General Meng Tian, in charge of constructing the wall for Qin Shi Huang, had 300,000 troops for the job. Sub-commanders were responsible for different sections, and all had to build with local materials. It took nine years to complete the task.
Nearly 1 million labourers were con-scripted, many torn from their wives and families. There were also convicts with shaven heads and iron collars, sentenced to years of hard labour on the wall. Some of the convicts were scholars who had disobeyed an imperial edict forbidding the use of books considered ‘unsettling’, and some were negligent civil servants. They had to work in difficult terrain in extremes of weather — temperatures plummeted from 95°F (35°C) in summer to —5°F (-21°C) in winter. They were pushed to exhaustion, and often left without food.
Although Meng Tian built a road as a supply route for garrisons and workers. Food often did not reach the outlying places — it was sold or eaten by the carriers on the way_ Thousands of men died. And were buried in the wall foundations_ Traditional poems and folk songs tell of their anguish, and name the wall as the longest graveyard in the world.
Although oxcarts or handcarts could be used on flat ground or gentle slopes, in mountain areas where the wall was built along the top of steep cliffs the building stones had to be carried on men’s backs, or on baskets slung from a pole — loads of about 1cwt (50kg) per man. On narrow paths, loads were passed from hand to hand along a human chain. Large stones were manhandled by gangs, who rolled them on logs and pushed with levers to inch them up slopes.
In areas where there were no stones, the wall was made of layers of hammered earth, built up between boards supported by wooden posts. In the sandy areas of the Gobi Desert, it consisted of 8in (200mm) layers of sand and pebbles alternating with tin (50mm) layers of desert grass and tamarisk twigs tied in long bundles.
Because of the difficulty of transporting food, Qin Shi Huang began a policy of growing crops on wasteland beside the wall, a policy continued by successive dynasties who repaired or rebuilt the wall. Peasant farmers who resettled in the area doubled as farmers and militia, standing guard or fighting as required. The garrison soldiers were also allotted small plots.
Among the water conservancy schemes organized to irrigate the crops was the Han Qu Canal, fed from the Yellow River near Yinchuan in the central area of the wall. Farmer-soldiers were obliged to grow not only grain but fruit trees as well, so there were other crops to fall back on if one harvest failed.
Picture Credit : Google
