When building the Great Wall of China

The Great Wall of China was completed at its northernmost point. This project started from the southeast and southwest respectively, and finally intersected here. In the east and west wall-building armies, this method of building in sections was implemented on a much smaller scale, so that the wall builders were divided into squads of about twenty men, each squad being responsible for building out five hundred meters, and then an adjacent squad would build a section of the same length toward them. However, when the two sections were connected, they did not continue to build down to the head of the kilometer, rather, the two teams were sent to a completely different area to build the Wall. This method naturally produced many large gaps, which were gradually and slowly filled in, some even after the Wall was declared completed. Yes, it is said that some of the openings were not filled at all, and although this is a view that can probably only be seen in the many legends that surround the project, the scale of the project is so large that it is impossible to verify these legends by one's own eyes and one's own standards, at least not by a single person.

At first it was thought that it was more advantageous, in every sense of the word, to fix it together, or at least the two major parts each together. Everyone was saying, and everyone knew, that the Great Wall was built to defend against the northern tribes. But how can a Great Wall that is not built together be defended against them? Not only is such a wall impossible to defend, but the construction itself is always in danger. An unguarded section of the wall in a desolate area is vulnerable to repeated destruction by nomads, who, frightened by the construction of the Wall, change their place of residence as quickly as locusts, so that they probably know the whole situation better than our builders. Nevertheless, the implementation of this side of the project could probably only be carried out by such a practical method. To understand this, it is necessary to consider that the Wall should be a barrier for centuries; the absolute seriousness of its construction, the use of the architectural wisdom of the various dynasties and peoples, and the persistent personal responsibility of its builders are the essential prerequisites for its construction. While ignorant folk, men, women, and young men, could be used for the rough work, the commander who commanded the four folk should be a man with a brain, educated in construction, and someone who could understand from the bottom of his heart what the meaning of the matter was. The higher the requirements, the higher the results. In fact, although the number of such people was not sufficient for the project, it was considerable.

The work was not done lightly at that time. Fifty years before the project began, throughout China, which was probably walled in, building techniques, especially masonry, had been declared the most important science, while other trades were recognized only when they were related. I still remember very clearly that as children, when we were just standing on our little legs, we had to build a kind of wall with pebbles in Mr. Mao's little garden, and when Mr. Mao lifted up his tunic and hit the wall, it all collapsed, of course, and Mr. Mao reprimanded us for not building it firmly, so that we cried and screamed and ran away to our parents. Although it was a small incident, it typified the spirit of the era.

I was lucky that I finished my top exams in primary school at the age of twenty, just in time for the construction of the Great Wall. I say fortunate because there were many who had long since finished what they could enjoy, but had no use for it for years, harboring grand architectural visions, but running around in vain, scribbling in large numbers. But those who finally came to work on this project as project leaders - albeit of the lowest rank - were in fact worthy of the task. They are masons who have thought a lot about the project and continue to do so, and who have felt one with the project since the first cornerstone was laid in the earth. Of course, besides the desire to do the most basic work, these masons were also driven by the impatience to see the work finally completed flawlessly. The masons were not driven by this feeling, but only by their wages. As for the top leaders, even the middle leaders, they hated to see the project unfold in many ways in order to stay mentally strong. However, for those who were of lower status and whose talents were not fully utilized, other measures had to be taken, such as not letting them lay brick after brick for months or even years in the wilderness, thousands of miles from home. Therefore people chose the method of building in sections. Five hundred meters can be completed in about five years, when these small heads are naturally exhausted and have lost confidence in themselves, in the project, and in the world. So while they were still rejoicing over the one-thousand-meter wall connected to the ceremony, they were again sent to a far, far away place. During the journey, they saw from time to time a section of the completed wall towering, they were awarded medals when they passed by their superiors' quarters, their ears heard the cheers of the new wall-building army coming from the mainland, their eyes saw the forests felled for scaffolding, a rocky hill knocked into city bricks, and at various holy places they could hear the songs of the devout people praying for the completion of the project. All this eased their anxious mood. After a peaceful life in their hometown, they became more robust. The reputation of the men who built the Wall, the devotion and respect of the people who listened to their stories about the construction of the Wall, and the faith of the silent common people that the Wall would finally be completed, all tensed their heartstrings again. They resigned from their hometowns like children who are forever pregnant with hope, and the desire to do their best for the great cause of the nation again became unquenchable. They came out of their homes before it was time, and half of the village kept sending them out far and wide. On every road they could see a line of people, a corner flag, a colored flag, and they never found that their country was so vast, so rich, so beautiful and so lovely. Every farmer is a brother to build a barrier for them, for which he will be grateful with everything he has for the rest of his life. How harmonious! What unity! Chest to chest, a kind of folk wheel dance, where the blood is no longer confined in a poor internal circulation, but flows sweetly back and forth in boundless China.

