The Great Wall of China

1. The Great Wall of China Understand how and why Qin built his ‘Great Wall’ Consider the human cost of this magnificent monument Created by Mr. C Wright, Dulwich College Shanghai

2. Questions from the video • What types of tribes ‘ravaged’ northern China according to the video? • Why was labour (workers) so ‘plentiful’? • How high was Qin’s Great Wall? • How long was it? • How many people were working on at one time according to the stories? • How many of those people may have died building the wall?

3. Where is the Great Wall? • The Great Wall of China stretches across the mountains of northern China, from the Jiayu Pass (in Gansu Province) in the west, to the mouth of the Yalu River (in Liaoning Province) in the east.

4. When was it built? • Sections of wall and fortresses had existed for many hundreds of years • Qin took these sections and linked them up in a massive project that took 7 years to complete. • Some of the original sections still exist, but most have been altered or re-built • The wall you see today as a tourist is NOT Qin’s wall, but in most cases Ming Dynasty: AD 1368-1644

5. How was it built? • Refer to textbook page 12

6. Was the great wall justified? • In pairs write a script for a conversation between the ghosts of a suffering peasant who has been forced to work on the wall and Qin himself. • You BOTH need to write the script out in full • Try to think of the arguments that both might have used to argue that the human cost of the wall was/wasn’t justified. • At the end be prepared to read out your ‘discussion’ in pairs.