The Problem of the Great Wall of China ARTHUR N. WALDRON Princeton University HE Great Wall of China is an elusive topic for the historian. One would think that so important a monument would be the subject of a substantial scholarly literature, but that is not the case.* And as one pursues the topic, it becomes clear that it raises not only historical, but also very important historiographical questions. Most people are familiar with the standard description of the geography of the Wall. It begins on the Gulf of Liaotung at Shan- hai-kuan (1/358, runs northwest past Ku-pei-k‘ou 4H, and then divides into northern and southern branches. The southern section, nearest Peking, contains the stretches at Pa-ta-ling A3##i which de- fend the Chii-yung-kuan /#/#5% pass, and are the sites most familiar 1 There is no full scholarly treatment of the Wall in a Western language. Probably the best summaries remain those of Joseph Needham in Science and Civilisation in China, 1: 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1954—), 38-57; and of O. F. von Méllendorf, “Die Grosse Mauer von China,” ZDMG, 35, No. 2 (1881), 75-131. Luo Zewen et al., The Great Wall (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981) is comprehensive, but weak in many ways, as is Yu Chin, comp., The Great Wall (Peking: Cultural Relics Publishing House, 1980). William Edgar Geil provides an idiosyncratic account in The Great Wall of China (London: John Murray, 1909). Other popular works include L, N. Hayes, The Great Wall of China (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1929) ; Peter Lum, The Purple Barrier (London: Robert Hale, 1960); Robert Silverberg, The Long Rampart (Philadelphia: Chilton, 1965); and Jonathan Fryer, The Great Wall of China (London: New English Library, 1975). L. S. Vasil’ev’s review article, ‘“Velikaia kitaiskaia stena,” Voprosy Istorit (1971), No. 1, 204- 12 leans heavily on Silverberg. 643644 ARTHUR N. WALDRON to modern travellers, while the northern portion runs along the bor- der of modern Shansi province. The two branches join again near the Yellow River, and a third southern wall provides security to passes southwest of the capital. On the western side of the Yellow River the Wall skirts the edge of the Ordos desert, passes Yin-ch‘iian (Ning- hsia), and then enters the Kansu corridor, which it follows until it reaches the western gate of the empire at Chia-yii-kuan #1@Bt. But even such a simple description as this is not without diffi- culties. Consider, for example, the basic questions of where exactly the Wall runs, and what sorts of ruins survive. One might think that the answers would long ago have been determined, but as a matter of fact the Wall has never been surveyed.* In the summer of 1979 a meeting of Chinese scholars interested in the Wall strongly recom- mended such a survey.* But until that is completed, we are forced to rely on less definitive evidence. Most of this is literary. Chang Hung-hsiang, a Chinese scholar who died recently leaving extensive manuscripts on the Wall,* published in 1936 the beginning of an inventory of the forts along its length, but his work was based on the painstaking study of gazetteers and histories, not on firsthand investigation.* As for field work, some ar- chaeological studies have been made recently, and one attempt to draw up a comprehensive inventory of walls—in a single province— has been carried out,* but much more remains to be done. Given such limited evidence, maps turn out to be of little use. Most atlases show the Wall clearly, but its route follows convention, and cannot be used to prove anything. The exception is maps which make use of aerial or satellite photography. Yet even here problems * Ya T'ung-k‘uei pal, “T‘an wan-li ch‘ang-ch‘eng” 98M SLE, Wen-wu ts"an-kao tateliao (1956), No. 6, p. 70. * Chung-kuo ch‘ang-ch'eng i-chi tiao-ch'a pao-kao chi‘ BLERRGEUSEIEME SSK (hereafter CCPK) (Peking: Wen-wu, 1981), p. 1. This collection of essays and materials (140 pages), edited by the Wen-wu pien-chi wei-yiian-hui, contains much archaeological information unavailable elsewhere, and represents the most comprehensive scholarship on the Wall yet published. 4 Frederick Wakeman, Jr., ed., Ming and Qing Historical Studies in the People’s Republic of China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1980), p. 87. * Chang Hung-hsiang #83894, “Ch‘ang-ch‘eng kuan-pao lu” SiRRURO&, Ti-hsiteh tsa-chih (1986), 1.13-82, 2.19-36, 3.11-28. ¢“Shan-hsi-sheng ching-nei ch‘ang-ch'eng chien-chi” {7449879 ARAB, in CCPK, pp. 101-6.THE GREAT WALL 645 of interpretation arise: on one such map a road is erroneously labeled as the Great Wall.’ So even a question as basic as “How long is the Great Wall of China?” is very difficult to answer.* Yet such problems have not threatened the Wall’s position as China’s foremost tourist attraction, nor have they inhibited the pro- duction of a sizable popular literature on the subject.* This raises a second kind of problem, that of historiography: much more is said and believed about the Wall than the evidence warrants. Over the last four centuries much confusion has developed about the Wall, as Chinese and Western myths have passed back and forth, reinforcing one another. But during the same period much sound scholarship has also been produced, in Asia and in the West. The purpose of this essay is to separate information from misinformation by examining the questions that naturally occur when one begins to think about the Great Wall, and to determine where reliable answers may be found. Few of the points are original; but they seem worth- while to make again, all together, because of the degree to which our understanding of Chinese history has been and is distorted by con- fusion about the Great Wall. The Wall is widely thought to have “guarded a border one 7 The best maps are probably U.S. Army Map Service, Series L 500 (which are not available for much of western China) and the Operational Navigation Charts, People’s Republic of China, put out by the Defense Mapping Agency (May 1974). The error occurs on ONC G-8 (Letter from Lt. Col. Robert G. Swanson, of Defense Mapping Agency, to Dr. Alta Walker, U.S. Geological Survey, copy in author’s possession). Many walls are also charted in the Chung-kuo li-shih ti-t'u-chi (pBU RSE AUIRK, (Peking: Chung-hua ti-t'u-hstich she, 1975), but evidence for them is not provided. The Sung maps, Hua-i t‘u S896 fi (ca. 1137) and Ti-li chih tw $43852 [i (ca. 1155) show a wall well to the north of most of the Ming wall, and probably intended to be that of the Ch'in, See Edouard Chavannes, “Les Deux plus anciens specimens de la cartographic chinoise,” BEFEO, 3 (1903), 222, bottom of page, also 221-24. Although the Sung maps were probably intended to be factual, Southern Sung scholars