I really didn’t know what to expect before we arrived at the Great Wall, and I have been greatly disappointed more than once in the past upon seeing famous landmarks in person for the first time. In the end, The Great Wall of China far surpassed any expectation I had, and now gets my vote in the on-going election to name the new ‘7 Wonders of the World.‘

The earliest concept of The Great Wall began around The Qin Dynasty, roughly 200 BC, though it is contended that walls were being built for protection in China as early as the 8th century BC, though not linked into a larger wall. The Great Wall was heavily fortified and build-up during the Ming Dynasty (1368 to 1644) to help keep out the advancing Mongols. It is hard to communicate the sheer size of the wall (its dimensions are about 15 feet wide and somewhere between 15 and 30 feet tall), and is built of solid limestone and sandstone like material. The wall is nearly 4,000 miles long (6,300 km) and is the longest man-made structure in the world. (Though despite common belief, it can not be seen from the moon…but you can see it using Google Earth).

Though the Wall has lasted through nearly 3000 years of history, the modern age has not been to kind to it. Between tourism, pollution, local farmers stealing parts of the Wall to construct their own things, and the occasional “Wall Raves,” the Wall is deteriorating in many places.

Click the photo below to see a photo gallery from our walk on The Great Wall. If you have not noticed, once you click the link to the photo galleries on this site, there is a link right above the title of the gallery that says “View Slideshow.” Click that to get a cool little sideshow of all the photos, and click on any particular photo as the slideshow plays to see some captions and comments from me. (Curious about the stuffed cow that keeps showing up in my picture galleries? More on that…in the next post.)