Not a single wall but a succession of walls built, abandoned, and rebuilt across two thousand years by different Chinese states for different purposes — the rammed-earth barriers of the Qin, the Han extensions that guarded the Silk Road, and the famous stone-and-brick Ming fortifications — a military barrier that rarely stopped determined invaders but became, centuries later, one of the most powerful symbols of national identity in the modern world.
Visitors who climb the stone battlements near Beijing are standing on a wall built by Ming dynasty convict laborers in the sixteenth century. They are standing on one famous Ming-dynasty section of something far larger, older, and less unified than the single ancient barrier most people picture. What exists is a palimpsest: walls from a dozen eras, built of different materials, serving different purposes, stretching across incompatible terrain, and frequently left to crumble when they stopped being useful. The story of how these fragments became one of the most recognized symbols on earth is more interesting than any myth about the wall itself.