likely had little firsthand knowl- edge of the north. See also Aoyama Sadao FILME, To Sd jidai no kOtsit to chishi chizu no Kenkyit BEARER O 3E8 & HAREHALH OD BYE (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 1963). ® The precise figure of 8,494 Chinese fi (about 4,247 km) is sometimes given, but it is derived from calculations of distances on maps and in gazetteers, not actual examination of the Wall, Gf. Yu, p. 68. In 1979 the New China News Agency announced that there were 31,250 miles of wall (Washington Post, 21 Aug., p. A4); the exact meaning of this figure is unclear, but it appears to be an estimate of the total length of all “long walls” in China, including doublings, crossings back, ete. * E.g., “China’s Great Wall of Wonder,” Reader's Digest (July 1982), pp. 67-73.646 ARTHUR N. WALDRON thousand miles long” for “more than two thousand years.” It has exercised a fascination over western visitors since the seventeenth century. The Jesuit father, Martin Martini, in the preface to his Atlas Sinensis (1665), dates it at 220 B.c., and attributes it to the first emperor of Ch‘in. He describes seeing it: of prodigious size and length, it was interrupted only at one point by some mountain peaks, and at a few others by rivers. It thus provided a continuous barrier along the northern Chinese frontier.*! In 1804 Sir John Barrow cal- culated that the amount of stone in the Wall was equivalent to “all the dwelling houses of England and Scotland.’’? Early maps show the Wall prominently,® and both Voltaire and Diderot described it.** It is widely believed to be the only man-made object visible from the moon. The place of the Wall as a monument of great historical signifi- cance is widely accepted. C. P. Fitzgerald states that “The Great Wall, though often repaired and refaced, was planned and linked together by Shih Huang Ti; although probably only the core of the modern wall is Ch’in work, the design and trace of the wall were planned by the great Emperor, and subsequent generations have only restored or maintained his monument.’’** Some historians have incorporated the Wall into their theories. For K. A. Wittfogel, the “periodic reconstruction” of the Wall is powerful evidence of the “continued effectiveness of hydraulic economy and government- 19 Rafe de Crespigny, “China’s Northern Frontier,” Queensland Geographical Journal, 71 (1971), 61 1 Martin Martini, Atlas Sinensis (Amsterdam: Blaeu, 1665), pp. 15-16, 1 Travels in China (Philadelphia: W. F. M, M’Laughlin, 1805), p. 224. 48 For example, Athanasius Kircher’s China Ilustrata (Amsterdam, 1667), a work whose dramatic engravings of the Wall and other Chinese scenes did much to excite the western imagination. A survey of the Wall was begun in 1708 by the Roman Catholic fathers Bouvet, Régis, and Jartoux; and the Wall is clearly marked in the maps they presented to the K’ang-hsi emperor in 1721, later published in Europe as a supplement to J.B. du Halde’s Description . . . de la Chine (Paris, 1735). See Arnold H. Rowbotham, Missionary and Mandarin (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1942), pp. 267-68, 4 Voltaire’s Essai sur les moeurs et Vesprit de nations (1756-59) in Ocuores complites de Voltaire (Paris: Garnier, 1878), x1, 165 describes the Wall, using almost exactly the same words as Diderot’s Encyclopédie (1765; rpt. Stuttgart: Bad Cannstart, 1966), x, 866, as a monument greater in immensity than the pyramids of Egypt, five hundred leagues long, and built in 139 .c. 35 C, P. Fitzgerald, China: A Short Cultural History (London: The Cresset Press, 1935), p. 519.THE GREAT WALL 647 directed mass labor.’’*® For Owen Lattimore, the Wall is tangible evidence of the fundamental incompatibility of nomadic and settled civilizations."* Some scholars have argued that the building of the Wall forced the people known as the Hsiung-nu to begin a migration across the Eurasian continent that ultimately brought them to Eu- rope, and that this was the origin of the Huns.** The scholar troubled by the disparity between evidence and be- lief in discussions of the Great Wall of China is scarcely in a new position. Natural questions arose as soon as the Jesuit reports of the Wall reached Europe: When was the Wall built? How exactly had it been constructed? To the first question, it was generally replied that Ch‘in Shih-huang, the first emperor, had built the Wall in the third century B.c. This some Europeans found hard to believe. If the Wall was that old why did Marco Polo, who had visited China in the late thirteenth century, never mention it?** Doubts arose in some minds. Sir George Staunton, who had travelled with Macartney in 1794, questioned as to “whether the wall was really in existence in the thirteenth century when that celebrated Venetian went to the court of the Tartar sovereign of China.’’** And indeed, early on some European scholars maintained that the Wall had not been built until the early Ming, after the Mongols withdrew from China. But against this view, ingenious explanations for Polo’s silence were found. He had entered China from the south, said some; from Korea, said others. 16 K. A. Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1957), p. 37. 1 See Studies in Frontier History (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1962), pp. 101~' 18 See William M. McGovern, The Early Empires of Gentral Asia (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1939), p. 114, and Joseph Needham, rv: 3, 55. Gibbon was skeptical of the Wall’s efficacy; Decline and Fail, chap. 26 states that it was no more effective than torrents, or precipices, or the deepest rivers, or the loftiest mountains, in stopping the nomads, Nevertheless, some famous writers including Rostovtzev, Lattimore, and Durant have argued that it was a real barrier (Needham, 1, 185, note a). Huang Lin-shu 3CWE pours scorn on that theory in “Shan-hai-kuan chih Chia-yii-kuan chih wancli ch‘ang-ch‘eng fei Ch'in shih chu” | SRUS3KSBE2 MB EIRIEAESE, Pien-sai yen chiu B8:52049¢ (Hong Kong: Tsao-yang, 1979), pp. 97-100. 18 See William Marsden, trans., Travels of Marco Polo (London, 1818), Introduction, pp. xxxvii-xxxix; and pp. 230-34, note 446. The references to the Wall, and dramatic portrayals of it in the recent Chinese-U.S. joint television production “Marco Polo” have no warrant in the text, 2 George L. Staunton, An Authentic Account of an Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China . . . (London: G. Nicol, 1797), pp. 184-85.648 ARTHUR N, WALDRON The view that the wall had been built by the Ch‘in was adopted by the philosophes and generally accepted.