探索世界之萬里長城 The Great Wall 4

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These aren't miniatures, they are life-size. So far, the Chinese have only dug up 10% of the site. And already thousands of warriors and some 10,000 weapons have been discovered. Look closely at the faces, each one is different. The Terracotta Army was sculpted from its real-life counterpart. The army is drawn up in battle formation. At the rear, a command post of senior generals give commands. Their age and status shown by their spreading waistlines. In all, it took almost 700,000 men 38 years to complete the construction of Emperor Qin's tomb. Once China was united, and he had reorganized his empire, Qin sent 300,000 soldiers to the northern frontier to drive back the ever- threatening nomads. When their job was done, Qin ordered his army to stay. And with an extra half a million peasants, they built the first Great Wall of China.

The wall was made with compressed earth. It's a technique still used every day in the Chinese countryside. First, wooden planks are laid parallel to one another as wide apart as the wall's thickness, then earth is shoveled between the planks, watered and packed down by human feet. Then the planks are built upwards, and the wall continues to grow layer by layer. It is a cheap and fast way to make a wall. A hundred times easier, it has been calculated, than building with stone. That's how Qin built 4,000 miles of wall in just 12 years. Surprisingly, these walls can last a very long time. The walls of this ancient city are nearly 2,000 years old, preserved by the extreme dryness of the Gobi Desert's climate. The wall protected China but it took a terrible toll on its people. Millions of men died of exhaustion while working on the wall. Some say the dead were used as mortar and buried in it. They said that the bones of the dead were so numerous, it turned the mortar of the wall white. No one escaped the terrible rule of the Emperor Qin. Every peasant paid his taxes and contributed to the growing wealth of his empire. The greatness of China was built on the backs of the poor. And the history of the Qin Dynasty is laced with tales of sadness. There is a fairy tale in China as well-known to the Chinese as the story of Snow White or Robin Hood is to us.

real-life: existing or occurring in reality

drive back: repel, repulse, ward off, resist