It becomes easier to understand through these segmented repairs, though it probably has all sorts of other reasons. It is not surprising that I have lingered so long on this question, which is central to the whole Great Wall project, and it seems less important for the time being. I want to introduce the ideas and experiences of that era and make them understandable, and it is precisely this issue that I cannot probe deeply enough.

One would probably first have to tell oneself that many achievements were made at that time which were only slightly inferior to the construction of the Tower of Babel, and yet in terms of piety they were simply the antithesis of that construction, at least as one would have intended. I mention all this because at the beginning of the Great Wall project, a scholar wrote a book that compared them in great detail. In his book he tried to prove that the construction of the Tower of Babel did not achieve its purpose in any way due to those reasons that the crowd said, or at least that the primary reasons were not among the well-known ones. He not only wrote articles and reports to prove it, but also tried to investigate it himself on the ground, while he argued that the project failed, and certainly failed, from its foundations. Yet our age is far ahead of that long-gone era in this regard. Almost every educated person today is a professional mason, and there is no ambiguity about foundations. But this scholar did not address these at all, claiming that for the first time in the history of mankind the Great Wall would lay a solid foundation for the new Tower of Babel. In other words, the Great Wall was built first and then the Tower. This book was a handful at the time, but to be honest, to this day I still don't fully understand how he imagined the tower. The Great Wall did not form a circle, but only a quarter or half circle, could it serve as the foundation of a tower? This can only be considered intellectually mediocre. Yet as the result of countless hardships and lives as a kind of tangible existence of the Great Wall, what is it really for? Why is the plan for that tower depicted in this work, albeit a hazy and vague one, and why are there all kinds of concrete suggestions for how to unify and coordinate the forces of the nation in this new great undertaking?

This book is just one example of the extreme confusion in people's minds at the time, perhaps precisely because many people sought to gather as much as possible toward one goal. The nature of man is fundamentally frivolous, like the nature of flying dust, which is not bound by anything. If it is bound, it immediately begins to shake wildly what binds it, sending walls and chains flying in all directions, along with itself.

In determining the construction of the sections, the leadership may not have been unmindful of considerations diametrically opposed to the construction of the Wall. We - and I'm afraid I say this in the name of many here - actually got to know each other while copying the imperial edict, and we found that without the highest leadership group, neither our book knowledge nor our insight would have been sufficient for the little responsibility we had in this great whole. In the secret room of the leadership group - where it is located and who sits in it - no one I asked knew, and still does not know. Probably all of man's thoughts and desires are hovering in that chamber, and all of man's goals and desires are hovering in reverse. Through the window, the afterglow of the divine world fell on the hands of the leading group depicting various plans.

The simultaneous construction of the whole line faces many difficulties that the leading group just can't afford to overcome even if they really want to, and such a statement will not be accepted by the opinionated observers. In this way, it is inferred that the leadership group deliberately implemented segmented construction. However, segmentation is only a stopgap measure, which is not appropriate. So there is this inference: the leading group wants to be inappropriate. --Peculiar inference! There is no doubt that even from the other side it has some justification of its own. There is probably no danger of saying this today. At that time there were many people who implicitly followed a rule, even the most outstanding ones, which was to try to understand the directives of the leadership group to the best of their ability, but only up to a certain limit, after which they had to stop thinking. A very sensible rule, which was further elaborated in a metaphor that was often mentioned later: it is not because it might endanger you that you stop thinking, it is not entirely certain that it will endanger you. Here it is simply impossible to say either that it will or that it will not. Your fate will be the same as that of the river in spring. It rises, becomes stronger and more powerful, gets closer to the land on its long banks, keeps its nature until it joins the sea, which it resembles more and is more welcomed by it. --This is the end of the reflection on the directives of the leading group. --The river, however, later spread out of its banks, lost its outline and shape, slowed down its flow downstream, tried to defy its mission, formed a small sea inland, it destroyed farmland and meadows, but could not maintain the momentum of this expansion for long, and had to merge into its own river again, and in the hot season even tragically It dries up in the hot season. --Don't think about the instructions of the leading group to such an extent.