** The question of the Wall’s exact structure also received a variety of answers. Some wove fantastic accounts of how “laborers stood so close for many miles distance to hand the materials one to another’’** while others, actually visiting the Wall, reported far less astonishing findings. In 1887 a French priest published an article about the Wall showing that Martini’s account was unreliable. He himself had visited the Wall in many places and found it, where it existed, by and large a modest earth construction. In some places there were only watch towers which had never been connected by any wall. As a result, he questioned the whole accepted notion of the Wall. He was ridiculed, although his arguments were reasonable and well cor- roborated.** In spite of such doubts, the view of the Wall that came to be accepted over the following centuries was close to Martini’s. Lord Macartney summed it up well in his journal: At the remote period of [the Wall's] building China must have been not only a very powerful empire, but a very wise and virtuous nation, or at least to have had such foresight and such regard for posterity as to establish at once what was then thought a perpetual security for them against future invasion, choosing to load herself with an enormous expense of immediate labour and treasure rather than leave succeeding generations to a precarious dependence on contingent resources. She must also have had uncommon vigilance and discernment so as to profit by every current event and to seize the proper moment of tranquility for executing so extensive and difficult an enterprise. . . 24 For westerners the Wall retained a romantic aura. In 1914 three American explorers made their way to the easternmost point of the Wall, near Shan-hai-kuan, where a stone platform touches the sea. They “vaguely realized” that they were standing on “the oldest 2 A late-seventeenth-century summary of the various controversies about the Wall may be found in Jonas Locnaeus, D. D. Murum Sinensem brevi dissertatione . .. (Uppsala, 1694). % Quoted in Luo, p. 177. % “Rapport sur la grande muraille de Chine ou il est prouvé que cette muraille, telle qu’elle est communément décrite non seulement n’existe pas, mais méme n’a jamais existé..., par M. Pabbé Larrieu . . . ,” Revue de? Extréme-Orient, 3 (1887), 347-61. ¥ J. L. Granmer-Byng, ed. An Embassy to China ; Being the Journal Kept by Lord Macartney During his Embassy to the Emperor Givien-lung, 1793-94 (London: Longmans, 1962), pp. 112— 13,THE GREAT WALL 649 artificial structure [they] had ever seen,” and “one of the oldest in the world.”** Had they been able to read in Chinese sources, they might have thought otherwise. The “Old Dragon’s Head” [lao-lung-i‘ou #24891] upon which they stood probably was constructed in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.** And in the year of their expedition, Chang Hsiang-wen published one of the first modern articles on the Wall, concluding that the ruins known today as the Great Wall were of Ming date.?? That article and others similar reflected the rise of interest in historical geography, particularly that of border areas, in the late Ch‘ing. The subject already had a long history, but the increasing foreign presence focused attention on it. This scholarly tradition has continued to develop.?* While it has not resolved all the problems surrounding the Wall, it has provided a sound basis for distinguishing the real history and significance of walls in Chinese history from what may be called the ‘myth of the Great Wall.” It has become evident that much of what is often asserted about the Wall is pure myth, It cannot be seen from outer space, either from the moon or from Mars, though the idea that it can be is at least fifty * Frederick G. Clapp, “Along and Across the Great Wall of China,” The Geographical Review, 9 (1920), 222. % Yung-p'ing-fu chih A7E GE (1879; rpt. Taipei: Hsiich-sheng shu-chii, 1968) 42.3035~ 36; CCPK, pp. 96-97. ® Chang Hsiang-wen 94H, “Ch'ang-ch'eng k'ao” Jb, Tihsiieh tsa-chih, 5.9 (1914), 1-3. Derk Bodde, who states that the wall “has been repaired and enlarged many times,” also notes that much of the present structure dates only from the Ming; see China’s First Unifier (1988; rpt. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Univ. Press, 1967), p. 180. %8 A valuable pioneering essay on the Wall was written by Ku Yen-wu Rik (1613- 82), Jih-chih-lu Bi 40% (SPPY ed.), 31.48b-51b. Among more important modern works are Wang Kuo-liang ERB, Chung-kuo ch‘ang-ch'eng yen-ko Kao BBR YYaEA (Shang- hai: Shang-wu, 1931); Shou P*eng-fei # BAR, Li-tai ch'ang-ch'eng kao HEUER (1941). On the Ming, the best article is Li Shu-fang 2598, “Ming-tai pien-ch'iang yen-ko k‘ao- deh” BRST WG, Vu-kang, 5.1 (March 1936), 1-15. Two recent publications of high quality, based on work several decades old, are Chang Wei-hua 3448, Chung-kuo ch‘ang- ch'eng chien-chih Kao (shang pien) "(iL e388 1B% LM (Peking: Chung-hua, 1979), and the review article by Li Wen-hsin 43¢{2, “Chung-kuo pei-pu ch‘ang-ch‘eng yen-ko k‘ao”” FPRLICAS RAR, She-hui Ko-hsiieh chi-kan, (1979), 1-14-58; 2.12841. Slightly less good than the paper by Yii T'ung-k'uei (note 2 above) but still useful is Chu Hsich (82, “Wan-li ch‘ang-ch'eng hsiu-chien ti yen-ko” Jf HLEWMEIBAYAAE, Li-shih chiao-hsiteh (1955), 12.17-23. In addition to a number of articles, two Japanese books treat the Wall, both titled Banri no chojd $B. Fehk, one by Uemura Seiji HAF (Tokyo: Sdgensha, 1944), and the other by Aoki Tomitaré HABE (Tokyo: Kondo Shuppansha, 1972).650 ARTHUR N,. WALDRON years old.** Indeed, visitors to China arriving in Peking by air from the north often do not see it. Nor is it nor was it continuous, or built entirely of stone, as Father Martini described. Nearly every bit that can be seen today dates from the Ming, and late Ming at that. In- deed, the very concept of a “Great Wall of China” confuses more than it clarifies. The words that are translated as “Great Wall,” ch‘ang-ch'eng ik, can be found in the Shih chi (Ist century B.c.). There they refer to a variety of walls, both Chinese and nomadic.*° The words therefore cannot mean “The Great Wall,” but rather simply “long wall” or “walls.”*! Yet through most of history, the phrase ch‘ang-ch‘eng seems to have meant only one thing to educated Chinese: the Wall built by the Ch‘in emperor. 