From Shanhaiguan in the east to Jiayuguan in the west, the total length is more than 13,000 miles, like a sleeping dragon coiled on the land of China, which is the Great Wall, also known as one of the eight wonders of the world.
The Great Wall has a long history, its history can be traced back to the Western Zhou Dynasty, after the Qin Dynasty destroyed the Six Kingdoms to unify the world, Qin Shi Huang began to connect and continue to repair the Warring States Great Wall, and the Great Wall has undergone continuous construction by various dynasties and generations, and today people see the Great Wall is mostly the building after the Ming Dynasty overhauled the Great Wall.
The Great Wall is not only the hard work of the working people in ancient China, but also famous allusions such as "The Princes of Beacon Theatre", "Ten Thousand Years of Ashes and Yanjing City" and "Thousands of Gold Warriors, Ten Thousand Miles to Build the Great Wall", "Climb the Great Wall under the heavens, Yanshan is like the sea and green onions" and other ancient famous sentences are also derived from this majestic building.
Today, the era of cold weapons has long passed, and the Great Wall has been listed as a world cultural heritage, attracting tourists from all over the world to come and watch.
The Great Wall is also a symbolic presence in the hearts of Chinese people, and Chairman Mao's famous sentence of "not a good man is not a good man if he does not reach the Great Wall" has also been regarded as a guideline by many people, vowing to climb the Great Wall once in his life to appreciate the majesty and beauty of the Great Wall.
Although the Great Wall is majestic and magnificent, resisting the invasion of foreign enemies, behind this is the blood and sweat of the vast number of working people, the most well-known allusion meng Jiang female weeping the Great Wall is the tragedy of people's families destroyed due to the construction of the Great Wall, although the story has a certain drama, but in the feudal era, and in the face of a huge and severe project, the oppressed must be the working people.
Therefore, when the Great Wall loses its most important military role, some people question whether such a huge project of labor and wealth is really useful?
The Great Wall was abandoned during the Qing Dynasty
After understanding the history of the construction of the Great Wall, we can know that although the Great Wall has undergone continuous construction in successive dynasties after Qin Shi Huang, this work was stopped in the Qing Dynasty.
For a long time, the Great Wall has been playing an effective role in resisting foreign invasions, and it is also an important military fortress for northern border defense.
An important reason why the Qing Dynasty stopped building the Great Wall was the Kangxi Emperor's own personal political opinion that "the people are the foundation of the state", and he believed that the correct way to govern the country was to stabilize the country, so that the people could live and work in peace and contentment, and as long as the people were treated well and let the people live and work in peace and contentment, the country would prosper and be strong.
The construction of the Great Wall moved the masses, the people lived in the depths of the water, even if the Great Wall is strong, it will eventually perish, so the Great Wall was abandoned after the Qing Dynasty.
It can be said that the Kangxi Emperor believed that the existence of the Great Wall was acceptable and had no substantive effect. Although the reasons for the Kangxi Emperor's abolition of the construction of the Great Wall seem to be very sufficient, the statement that the Great Wall is useless still cannot withstand scrutiny.
First of all, an objective reason for the Kangxi Emperor's decision to stop repairing the Great Wall was the alliance in Duolun in 1691, which improved the relationship between the Khalkha Mongol tribes and the Qing, and significantly strengthened the Qing Dynasty's jurisdiction over the northern desert region.
After the Duolun Alliance, the Mongol problem was basically solved, and the Great Wall, which was built to resist the invasion of the northern minorities, did not threaten the northern minorities, and the military role gradually disappeared.
"Those who look to the east do not see the western wall, and those who look at the south do not see the north. The Kangxi Emperor was too one-sided in his view of the problem, and if there was no objective condition of the Duolun Alliance, in the face of the threat of ethnic minorities in the north, the Kangxi Emperor's choice would definitely be to continue to build the Great Wall to resist foreign enemies.
The role of the Great Wall
For the great role of the Great Wall, many foreigners feel the same. A famous American professor put forward a point of view: China's move to build the Great Wall has really harmed some European countries.
In The Dangerous Frontier, the American professor elaborates on his views. He believes that because of the construction of the Great Wall in the central plains of China, the northern nomads could not expand their territory to the southern region.
In order to compete for more resources and territory, the northern minorities had to shift their attention to the west, forced to move west, the xiongnu and mongols in history because of the failure to go south, and the westward migration to Europe, the Huns expelled the Germans and caused the Roman Empire to perish, some of the Xiongnu tribes were defeated during the Han Dynasty, several branches of the Xiongnu migrated west to Europe in order to survive, and the westward migration of the Huns brought disaster to Europe.
Hungary is a landlocked country in central Europe, studying the history of Hungary, we know that after the fall of the Roman Empire, various ethnic groups migrated here.
The first to arrive were the Huns, who were forced to move westward under the blows of the Han Chinese, and under attila's leadership, they established the powerful Hungarian Empire, which is also the early history of Hungary.
It can be said that the role of the Great Wall is not only to highlight the national prestige, but also to resist foreign enemies and effectively obtain information from enemy forces, and the construction of the Great Wall has also indirectly affected the pattern and history of the West.
Take a holistic view of history
Dialectics requires us to look at problems from a connected, comprehensive, and developmental point of view, to oppose an isolated, one-sided, static point of view, to adhere to materialistic dialectics, and to oppose metaphysics.
"The less we know about a thing, the easier it is to form judgments, and the easier it is to form strong, simple judgments." The impact of anything is not single, and if we want to evaluate a thing correctly, we must have a comprehensive understanding of the thing.
The Kangxi Emperor denied the value of the existence of the Great Wall for personal reasons, and many people today are limited to the times, harshly criticizing ancient people and ancient events and questioning their existence value with a modern perspective, they describe Yue Fei as a violent maniac, and Bai Juyi's "Pipa Xing" will become a bad work of obscene words and disrespect for women.
Judging the characters and works themselves out of the context of the times is a very irrational behavior, not to mention that the final fate of this behavior is to mislead more and more people and make more excellent works disappear. We must look at history with a holistic view and reject historical nihilism.
brief summary
"The things of the world cannot be observed from one point of view alone, and it can be said that they are the only truth." Not being limited by the times and not being hindered by narrow prejudices is the spirit that our contemporary youth should have when making historical evaluations.