This analogy was probably particularly appropriate during the construction of the Great Wall, but it has at least a very limited impact on my current reporting. My investigation is merely a historical one. The dissipated thunderstorm clouds do not eject lightning, so I can look for an explanation for the construction of the Wall that goes further than what people were satisfied with at the time. My mind's ability to think was narrow enough to give me a range, but the area I could roam across was limitless.

Who should the Great Wall be used to defend? Against the northern tribes. I come from southeastern China. None of the northern tribes are a threat to us. We read about them in books written by the ancients, whose atrocities by nature have caused ours to sigh in the quiet of the pavilion. In a realistic painting by artists, we see the faces of those who deserve to be punished to hell, with open mouths, jaws with sharp teeth, and closed eyes, as if they are particularly hungry for the prey that will be chewed by their mouths. If children are mischievous, they will throw themselves around our necks in tears if we show them these drawings. That's all we know about these northern countries. We have never seen them, and staying in our own villages, we will never see them, even if they come galloping straight towards us on their blazing horses, - the country is too big for them to reach us, and they will remain in the air forever.

If this is so, why do we leave our homeland, this river and these bridges, our parents, our crying wives and our children who are eager to be taught, and go to distant cities to study, and why do we think of the Great Wall in the north? Why? Go ask the leadership group. They know us. They know about us, they know about our little craft, they know that we all sit in the low shack, and they may or may not be satisfied with the prayers that our father says in the evening in front of the family. If I am allowed to think of the leadership group in this way, then I would have to say that, according to my point of view, this leadership group had existed for a long time, but did not meet, probably stimulated by a beautiful dream in the early hours of the morning, the courtiers held a meeting in a hurry, made decisions in a hurry, and in the evening called for the beating of drums to gather the people from their beds to explain the decisions, even though it was for nothing more than a festival of lights to the gods, who had yesterday The god had shown these gentlemen auspicious signs yesterday, but the next day, just after the street lights went out, they were beaten up in a dark corner. In fact, this leadership group may have been there all along, as was the decision to build the Great Wall. The innocent emperor thought he was the one who gave the edict to build the Great Wall. Those of us who have built the Great Wall know otherwise, and we are silent.

From the building of the Great Wall until today, I have been working almost exclusively on comparative world history - there are some issues that only this approach can touch their nerves to some extent - and I have found in my research that we Chinese are uncannily clear about certain institutions of people and state, and others are incredibly vague. Exploring these causes, and especially the latter phenomenon, has always fascinated me and continues to fascinate me today, and these questions involve the building of the Great Wall.

The imperial family, at least, is among the institutions we know least about. In Beijing, of course, or rather among the palace courtiers, it is a little clearer, although this clarity is more false than true. Even teachers of state law and history in higher schools pretend to know all about these things and pretend to be able to present what they know to university students. The lower the rank of the school, of course, the less doubtful one is about one's knowledge, while shallow education raises an overwhelming wave around a few theorems that have remained unchanged for centuries, and which, though not lost as eternal truths, can never be distinguished in such a sea of clouds and fog, I'm afraid.

However, according to my opinion, the question about the royal family should ask the people, because the people are the ultimate pillar of the royal family. Of course here again I am only able to talk about my hometown. Apart from the gods of agriculture and the colorful and very remarkable rituals to them throughout the year, all we have in our heads is the emperor, but not the current emperor. In fact, if we knew the emperor or knew something specific about him, we would have him in our heads. Of course we always want to know what happened in this regard, this is the only curiosity we have, however it is so bizarre to say that it is almost impossible to learn anything, not from the pilgrims who traveled a lot, not from the villages far and near, not from the boatmen who not only traveled in our small river, but also broke through the big rivers. Although I heard a lot, I could not deduce anything from it.