2 The assertion that the Wall can be seen from the moon is made with surprising frequency, ¢.g., in CCPK, p. 1; in Yu Jin, facing title pages and in Luo Zewen, pp. 6 and 180. In fact, no man-made objects are visible from the moon: to see the Wall would be equivalent to “viewing a popsicle stick from 384 km.” The legend about the Wall goes back at least to Adam Warwick, “A Thousand Miles Along the Great Wall of China,” National Geographic, 43.2 (1923), 113, and was spread by a cartoon by Robert Ripley, Believe It or Not!, 22 May 1982, which used Warwick's article as a source, and called the Wall “The mightiest work of man—the only one that would be visible to the human eye from the moon!” Although no mention of the Wall was ever made in a NASA voice transmission or astronaut debriefing, the legend seems to have gained new life during the manned lunar missions. It is possible that the legend about the moon is a variant of an earlier one, that the Wall could be seen from Mars. Needham, 1v:3, 47 states that the Wall “has been considered the only work of man which could be picked out by Martian astronomers.” He probably follows L. N. Hayes, p. 2; the idea may well have developed during the period of great interest in Mars spurred by the research of the astronomers G. V. Schiaparelli and Percival Lowell. My thanks to Dr. Alta Walker (quoted) of the United States Geological Survey; Mr. Edward T. Meyer, of Ripley International; Dr. Paul Lowman, of Goddard Space Flight Genter; and Mr. Fletcher Reel, of NASA, for information on this question. ¥ For example, the I-chii people built a wall to protect themselves from the Cl See Shih chi (Chung-hua shu-chii ed.), 40.2885. Burton Watson, trans., Records of the Grand Historian of China (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1961) 1, 159. 41 See A. F. P, Hulsewé, China in Central Asia (Leiden: Brill, 1979), p. 74 note 31. The treatment of the words as a proper noun, seeming to refer to a single entity, is certainly standard today: they are side-scored in the Chung-hua shu-chii editions of the dynastic histories. However we may wonder whether such a reading was always intended by the authors. Another problem is the supplying of the precise translation “wall” where the text may mean simply “the frontier.” Thus Louis Hambis translates sai hsia SEF as “sous la Muraille.” See Documents sur histoire des Mongols a Pépoque des Ming (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1969), p. 34.THE GREAT WALL 651 [He] dispatched Meng T’ien to lead a force of a hundred thousand men north to attack the barbarians. He seized control of all the lands south of the Yellow River and established border defenses along the river, constructing forty-four walled district cities overlooking the river and manning them with convict laborers transported to the border for garrison duty. ... Thus he utilized the natural mountain barriers to establish the border defenses, scooping out the valleys and constructing ramparts and building installations at other points where they were needed. The whole line of defenses stretched over ten thousand Ji from. Lin-t’ao to Liao-tung, and even extended across the Yellow River and through Yang-shan and Pei-chia.2? This passage and three others constitute the primary evidence for the Gh‘in Wall.** Not even the date of construction is unambiguous. References to the Wall are scarce in the literature of the period from the Ch‘in to the Ming, as will be seen below, while by contrast, Ming historical materials abound with references to wall-building. But the Ming never applied the phrase ch‘ang-ch‘eng to their con- structions; rather they called them “border walls” (pien-ch‘iang fil), because, it is said, the memory of the tyrannical first emperor of Ch'in was so loathed that the Ming preferred avoiding a term so intimately associated with him." This Ming wall-building work is well known, but it is often thought of as primarily repair of a much older structure. But if they had only been repairing the wall it seems likely that the Ming would have continued to use its traditional name. Could they have been building something entirely new? To resolve this problem one must ask what sorts ofruined walls they might have reconstructed. Could they have reconstructed the Ch‘in Wall? There is a dearth of references to that wall in histories of the dynasties immediately following.** Ch‘ing scholars point out that in the Han and Chin records, armies are described as leaving outposts (sai #) and crossing mountains, but not walls. Places now impressively fortified received modest descriptions: Chii-yung-kuan, where the Wall is most com- monly visited today, is a “mountain pass,” while Yii iit, the older name for Shan-hai-kuan, is mentioned only as the “name of a river” % Shih chi, 110.2886; Watson, 11, 160. 59 Shih chi, 6.2525 110.2886; 88.2565-66; Han shu, 94.3748. On the Ch‘in wall, see Jos. L, Mullie, ‘La Grande Muraille de Yen et de Ts'in,” CAJ, 13.2 (1969), 99-136. % Ku Chich-kang §i(gifl] and Shih Nien-hai 2:33, Chung-kuo chiang-yit_yen-ko shih HfaREB AHL (Changsha: Shang-wu, 1938), p. 268. 38 See Chang Wei-hua, p. 129.652 ARTHUR N. WALDRON in the geographical section of the Han history.** But at least part of the Ch‘in wall seems still to have existed in the early Han: in 162 B.c. Emperor Wen-ti reaffirmed the dynastic founder’s agreement with the Hsiung-nu that the ch‘ang-ch‘eng should be the dividing line be- tween their peoples.*” But the Han proved unable to maintain the presence the Ch‘in had in the north, and the Ch‘in fortifications were lost. Only in 128 3.c. did Emperor Wu-ti decide to undertake new invasions of the north like those the Ch‘in had made. In 127 B.c. Yiin-chung &*} was occupied, and the Han apparently repaired some Ch‘in fortifications, In 121 8.c. the Han extended their control into the Kansu corridor, and built walls in its western portion to protect the oases that served as bases for their extension of influence into the Tarim basin.** These fortifications, in which watch towers are more important than walls, were discovered by Sir Aurel Stein near the Han fortress of Yii-men =f" in 1906.** They may account for Ammianus Marcellinus’s (A.D. 330 ?-395 ?) mention of the walls of Seres, the country at the end of the Silk Road, and have had a role in the development of the legend of the Wall of Gog and Magog as well.4° Some authors assert that the Han also had a Great Wall some 10,000 kilometers long, but at present evidence for this is extremely limited. References to walls are similarly rare in later literary records: the Shui-ching chu #2 (6th century A.D.) mentions a gateway of heaped stones, and some lookout towers at Chii-yung-kuan;* a reference in % Chicfu Vung-chih $4455 (1910; rpt. Taipel: Hua-wen, 1970), 70.2274-75. ¥ Shih chi, 110.2902. % Sce Michacl Loewe, “The Campaigns of Han Wu-ti,” in Chinese Ways in Warfare, ed. F. A. Kierman and J. K. Fairbank (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1974), pp. 67— 122, ® M. Aurel Stein, Ruins of Desert Cathay (London: Macmillan, 1912), m, 44-53 and passim. * Ammianus Marcellinus, History, xin: 6, 64 “Beyond these lands . . . , toward the cast, the summits of lofty walls [aggerum, lit., “mounds”] enclose the Seres, remarkable for the richness and extent of their country.” For a discussion of the wall of Gog and Magog, sce Ruth I, Meserve, “The Inhospitable Land of the Barbarian,” Journal of Asian History, 16 (1982), 75-79. M. J. DeGoeje suggested the legend originated with a Chinese wall; see “De Muur van Gog en Magog,” Verslagen en Mededeelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van Welenschappen (Amsterdam), 3rd ser., 5 (1888), 87-124. “1 See COPK, p. 1. * (SPTK ed.), 14. Ib.THE GREAT WALL 653 the history of the Western Chin (265-316) has been taken to describe a rebuilding of the Ch‘in Wall, but the words are ambiguous.