The Great Wall
Known to the Chinese as the “Long Wall of Ten Thousand Li”， the formidable defensive structures built to ward off invasion of the Celestial Empire by barbarians is called the Great Wall or the Wall of China by Europeans.The principle of these extraordinary fortifications goes back to the Chunqiu period (722481 BC) and to the Warring States period (453221 BC)．
The construction of certain walls can be explained by feudal conflicts, such as that built by the Wei in 408 BC to defend their kingdom against the Qin.Its vestiges(残留部分), conserved in the centre of China, antedate by(先于) many years the walls built by the Kingdoms of Qin, Zhao and Yan against the northern barbarians around 300 BC.Beginning in 220 BC, Qin Shihuang, the founder of the Empire of the Ten Thousand Generations, undertook to restore and link up the separate sections of the Great Wall which had been built in the 3rd century BC, or perhaps even earlier, and which stretched from the region of the Ordos to Manchuria.
Towards the west, he had extended the fortifications(防御工事；加强), the first cohesive defense system of which significant vestiges still remain in the valley of the Huanghe all the way to Lanzhou shortly before the accession of the Han Dynasty(206 BC)．During their reign the Great Wall was extended even further, and under the emperor Wudi (14087 BC) it spanned approximately 6,000 km between Dunhuang in the west and the Bohai Sea in the east.The danger of incursion along the northern Chinese border by the federated Mongols, Turks and Tunguz of the Empire of the Xiongnu, the first empire of the steppes, made a defense policy more necessary than ever.After the downfall of the Han Dynasty (AD 220), the Great Wall entered its medieval phase.Construction and maintenance works were halted(停止)；China at that time enjoyed such great military power that the need for a defense policy was no longer felt.
1．Why was the Great Wall built in ancient days?
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2．Which kingdom built the earliest wall? And when was it built?
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3．In which dynasty did the Great Wall reach its longest span?
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【答案】 1.To ward off invasion of the Celestial Empire by barbarians.
2．The Wei in 408 BC.
3．The Han Dynasty.