Our country is so vast that no fairy tale can go beyond its borders, and the heavens have only just covered it. ...... Beijing is only a dot, and the palace is only a small dot. Yet the emperor is so big that he fills every layer of the world. But the emperor is a human being like us, and like us, he has to lie in a bed that is more than adequate, but may still be short and narrow. Like us, he sometimes stretches his arms and legs, very sleepy when he yawned with his tender mouth. But how could we know that, thousands of miles away in the south, we were almost on the edge of the Tibetan plateau? In addition, even if every message reaches us, it arrives extremely late, long out of date. The emperor was surrounded by a large number of illustrious but impenetrable courtiers - servants and friends whose clothes were filled with malice and hostility, who were the balance of the imperial system and who always wanted to shoot the emperor down with poisoned arrows to weigh the plate. The imperial system is immortal, but the individual emperors will fall and collapse, even if the whole dynasty will eventually fall to the ground and break with a grunt. About these fights and sufferings the people will never know, they are like late outsiders, standing at the end of a crowded alley, quietly eating the dried food they brought, while in the middle of the market square far ahead, executing their masters by firing squad. There is that legend, which clearly reflects this relationship. The emperor, so the story goes, to you, to you personally, to you the poor servant, to you the shadow that fled before the holy light of the emperor, the emperor lay on his deathbed in favor of an edict to you. He had the edict bearer kneel beside the bed and whispered the edict into his ear. He took this edict very seriously, so he had the imperial envoy repeat it again into his ear. He nodded his head to indicate that the repeated edict was without error. In front of all those who had witnessed the emperor's death - all barriers were destroyed, and on the high and wide open steps stood a circle of the empire's great men - and in front of all these people, the emperor sent the imperial messenger away. The imperial messenger moved immediately. Strong and tireless, he stretched out this arm one moment and that arm the next, fighting his way through the crowd. When he encountered resistance, he pointed to his chest, where the sun was marked, so that he could move forward more easily than anyone else. But there were so many people crowded together that their dwellings could not be seen at a glance. If there was an open field in front of him, he would be walking so fast that you would probably hear his fists beating on your door soon. But in reality it was not so, and his sweat would have gone to waste. He is still desperately squeezing inside the room of the inner palace, and he will never be able to squeeze out. Even if he could squeeze out, it would be useless, he still had to fight to squeeze down the steps. Even if he could squeeze down the steps, it was still useless, he still had to go through several courtyards, and after the courtyards there was another circled palace, another step and courtyard, another palace, and so on for thousands of years. When he finally broke out of the outermost palace gate - and yet this would never, ever happen - the capital city appeared before him, the center of the world was everywhere stuffed with sediment falling from on high. No one could squeeze out of it, not even with a legacy. -- and yet every time dusk falls, you sit by the window and dream of that legacy.

That's how our people look at the emperor, so disappointed and so hopeful at the same time. They don't know who the emperor is, and they even have doubts about the name of the dynasty. Many of these things are learned in the schools in order, yet there is such a general confusion in this regard that even the best students can only follow it. The long-dead emperor is ascending the throne in our villages, and the emperor, who is still heard only in song, issued an imperial edict not long ago, which was read out by a monk before the altar. The oldest historical battle is only now being fought, and the neighbor rushed into your house with a red face to deliver this news. The women of the harem were extravagantly nourished among cushions and pillows, and their cunning attendants alienated them from high moral character, and their lust for power, greed, and wanton pleasure repeatedly renewed their crimes. The more time passes, the more horrific all the colors. Once the whole village learned in a trumpet of sorrow that thousands of years ago there had been an empress who had drunk her husband's blood in large gulps.