** The Northern Wei (386-534) built a defense line over 2,000 Zi long in 423 to resist the Jou-jan;** and in 446, one hundred thousand men were put to work building defenses.** Another wall was apparently built in 484: on this second occasion, the Prime Minister, Kao Li fi (d. ca. 502) presented his arguments in favor of the “five benefits of long walls.”** In 545 the Eastern Wei (534-49) strengthened its defenses by building forts at strategic places.*? The Northern Chi (550-75) built 400 di of wall in 552,%* and 900 / more in 555, in- cluding some at Chii-yung-kuan.** By 556 it was calculated the dy- nasty had built 3,000 4 of wall, extending to the sea;*° the next year a secondary wall was built inside of the main one.*! In 580, the Latter Chou (557-80) repaired some Northern Ch‘i works.*? These walls are sometimes said to have been reconstructed by the Ming.** The Sui (590-617), too, did considerable wall building: in 581,5* 586,** 587,5° and 588.5? In 607-8 a wall was built from Yii-lin to near Hu-ho-hao- tess The T‘ang (618-906) built no walls, nor did the Sung (960-1126). An entry in the Liao shih for a.p. 908 is translated by Wittfogel and Feng as “the Great Wall was extended to the sea-mouth of Chen- tung,”’ but the text could just as well be read, “‘a long wall was built * Chin shu, 42.1219. (For dynastic histories, all references are to the Chung-hua shu- chii ed.) See Li Wen-hsin, p. 134. 4 Wei shu, 3. shih, 1.34-35. #8 Pei-shih, 2.58-59; Wei shu, 4B.101. “© Teu-chih t‘ung-chien (hereafter TCTC) (Peking: Chung-hua shu-chii, 1956), 136.4262~ 63; Wei shu, 54.1200-02; Pei shih, 34.1256-57, * TCTG, 158.4920; Pei shih, 6.229; Pei-Ch'i shu, 2.22. *8 Pei shih, 7.2493 PeisCh'i shu, 4.56, * TCTC, 166.5130; Pei shih, 7.253; Pei-Ch'i shu, 4.61. % TCTC, 166.5156; Pei shih, 7.253-54; Pei-Ch'i shu, 4.63. A TCTC, 167.5171; Pei shih, 7.254-55; Pei-Ch'i shu, 4.64, See also TCTC, 169.5232 (reference to the year 563). 8 Pei shift, 10.376, Chou shu, 7.120. Cf, Shou Preng-fei, p. 19b. ¥ Pei shih, 11405; Sui shu, 1.15. % Pei shik, 11412. % Pei shih, 1413; Sui shu, 1.23. © Sui shu, 1.125. % Pei shih, 12.450; Sui shu, 3.70; TCTG, 180.5632. Pei shih, 12.451; Sui shu, 3.71.654 ARTHUR N. WALDRON at Chen-tung.’’** However the Chin kingdom (1115-1234) certainly built walls. Some of this extensive work was begun before 11383 large-scale work was carried out in 1181; and additional construction was completed in 1198.°° The Chin walls, known as wai-pao 4% in Chinese, and éngii to the nomads were, in modern Inner and Outer Mongolia, far to the north of the present wall.* Essentially, then, for the period before the Ming we have literary evidence that ram- parts of various lengths were built at various times, mostly at places to the north of the traditionally accepted route of the “Great Wall.” Scholars aware of the lack of evidence for a Wall during these earlier periods sometimes speak instead of the “line of the Great Wall.’’*? But the frontier between the Chinese and the Inner Asian peoples was not a fixed line; rather it shifted from dynasty to dynasty. Because of such border changes, if for no other reason, a single Great Wall could not have been built and then maintained over time. Indeed, historical maps of the “Great Wall’? show in fact many discontinuous walls, differently placed. Our historical imaginations are inevitably affected by the abun- dance of images of the Ming Wall, and in particular of the superb but atypical stretch at Chii-yung-kuan, near Peking. It it therefore important to remember that the fortifications built by earlier dy- nasties bore little resemblance to it. They were, as far as we can deter- mine, ramparts of earth, and today peasants give their remains such names as “earth dragon.’’** They were built quickly: one passage tells that a man could build such a rampart eighteen feet long in a month.** The Han walls that Stein found in western Kansu were # Karl A. Wittfogel and Feng Chia-sheng, History of Chinese Society : The Liao (907-1125), ‘Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, NS, 36 (Philadelphia, 1946), p. 367. There are other references to “ancient long walls” (ku chtang-ch'eng 7S23R) in sources from the period, ¢.g., Ch'i-tan kuo-chih SAF}Miag (Ssu-k‘u shan-pen ed.), 24.1b, 7.5b. * “Chin-tai ch‘ang-ch‘eng” 4{tJ@ii2, in CCPK, pp. 77-83. For further references, see Susan Bush, “Archacological Remains of the Chin Dynasty,” Bulletin of Sung-Yuan Studies, 17 (1981), esp. 12-13. *\ H, Desmond Martin, Gingis Khan and His Conquest af North China (1950; rpt. New York, 1977), p. 127, © E,g., Sechin Jagchid, “Trade, Peace and War Between the Nomadic Altaics and the Agricultural Chinese,” in Proceedings of the Teventy-seventh International Congress of Orientalists (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1971), p. 593. * CCPK, p. 9. * TCTC, 136.4262.THE GREAT WALL 655 composed of layers of bundled twigs, six or so inches thick, alternated with thinner layers of coarse clay or gravel.** Although pounded or layered earth was the commonest building material, stones were used as well, for example in the wall north of Chang-chia-k‘ou that is said to be of Ch‘in date.** Walls were built in a season or two by troops or corvée labor. They eroded easily. In Han times, one objection raised to giving up border defense in return for peace with the Hsiung-nu was that the fortifications would decay without main- tenance.*7 In the early Ming, walls built of earth in the traditional way disappeared in a few decades and had to be rebuilt. The walls visited today, by contrast, required years for the building of even relatively short stretches. Not surprisingly, then, few remains of early walls survive (though some, even mud brick, have lasted), and there are few mentions of such ruins in the written record. Archaeologists have found traces of what they believe to be pre-Ch‘in and later walls; and remnants of the Ch‘in wall have been listed since T‘ang times in the sections of gazetteers devoted to ancient sites [u-chi i Bis]. A few sections of such walls, several hundred yards long, exist today, notably near the city of Ch‘ih-feng in Liaoning province.** Ruins, dated to the Ch‘in and Han, have been found north of the Yellow River loop.