Legends and Lore: The Soul of the Wall

Among the many legends of the Great Wall, none is more beloved than the story of the "Ratifying Brick" (Dingcheng Zhuan) at Jiayuguan.The Impossible CalculationIn the 1530s, the Ming court commissioned the construction of Jiayuguan's imposing gate tower. Master craftsman Yi Kaizhan was tasked with the project. Known for his extraordinary mathematical abilities, Yi calculated the exact number of bricks...

The Old Dragon Head (Laolongtou) at Shanhaiguan is where the Great Wall makes its dramatic plunge into the Bohai Sea. The name comes from a Ming Dynasty legend: the wall, stretching thousands of kilometers from west to east, resembled an enormous dragon — and at its eastern terminus, the dragon lowered its head to drink from the sea.The Engineering ChallengeBuilding...

"Bu dao Changcheng fei hao han" — "He who has not been to the Great Wall is not a true man." This single sentence, written by Mao Zedong in 1935, transformed the cultural meaning of the Great Wall.The Original ContextMao wrote these words not as a tourism slogan, but as part of a poem commemorating the Long March — the...