Great Wall

Hello, I am Qiu and I will be telling you about the Great Wall of China. My great grandfather was actually there during the process. He was one of the most important builders. The wall once stretched more than 4,500 miles from the Jiayu Province in the east. It began as a series of walls and fortifications built more than 2,000 years ago, and eventually unified under the Ming Dynasty, which took power in 1368 A.D. But, vandals reduced the wall to 1,500 miles. From 475 to 221 B.C., there were seven warring states in China's Zhou Dynasty Qi, Chu, Han, Wei, Qin, Yan, and Zhao. So, they bulit the wall as a defense against them. In the year 221 B.C. the first emperor Shi Huangdi started reinforcing his defenses against the Xiongnu by  joining four earlier fragmentary walls and building new sections to extend them to 3,100 miles.  In 214 B.C., he sent General Meng Tian, with an army of 300,000 workers and countless prisoners, to the northern frontiers of his empire to begin building the wall. Shi Huangdi's policies of taxation Shi Huangdi's policies of heavy taxation, the Great Wall, and other public works created a social unrest. When he died in 210, his empire collasped. Later the Han dynasty was founded in 206 B.C. Under the Emperor Wudi, who reigned from 140 to 67 B.C., the Han expanded into southern China, Vietnam, and Korea and opened trade routes through Central Asia to India, Persia, and the Western world. Now, thousands of years later, the Chinese government declared it a national monument.