** A Sui wall has been found in Ninghsia.” Literary references to ruins are similarly scarce. In the Kuei-hsin ésa-chih (ca. 1298) people living near the Wall are described as pulling durable wooden stakes out of it when por- tions collapsed in the rain, and the author records his astonishment that the wood could have lasted over 2,000 years.”! A Yiian traveller describes coming across a section of wall in the north, at modern * Stein, 1, 63. [td Chita FRRBA, Tod kenchiku no kenkyd HRIRROWIE (Tokyo: Rydginsha, 1943), 1, 309-10. © Han shu 9.297. *8 “Chao-wu-ta-meng Yen Ch'in ch‘ang-ch‘eng i-chih tiao-ch‘a pao-kao” BSE 36 RIVALED, in CCPK, p. 8. © T’ang Hsiao-feng fifi, “Nei Meng-ku hsi-pei-pu Ch'in Han ch‘ang-ch‘eng tiao- ch'a chi” PYStiy PULA HERR ABs, WH (1977), No. 5, pp. 16-24. 79 “Ning-hsia ching-nei Chan-kuo, Ch'in, Han ch‘ang-ch‘eng i-chi” $239 5375 BRLIEBE SuSE, in CCPK, p. 45. 1 Chou Mi fg, Kuei-hsin tsa-shih SES2HE0%, in Hoilef-chin Uaozilan PRE (rpt. ‘Taipei: I-wen, 1965), Asii-chi, A44a-b.656 ARTHUR N. WALDRON Dalai Niir in northwest Liaoning.’* This must have been part of the Chin # wall, which is today the best preserved of the pre-Ming works: over 5,000 kilometers can be traced.7* In 1752 the Emperor Ch‘ien-lung happened upon a stretch of ancient wall in Hopei and had a stele erected to commemorate the occasion.’ Like these earlier ones, even many of the Ming walls have largely disappeared. In July 1980 a fortified complex was discovered, apparently associated with the pass at Ku-pei-k‘ou, and elaborate enough to be declared a “new Pa-ta-ling”’ after the most celebrated section of the Wall. Built only in the Lung-ch‘ing period (1567-72), apparently little more than foundations remain.’* One puzzling aspect of the archaeologi- cal work now being carried out in China on the Wall is that nothing has been published about walls from the Northern Dynasties or the Sui. Most of those described are dated to the Han or earlier. Yet there is considerable literary evidence for the later walls. It would be interesting to know what has become of them. The Mongols encountered no Great Wall when they conquered China. They were briefly held up at Chii-yung-kuan by the Chin, who had strengthened their bastion impressively. The gates were “sealed with iron and the surrounding country (approximately 30 miles) strewn with caltrops.”’’* Wang Yiin :E{ (1227-1304) spoke of the Ch‘in having built a wall there when he described the place, but mentioned no existing wall.”? The Arab traveller Ibn Batuta, who visited China in about 1347, asked about the “Rampart, or Great Wall of Gog and Magog,” and was told that it was sixty days’ journey away, in a territory occupied by wandering tribes who “ate such people as they could catch.” Clearly, he was hearing the legend of the wall but no information about any real wall.”* One can agree %8 Chang Te-hui B84, Sai-pei chi-hsing HACKYAT (1 ch.), in Huang-ch'ao fan-shu yit-ti ts‘ung-shu SLAG MMM (Taipei: Kuang-wen, 1968), p. 1448. Cf. COPK, p. 82. 73. CCPK, p. 88. 14 “Hio-pei-sheng Wei-ch‘ang-hsien Yen Ch'in Han ch‘ang-ch‘eng tiao-ch‘a pao-kao” CATA RIRAELGS, in CCPK, p. 41. The stele, destroyed in 1966, has now been restored. % Luo, The Great Wall, p. 120. 7 Martin, p. 159. Cf. Yan shih, 120.2960. 7 Ghtiuchien hsien-sheng ta-chiian wen-chi RANI AZ ICA (SPTK ed.), 80.776. % Henry Yule and Henri Cordier, Cathay and the Way Thither (London, 1913-16), 1v, 123,THE GREAT WALL 657 with the modern geographer Pai Mei-ch‘u F1/#%), who stated that most of the early walls have long since disappeared, and that what survive today are Ming works.7* Militarily significant walls, then, not to mention anything re- motely like the Great Wall of popular imagination, did not exist for most of Chinese history. Yet the tradition of the Great Wall, once established by writings about the Ch‘in, developed and gained strength in literature, and indeed finally rested its mantle on the walls built by the Ming. The most famous of all legends about the Great Wall is the story of Meng Chiang-nii 3¢%, a virtuous wife whose lamentation for her husband, who had died building it, causes the Great Wall to break open and reveal his bones. The development of this story has been extensively studied.*° The earliest written accounts, from perhaps the fifth to seventh centuries,*! appear to blend two independent legends: that of Ch‘i Liang’s #822 wife, dated to B.c. 550, and that of the Ch‘in Great Wall.** The next versions of the story are from Tun-huang, where Han walls are visible even today, and not surprisingly these sources place the events in Kansu.** The Sung saw increased interest in the story, and the establishment of temples to Meng Chiang-nii."* The story was further elaborated in the Yiian and Ming, and today the temple of Meng Chiang-nii has a place of honor near the eastern terminus of the Ming wall at Shan- hai-kuan. As the story of Meng Chiang-nii illustrates, the literary evidence tells us more about the Chinese imagination than it does about historical geography. Elsewhere, references to the ch‘ang-ch‘eng also suggest that it is usually treated as an image, not a fact. Thus the yiieh-fu title, “Yin-ma ch‘ang-ch‘eng k‘u hsing # Es,” may have been founded on a kernel of fact, but the poems written to this title make use of a set of conventional references to the Great Wall.** * Quoted by Wang Kuo-liang, his pupil, in his Chung-kuo ch‘ang-ch'eng yen-ko kao, p. 67. * The legend is treated in detail by Ch‘iu-kuei Wang, “The Transformation of The ‘Meng Chiang-nii Story in Chinese Popular Literature,” Diss. Cambridge Univ., 1977, and by B. L. Riftin, Skazanie 0 velikoi stene i problema zhanra v kitaiskom fol'klore (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Vostochnoi Literatury, 1961). ® Wang, p. 17. ® Wang, pp. 14 ff. © Wang, pp. 40-41. *% Wang, p. 55. *% Wang, 25-26; Yileh-fu shit-chi $2354 (SPPY ed.), 38.1a-Sb.658 ARTHUR N. WALDRON In fact, the ch‘ang-ch‘eng makes frequent appearances in yéieh-fu poems, in familiar themes. For example, a woman thinks of her husband in the bitter cold of the north, by the Great Wall.** Often such poems have a didactic purpose, as in the verses lamenting the futile defensive policy represented by the Ming wall written by the Ming loyalist Wan Ssu-t‘ung aiflal (1638-1702).°7 The Great Wall has enough symbolic reality to be evoked as a metaphor for historical figures. In the biography of T‘an Tao-chi HGH (d. 435) we learn that when this hero was imprisoned after great service to the Chin and Liu Sung, he threw down his head cloth and said, So you would destroy your Great Wall!”** In the T'ang, T’ai-tsung so appreciated his general Li Chi 4: (584-669) that he said that while Sui Yang-ti had needed to build a Great Wall, he needed only to appoint Li Chi to Ping-chou.