Although the Great Wall was built for protection, it did not do it’s job too well. The Xiongnu and Mongols from the north were able to build tall ladders, group together, and charge over a small section of the wall (Cope 163). However despite that fact, the Great Wall was still an important part of the Chinese because the Chinese Emperor was able to think of a method of a series of signal towers, which alerted from far away to the Chinese that a attack was coming and so they they were ready for it (Waldron 63). By having a pile of flammable black smoke powder, on each tower on the Great Wall, the Chinese Emperor was able to deceive an important strategy to make the Great Wall extremely useful (Waldron 64). When signs of a attack was coming, …show more content…
Not only is it long, it also stretches over mountains, deserts, forests and even parts of water (Hinsberg 1). Various people including soldiers, convicts, male citizens and even sometimes children were used in building of the Great Wall of China (Waldron 80). Many people who worked on the Great Wall were soldiers that were assigned to guard and build the Great Wall (“Labor Force of Great Wall” 1). Others were convicts forced to serve on the Great Wall of China (“Labor Force of Great Wall” 1). However, the overall labor force consists of labor of men, who are taken from their families and farms, and forced to work on the Great Wall (Henzel 13). Some dynasties such as the Sui Dynasty used young boys to also work on the Great Wall (Hinsberg 1). Not only did the construction of the Great Wall require a large work force, they also didn’t have enough people to work on it so they required people from all sorts of categories. It’s clear that the Chinese nation was desperate in need of workers. One of the first Emperor’s to assign people to work on the Great Wall is Qin Shi Huangdi, of the Qin dynasty (Henzel 10). He started the project by assigning 300,000 soldiers to manage the project of the Great Wall, along with millions of labor force common people and criminals. Even with all of those people, it took nine years to build the Qin Dynasty Great Wall (“Great Wall History” 1). In other dynasties, millions of other people were needed to build the Great Wall. During the Qi Dynasty, 1,800,000 common people were called up and forced to take part in building a section of the Great Wall from Xiakou to Hengzhou (Great Wall History 1). A section of the Sui Dynasty Great Wall took 1,000,000 people to build in Inner Mongolia (“Great Wall History” 1). The sheer number of the workers distinctively indicates the massive project of the Great Wall and how it influences the empire. The defensive system