuan dynasty. White marble. Nine and a half meters high. Its original roof held three white pagodas that the Ming demolished when they took power, replacing them with a Buddhist temple, which the Qing in turn burned down in 1702. What you see now is just the base. But that base is a museum in itself. Come closer and look at the reliefs on the inner walls: Buddhist texts carved in six different languages, including Sanskrit, Tibetan, Mongolian, and Chinese. Figures of celestial guardians. Columns covered in inscriptions. Why …

You've reached Badaling. The most famous section of the entire wall. Built in 1504 during the Ming dynasty. Its highest point, the North Tower — Beibalou — stands 1,015 meters above sea level. In 1957 it became the first section of the wall opened to tourism. Today it receives nearly ten million visitors a year. Since 2019 there's a daily cap of 65,000 people. In February 1972, Richard Nixon visited during his historic trip to China. Premier Zhou Enlai accompanied him. Nixon later said: "It is a great wall, and it had to be built by a great people." Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and do…

You're on the walkway between the two large towers. Look down. Then look at the bricks on the sides. We already talked about rice mortar. But there are other construction secrets most people miss. The Great Wall isn't just a wall. From above, it's a road. It's four to five meters wide, enough for five horses to march in parallel, or for an entire army to move quickly from point to point. In the widest sections, two cars could drive side by side. The interior of the wall isn't solid either. Many sections have internal drainage channels so rainwater doesn't accumulate and cause the structur…

You're at Badaling's South Tower, looking down over the entire pass. Now I'll answer the question I asked earlier: can you see the wall from the Moon? No. NASA confirmed it. Viewed from the Moon, the wall has the same apparent width as a human hair seen from three kilometers away. Impossible to see. The claim first appeared in 1932, before anyone had been to space. Remarkably, it circulated in Chinese textbooks for decades. It wasn't until 2003, when China's first taikonaut Yang Liwei returned from his space mission and said he hadn't been able to see it, that the myth began unraveling in …

Stop here. Last look. Today you walked three distinct sections of the wall: Mutianyu, with its double battlements and Ming granite; Juyongguan, the strategic pass where Mongols built temples over the gates they had crossed; and Badaling, the most visited stretch in human history. One final fact few people know: according to surveys from 2012, 22% of the Ming Great Wall, nearly 2,000 kilometers, has already disappeared. Erosion, vandalism, and above all, generations of villagers who used it as a quarry to build their homes. The wall that took two thousand years to build is disappearing faste…