** Symbols have lives of their own, and cultural, as much as historical, forces give them form and content. The Great Wall of China of the modern imagination is a historical newcomer. The newcomer’s ancestry should be clear. On one side are the gradually evolving legends of the Ch‘in Wall, tenuously linked to reality. On the other side is the actual Ming Wall, whose ruins we can visit. Local Chinese names for ruins of walls reflect some knowledge of their origins. The term wan-li #2 (“ten-thousand li”) ch‘ang-ch‘eng was taken by some to refer to the reign title Wan-li #8) (1573-1620) of the Ming emperor who had built much of it.*° ‘Twentieth-century travellers looking at a Ming wall in northwest China asked whether it was the Great Wall and were told, no, it was a pien-ch‘iang; the ch‘ang-ch‘eng was to the north.*! The linking of the ancient legend and the sixteenth-century structures is necessarily a relatively modern development. But its influence is hard to over- state, The Ming Great Wall casts a long shadow back over history, one that has obscured some very important questions. % “Pei-feng hsing” {UMLAT, Li T'ai-po ch'iian-chi 26K ASK (Peking: Chung-hua shu- chii, 1977), 3.215, 87 Wan Ssu-t‘ung BUR, Wan Chi-yeh hsien-sheng Ming yiieh-fu SAREE IGA PASNT (1869). 8 Sung shu 43.1344, 8 Hsin T'ang shu 93,3818-19. % Geil, p. 71. * Clapp, p. 234.THE GREAT WALL 659 Probably the most important of these is the role of walls in tradi- tional Chinese military strategies. What the early histories describe are earth ramparts, of the type used throughout the ancient world to break mounted attacks. They were like the rolls of barbed wire or the antitank barriers of twentieth-century warfare: components of defensive systems, but not in themselves such systems. Just as the anti-infantry barbed wire is associated with blockhouses, trenches, and mobile units, so the ramparts built in China functioned as parts of broader strategies. They demand that we look at the forts, cavalry detachments, signalling systems, etc., associated with them, as well as at the broader background of military choices. We certainly do so in the study of analogous problems in Western history, but in the case of China the myth of the Wall seems often to distract our attention. Is it too much to suggest that the captivating idea of the Wall as a barrier that closed off the Middle Kingdom from the barbarism beyond in fact originates only with the Ming Wall? The idea was certainly given validity by the way that Wall was used by the Ch‘ing, who maintained and garrisoned important sections, even though such walls had no military significance for them. Foreign visitors have left accounts of how they were carefully ushered through impressive and well-guarded gates en route to Peking.*? Westerners came to believe that the Wall had been built as an impenetrable barrier and that it had permitted the Chinese to be spared Rome’s fate. The ancient civilization of the east, unlike that of the west, had been able to turn away from the chaos and dangers that surrounded it and live in peace. A purely defensive answer to the problem of security, the Wall was seen as a kind of prototype of the Maginot Line. The Maginot Line was, in fact, no more such a barrier than was the Ming Wall, though its psychological role and the legend sur- rounding it are similar. A planned battlefield, it was not continuous, and its origins are best sought in the politics and diplomacy of the post-World War 1 period.** But even as it was being built it was also being incorrectly described; the press was calling it an impregnable wall of concrete and steel girding France around.® ° Luo, pp. 176-78. % See Judith M. Hughes, To the Maginot Line (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1971). * See Vivian Rowe, The Great Wall of France (New York: Putnam, 1961), p. 84.660 ARTHUR N. WALDRON The Ming wall may have been a victim of the same kinds of faulty understanding. As successors to the Mongol Khans, the early Ming rulers probably sought initially to succeed to the entire Yiian pat- rimony, including the province of Mongolia. Their military cam- paigns in the north certainly suggest as much. For defense the Ming founder Chu Yiian-chang simply took over Mongol garrisons, and for a while kept a sizable militia on the borders, though late in his reign he greatly reduced its numbers.** A few references speak of building fortifications at passes and other important places. Nowhere is a Great Wall mentioned. Chu’s son, who reigned as the Yung-lo emperor (1402-24), also pursued an active and aggressive policy in the steppe. He is often credited with rebuilding the Wall. The texts upon which that asser- tion is based, however, do not bear it out,** though Yung-lo certainly paid attention to defensive works. But he neither built nor rebuilt a Great Wall. In fact, several texts are impossible to reconcile with a Wall’s existence.*” The Wall came into existence only in the mid and late Ming, as military policy changed. And most importantly, it should be under- stood that the Wall was never planned. Rather sections, initially earth ramparts of the traditional type, were built at various places as military and political circumstances dictated. By the late-sixteenth century these sections were semi-continuous, and by the end of the dynasty a very impressive line. But there had been no day when the Grand Secretaries said, “let us build a Great Wall.” Any such decision is visible only in retrospect. Early Ming policy toward the steppe had stressed the offensive, a policy that changed after the disastrous defeat at the battle of T‘u- mu + (1449). Before this battle, the Ming had behaved like Yiian, % Ming shih-lu, T’ai-tsu, 208.3098 (1391/56). Ming shih-lu, T'ai-tsung, 131.1616 (1412/8/7). The passage merely records an order to “raise ramparts of stones” at certain strategic places. * For example Wang Kuo-liang, pp. 64-65, quotes Shang Lu 7 (1414-86), who lists passes and comments that while they are guarded, the land between them is broad, and there are many hilly places and small roads where men and horses can get through. Henry Serruys has repeatedly pointed out the absence of a Great Wall in the carly Ming. See “Chinese in Southern Mongolia During the Sixteenth Century,” MS, 18 (1959), 10, note 32; and “Towers in the Northern Frontier Defenses of the Ming,” Ming Studies, 14 (Spring 1982), 9-11.THE GREAT WALL 661 or even Han or T‘ang rulers, and had actively campaigned against the nomads. Indeed, incompetent application of that policy had led to T‘u-mu. After that catastrophe the emphasis in strategy shifted to the defensive. Only a small proportion of the extensive set of military deployments known as the “Nine Border Garrisons” (chiu pien chen 9494) had been created before T‘u-mu. An examination of the dates when new garrisons and command positions were established dis- closes the profound shift in Ming military posture that began in the mid-fifteenth century.