Mug Shot — «Beijing - Great Wall of China»

City: Beijing Country: China Edition: 2008 Icon Edition Belongs to: 755 users (56 trading, 122 seeking)

Beijing is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world. The metropolis, located in northern China, is governed as a direct-controlled municipality under the national government. Beijing is China's second largest city by urban population after Shanghai and is the country's political, cultural, and educational center,and home to the headquarters for most of China's largest state-owned companies. Beijing is a major transportation hub in the national highway, expressway, railway and high-speed rail network. Beijing's Capital International Airport is the second busiest in the world by passenger traffic. Few cities in the world have been the political and cultural centre of an area as immense for so long. Beijing is one of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China. It has been the heart of China’s history for centuries, and there is scarcely a major building of any age in Beijing that does not have at least some national historical significance. The city is renowned for its opulent palaces, temples, and huge stone walls and gates. Its art treasures and universities have long made it a centre of culture and art in China.

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 in part to protect the Chinese Empire or its prototypical states against intrusions by various nomadic groups or military incursions by various warlike peoples or forces. Several walls had already been begun to be built beginning around the 7th century BC; these, later joined together and made bigger, stronger, and unified are now collectively referred to as the Great Wall. Especially famous is the wall built between 220–206 BC by the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang. Little of that wall remains. Since then, the Great Wall has on and off been rebuilt, maintained, enhanced; the majority of the existing wall was reconstructed during the Ming Dynasty. Other purposes of the Great Wall have included allowing for border control practices, such as check points allowing for the various imperial governments of China to tariff goods transported along the Silk Road, to regulate or encourage trade, as well as generally to control immigration and emigration. The defensive characteristics of the Great Wall were enhanced by the construction of watch towers, troop barracks, garrison stations, signaling capabilities through the means smoke or fire, and the fact that the path of the Great Wall also served as a transportation corridor. The Great Wall stretches from Shanhaiguan in the east, to Lop Lake in the west, along an arc that roughly delineates the southern edge of Inner Mongolia. The most comprehensive archaeological survey, using advanced technologies, has concluded that all the walls measure 8,851.8 km. This is made up of 6,259.6 km sections of actual wall, 359.7 km of trenches and 2,232.5 km of natural defensive barriers such as hills and rivers.


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  China, Beijing

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