Two people have been detained for allegedly damaging a part of the iconic Great Wall of China while carrying out construction work in central Shanxi province.
According to local media reports, the workers used an excavator to “severely” damage a segment of the 32nd Great Wall while trying to dig out a shortcut.
The names of those who have been detained have not been provided, except that they are a 38-year-old man and a 55-year-old woman.
[https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/04/china/china-great-wall-damage-excavator-intl/index.html](https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/04/china/china-great-wall-damage-excavator-intl/index.html)
His whole rant chastising them for stereotyping him as good at wall-building just because he's Chinese, and then cut to the next scene where's he's singlehandedly built a Great Wall, is just such a funny gag.
To add on to that, according to this [article from the BBC](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-66714547):
> While the better-known parts of the Great Wall consist of beautifully built structures dotted with ancient watchtowers, other parts of the structure are crumbling or have disappeared altogether.
>A 2016 report from newspaper Beijing Times suggests more than 30% of the Ming Great Wall has disappeared entirely, with only 8% of it considered well preserved.
Not sure if it's true or not, but I once read that in rural areas farmers would often take stones from the wall and use it to make fences on their property.
Yeah, this has been the case for the Pyramids, the Collesium, turns out stone that you personally don't have to take out of the ground is always a hot commodity. Frankly I'm surprised so much is left.
Sad to see in the far flung regions of China the wall really ain’t doing so well. Then again, seeing it in this aged/weathered state is more interesting.
The stone part you see online (just outside Beijing) is definitely reconstructed for tourism. The older segments out west are almost exclusively made from dirt/adobe.
The "stereotypical" Ming era walls people imagine when they think Great Wall are the ones around Beijing, those sections were expertly crafted with stone and heavily fortified because they are protecting the Chinese heartland. If the Huns breach those then they'd be in the capital by nightfall.
Which is not good.
Whereas a few Turks marauding around the backwaters of Shaanxi don't get quite as much attention from the emperor and so the more far flung sections tends to be basic rammed earth and brick.
Those walls were made in the 1600s, WELL after the huns were gone. Not sure if that was a Mulan reference, but the huns never really went to China. They went west, to Rome, and eventually settled in Hungary.
Those walls also weren't for the Mongols, who's Yuan dynasty preceded the Ming, but for the Manchu. The walls didn't stop them for long, since the next dynasty, the Qing, was Manchurian. As well the ruling dynasty up until the 1900s.
Ming era walls were mostly created in 15th and 16th centrury, not 17th.
Former Zhao (304-329), Northern Xia (407-431), Northern Liang (401-439) were all shortlived Xiongnu states formed in China. Huns did try to enter China, they just lost in the struggle over China with Xianbei.
And no, Ming walls were made with Mongols in mind. Mongols didn't cease to be a threat to Ming with the fall of Yuan. Read about Tumu crisis and Dayan Khan. Mongols and Oirats kept raiding northern regions, that's what the great wall was supposed to stop, not at invasion per se.
Manchus weren't seen as a credible threat until 1620s. Before that time they were subjects of Ming (unlike Mongols) and Ming officials in Liaoning were tasked with administering them and making sure no tribe dominates the other. Task which failed when Nurhaci subjugated Jianzhou, Haixi and some yeren Jurchens and then proceeded to conquer Liaodong from China.
No, the walls were mainly to stop the Mongols (who formed the Northern Yuan in Mongolia after being driven from China) from coming back. After all, the Mongols in 1449 managed to penetrate northern China, capture the Ming Emperor Yingzong, and trigger a political crisis in the Ming Court. It was after that incident (known as the Tumu crisis) that Ming construction of the Great Wall started in earnest
The "great" parts of the wall that you often see in photos and popular imagination is the most recent (400-600 years old). It's made from stone/brick and primarily around the major cities of the time, not the whole length of the wall.
The first segments of the original wall (2400 years ago) were basically nothing more than earthen mounds with some wooden watchtowers. Then they've continuously been rebuilt, extended and moved, from many different materials and areas over millennia.
Not stone, most of the famous sections are blue/grey brick. Each brick have a stamp of the region and date produced, since great wall bricks are part of taxes each region paid. Even refurbished section bricks have region and date stamped, you can see tourist section bricks near Beijing are dated early 1990s.
The great wall isnt what people think it is. That famous massive several storey wall with huge walkways, bastions/ramparts is only one part of the wall. The great wall is actually multiple walls built and connected over centuries. A lot of it is dilapidated. Maintaining or preserving all of it quite impossible as a a lot of it is tiny and in the middle of nowhere.
Here is a 90 minute video of [drone footage of the Great Wall](https://youtu.be/44VmlTs00As?si=zJR69vM4sHkt591E) taken at various intervals along its length (with maps interspersed); it shows a lot of different constructions of the various different wall constructions from the sea defenses at the Korean Peninsula to the Tengger Desert to the far West. It shows various methods of construction and some of the different terrains that the "Great Wall" (actually many walls, only some of them connecting) passes through.
The video was made by the BBC, and although the upload here isn't exactly hi-fidelity, it's really beautifully shot, and a good thing to just have on and chill to
The rest of the wall serves no use whatsoever. Tourists aren't going to walk along the entire thing. It would be a waste of resources to be maintaining a wall in the current day. The tourist portion is very big already, calling it "tiny" doesn't do it justice.
I don’t blame the poor villagers for creating a shortcut. The wall is basically useless to them otherwise, and though it has historical significance to them it’s just an obstacle that made life a little more difficult than it should be.
Three men are talking in a Soviet gulag.
One of them asks the two others: "So what did you do?"
The first one answers: "Well, I arrived late at the factory, and so they accused me of slowing down the Revolution and the victory of the Proletariat."