** The change was slow and even so was widely criticized. The first wall—of earth—was built in 1474 in the vulnerable northwest. A few decades later it had eroded away. A proposal for a similar wall nearer the capital was rejected. Not until the mid-sixteenth century were the impressive parts of the Great Wall built, some as much as a century after T‘u-mu. The remains of the Great Wall visited today date to this time. In the mid- and late-sixteenth century the Ming were weak and the Mongols strong, yet the Ming rejected any kind of compromise with them. This made wall building the only possible strategy. Indeed, one would hardly expect a militarily strong dynasty to expend vast sums to build an array of stone walls only sixty kilometers northwest of their capital, as the late Ming did at Chii-yung-kuan, probably the most impressively fortified part of the border. The place is of great strategic importance, and has long been known as such; but the early Ming rulers were content to build a fort and station some troops there. Only after the T‘u-mu debacle did concern increase. A censor was dispatched to Chii-yung-kuan to strengthen what had suddenly become the front line of defense. Though fortifications had been built in the area as long ago as the Northern Ch‘i, the walls familiar today were built only in the Ming: some in 1504, others during the Chia-ching (1522-67) and Lung- * On the nine garrisons, see Tamura Jitsuzd RAPHE, “Mindai no Kyé-hen-chin” BLO AMAR, in Ishihama sensei koki kinen ToyOgaku ronsd ABM A ACS EORE (Osaka: Kansai Daigaku, 1958), pp. 290-300, as well as his “Mindai no hokuhen boei taisei” BALD ALSEDH TAG, in his volume of essays, Mindai Manmd shi kenkyit VACHS SRGAFE (Kyoto: Kyéto Daigaku, 1963), pp. 73-161. Less exhaustive treatments include those by Ku Chieh-kang and Shih Nien-hai, and N. P. Svistunova, “Organizatsiia pogranichnoi sluzhby na severe Kitaia v epokhu Min,” in Kitai i Sosedi v Drevnosti i Srednevekov'e, ed. 8. L. Tikhvinskii and L. 8. Perelomov (Moscow: “Nauka,” 1970).662 ARTHUR N. WALDRON ch‘ing periods (1567-73). A tablet describing work on the Wall there is dated Wan-li 10 (1582), and subsequent repairs were carried out under both K‘ang-hsi (1661-1722) and Ch‘ien-lung (1736-96).°° The same is true of two other famous points on the Wall, Chi yli-kuan and Shan-hai-kuan. Both have long histories, but the im- pressive fortifications are relatively new. At Chia-yii-kuan they date only to the Chia-ching period and after,°° as does most of the extensive fortified complex of walls and gates at Shan-hai-kuan. The inscription “T‘ien-hsia ti-i kuan KF#$—” was first made by Hsiao Hsien #8 (chin-shih 1472); the present plaque dates from 1924.11 These three portions of the Wall were all extensively re- stored by the People’s Republic, beginning in 1952, and are carefully protected. Unfortunately, though, a great deal of wall has been destroyed in recent years: 54 out of 184 kilometers and 100 towers in Peking municipality alone; hundreds of kilometers of wall have been leveled and such important gates as Hsi-feng-k‘ou and Ku-pei-k‘ou have been damaged in Hopei province. Earth walls have been dug up and used as fertilizer; stone walls have been blasted and used as material for road, reservoir, and building construction. Even the Old Dragon’s Head at Shan-hai-kuan has been quarried to build houses. To deal with such problems, the Chinese government has recently drafted regulations, and a committee has been formed to ensure the preserva- tion of what remains of the Great Wall.?°? Study of the ruins, and further research in documentary sources, should enable historians to provide a far more detailed account ofhow * Hibino Takeo A JLB, “Kyoydkan no rekishi chiri” RRGO MERIT, in Chitgoku rekishi chiri kenkyt (Tokyo: Dabdsha, 1978), pp. 293-315; Lo Che-wen §8H73C [Luo Zewen], “Wan-li ch‘ang-ch'eng—Shan-hai-kuan Chii-yung-kuan Yiin-t'ai_ ho Pa-ta-ling Chia-yii-kuan” 2 fe dit— (NG A Som 7 EL, WW (1977), No. 8, 65-73; Yen-ch'ing wei chih lich 3CHE%):458 (1745; rpt. Taipei: Ch‘eng-wen, 1970), Pp. 10-25, 36, See also Chi-fu t'ung-chih, 69.2258-59. 100 See “Chia-yii-kuan chi ch‘i fu-chin ti ch‘ang-ch‘eng” SH1@ERKICHIEAVSEAR, in CCPK, pp. 106-17. An carth-walled fort had been built in 1372, and added to in 1495 and 1506, The brick gates and the earth long walls were begun in 1539, 101 A fort was begun in 1382. See “Shan-hai-kuan kuan-ch'eng ti pu-chii yi chien-chu Kan-ch‘a-chi” (LYS HBUpRi ike SUMAGAAS, in CCPK, pp. 93-100; Lin-yii-hsien chih HERE (1929; rpt. Taipei: Ch'eng-wen, 1968), 7.434-35; 13.766, 769, 71, and the Yung-p*ing-fu chiht 42.3036. 192 “*Ch‘ang-ch‘eng pao-hu yen-chiu kung-tso tso-t‘an-hui ts'e-chi” SESRRSOOPIELAE HER @ Ga, in CCPK, pp. 3-5.THE GREAT WALL 663 the Ming and other walls were built than has hitherto been possible. The gradual development of the present Great Wall can only be understood when its various sections are related to the circumstances that led to their construction. The walls in the northwest, for ex- ample, reflect the outcome of a heated court debate over whether to attempt to occupy the Ordos, the area within the great bend of the Yellow River; while walls near Peking were built during the period when the Ming were unwilling to deal with the Mongol leader Altan- khan (1507-82). Walls in the northeast were designed to counter the Manchus. To treat all the sections as components of a master plan can lead to serious misunderstanding of Ming policy. The same point should be made about walls from different dy- nasties. Books that speak of “The Great Wall of China”’ might per- haps better discuss “Walls in Chinese History,” for the structures they describe—built at various times, on various routes, and for various purposes—have no intrinsic relationship to one another. Most early Chinese walls do not seem to have been very important. Have they been joined together as an object of attention simply be- cause the impressive Ming wall seems to require a distinguished his- torical lineage? Had the Ming not built a wall perhaps the earlier walls would have received little more than footnotes in history books, and the grand and misleading historical idea of the Middle Kingdom from ancient times holding itself dramatically apart from its neigh- bors would have been shorn of a potent symbol. When considering the problems posed by walls in Chinese history, and more broadly the questions of military policy that form their background, let us beware of the myth of the Great Wall. That myth had its roots in China, but it blossomed in the West almost four centuries ago. Since then it has developed a life of its own. While it is a promising subject for students of folklore and myth, it can only mislead the historian.