This is how the people treated the monarchs of the past, but then mixed the current monarchs into the pile of the dead. Once, it was sometime in a certain generation, an imperial official who was touring the province happened to come to our village, he made certain demands in the name of the emperor of that dynasty, checked the tax bills, listened to the school lessons, asked the monk about what we had done, and before getting into the palanquin, he gave a long admonishment to the villagers who had been driven over, summarizing everything again, at which point a smile swept across everyone's face The villagers, you glanced at me, I glanced at him, and then all lowered their heads to look at their children, so as not to draw the officer's attention to themselves. What happened, we all thought, he spoke of the dead just like the living, but the emperor has long since died, the dynasty has long since died, the official is making fun of us, but we pretended not to notice, so as not to hurt his face. But people can only really obey the ruler of the dynasty, because everything else is a sin. Behind the hastily departing palanquin, someone who had been lifted from the collapsed urn became the owner of the village with a stomp.

Likewise, our people here usually have little to do with changes in dynastic politics and contemporary wars. I still remember an incident from my teenage years. A riot broke out in a neighboring province, a neighboring province but very far away from each other. I can't remember the reasons for the riot, and they don't matter, the reason for the riot arose every morning in that place. The people of that place were in an emotional state. One day, a beggar who traveled through that province brought a leaflet of rioters to my father's house. It was a festival, our house was full of guests. The monk sat in the middle and looked at the leaflet carefully. Suddenly everyone laughed, the leaflet in you grabbed me tore, received a lot of things beggar was a stick to drive out of the door, everyone scattered, rushed to enjoy that beautiful day. Why is this? The dialect of the neighboring province is completely different from ours, and this difference is also manifested in certain forms of the written language, which for us have the flavor of the ancient language. Before the monk had finished reading two pages, everyone had already made their judgments. Something old-fashioned, long heard and long not set aside in the mind. Although - I seem to remember - the beggar's words irrefutably confirm that terrible life, but everyone is laughing and shaking his head, a word does not want to hear. We here are so happy to erase the present.

If we can infer from this phenomenon that there is no emperor at all in our hearts, it is not far from the truth. I have to say it over and over again: there may never be a people more loyal to the emperor than we, the people of the south, though such loyalty brings no benefit to the emperor either. Although the sacred dragon coiled on a small pillar at the entrance of our village is reverently spewing its fiery breath in the direction of Beijing since the beginning of time, the people of the village feel that Beijing is much stranger than the afterlife. Is there really such a village, where the houses are lined up and the fields are covered with fields that cannot be seen from our hill, and between the houses stand shoulder-to-shoulder people day and night, is there really such a village or town? It's too hard for us to imagine what such a city would look like. It's better to think of Beijing and the emperor as the same thing, perhaps a cloud, a cloud that strolls quietly through time under the sun.

The result of these views is a freer, uninhibited life, but by no means unethical, and in my travels I have almost never encountered a morality as pure as that of my hometown. It is a life free from any of the laws of today, following only the precepts and admonitions perpetuated to us by antiquity.

I have to avoid generalizations, and I don't think this is the case in all the thousands of villages in our province, let alone in the 500 provinces of China. But perhaps I can, based on the written material I have read on the subject, based on my own observations - the information on people during the construction of the Great Wall is particularly rich, and the observer takes the opportunity to explore the hearts and minds of people in almost all provinces - based on all this perhaps I can say that the main views about the emperor in each region show basic characteristics that are always consistent with those of my homeland. I have no intention of making this view a virtue. It was mainly caused by the ruling clique, which in the oldest empires of the world has not been able or neglected until today to train the imperial institutions so clearly that their influence could reach continuously and directly to the farthest borders of the empire. But on the other hand, the lack of imagination or speculation of the people also has something to do with it; the imperial system is alive and well only in Beijing, and only in Beijing can it be felt by the present generation; the people are not capable of pulling it to the breast of themselves, their vassals, whose chests have nothing more to ask than to feel this contact and perish in it.

This view may not be a virtue. What is even more peculiar is that this lack seems to be one of the most important cohesive agents of our nation, yes, if it is allowed to be expressed more boldly, the land on which we live. It is even worse to detail here a reason for accusation that is not shaking our hearts, but our legs. Therefore the study of this issue I do not want to engage further for the time being.