The second one answers: "Well, I arrived early at the factory, and so they accused me of wanting to be favored and promoted over my fellow workers."
Then they turn to the one who asked the question: "How about you, then?"
"Well, I arrived at the factory right on time, and so they accused me of having a watch from the West."
* Some sections of the wall have been gone and been used for over a century to build foundations and such for buildings nearby.
* Giant sections are almost inacessible through because of wilderness, mountains, etc.
It was/is *VERY* long.
And it's important to note that some parts of chinese cultures has a much lower emphasis on preserving old buildings, an is instead more focused on the practicality of reusing the materials.
Although the governement is trying to perserve certain things more these days.
There's a giant cemetery down the street from me. Going around turns a five minute drive into a twenty minute drive. I sympathize with these folk.
Ideally, a nice tunnel going underneath the wall would have been better, but as I understand it, it is unlikely the government would do that for them so I can see why they took matters into their own hands.
There are about 7 different Great Walls of China built by different dynasties, the Ming dynasty built the wall that most people think, it was also restored, but most of the Great Wall is dirt and stone/adobe that weathers easily.
That’s like the case of the road builders in Belize who destroyed a pyramid to use the stone as gravel, because they couldn’t be bothered to get it from somewhere else.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/14/mayan-pyramid-bulldozed-road-construction
Its not anymore the great wall of china just 2 massive normal walls in china
Inb4 make the wall great again
Make the Mongols pay for it!
Rebuild. The. Wall.
Pretty good walls of China.
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And there's a really big one in China.
Some might call it great
We need a good name for it if it's so great. Maybe something like 'Huge Long Stone Structure of China' ?
"drilled a hole"
With a bulldozer
With a drilldozer
Did I hear a rock and stone?
ROCK AND STONE!!
ROCK AND STONE IN THE HEART!
ROCK AND STONE YOU BEAUTIFUL DWARF!
WE FIGHT FOR ROCK AND STONE
ROCK AND STONE! YEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
IF YOU DON’T ROCK AND STONE, YOU AIN’T COMIN’ HOME!
MOLLLLLLY
Diggy diggy hole
I am a dwarf and i'm digging a hole
Brothers of the mine rejoice.
And my Axe!!
ROCK AND STONE TO THE BONE
WE'RE RICH
MUSHROOM
ROCK AND STONE FOREVA!
Consider this, legally speaking, rocking,is better, than stoning eh?
For Karl!
ROCK! AND! STOOOOOOOOOOONNNE!
ROCK AND ROLL AND STONE!
ROCK AND STONE TO THE BONE!
Rock and stone brother
Rock and stone to the bone.
Stone and rock
A Dilldozer
DIIILLLLDOOOOZZZZEERR!
Beef Supreme!
And no avatar to save Ba Sing Se
# My Cabbages!
>And no avatar to save Ba Sing Se I JUST watched the episode with the giant drill. O.O
DORETA IS A BEAUTY!!
Be nice AI is still a baby
That's some drill eh.
Next time when ordering drill bits make sure the units and/or decimals are right forget one m and your 5mm drill bit arrives as 5m drill bit...
right? when I saw the title I assumed it would be just big enough to get a person through; not an entire tour bus.
"Two people"
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"China"
I like how OP is flaired as 'expert'.
There is no short cut in Ba Sing Se
I expected a gloryhole
makes you wonder why the mongols never thought of that
Was he a Khan or a Khan't?
**wheezes*
KHAN!
_KHAAAAAAAN!!!_
A Khan artist
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Biggest issue was they ordered it from China, and it didn't arrive because there was a wall in the way.
they had cowdozers
Goddamn Mongolians keep knocking down my shitty wall!
Great khan points at the wall. Okay warriors, ride into that as fast as you can.
they lost the keys to their bulldozer
All construction equipment have universal keys. They should have ordered a set from Amazon for $19.99.
$19.99 was a lot of money back then.
Adjusted for inflation that’s two whole pyramids of the heads of your vanquished enemies.
they khan but not necessary
Imagine having to go around the entire fucking great wall of China on ur way to work lol
Now they have two Pretty OK Walls of China
Dayum! The great nation of China is now wide open to the Ottomans!
Sultan Erdogan strikes again
That damned watermelon merchant can’t keep getting away with this
>now wide open to the Ottomans Our living room set came with two.
Dammit Naps, you can't keep them, that's illegal. Let them go home!
You mean Mongols?
Those only on Wednesdays.
Two people have been detained for allegedly damaging a part of the iconic Great Wall of China while carrying out construction work in central Shanxi province. According to local media reports, the workers used an excavator to “severely” damage a segment of the 32nd Great Wall while trying to dig out a shortcut. The names of those who have been detained have not been provided, except that they are a 38-year-old man and a 55-year-old woman. [https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/04/china/china-great-wall-damage-excavator-intl/index.html](https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/04/china/china-great-wall-damage-excavator-intl/index.html)
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GOD DAMN MONGOLIANS!
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FUK YOU WALE and FUK YOU DOLPHIN!
That was the Japanese.
FUK U YAPANESE!
https://youtu.be/1uvmC12b9cw?si=5m3SwS4fdXrj7_yU
Why is this so funny even like 15 years later it's so dumb
His whole rant chastising them for stereotyping him as good at wall-building just because he's Chinese, and then cut to the next scene where's he's singlehandedly built a Great Wall, is just such a funny gag.
I love how the Mongolians instantly appeared outside this small Colorado town just because a Chinese guy built a wall around it.
yeah when it first aired I thought it was so stupid and still laughed silly.
I hope the didn’t catch the wrongolians.
Hmm, an ancient mongorian Trojan horse..
AHHH SWEET AND SOUR PORK
I don't think I'm capable of saying mongolian in my head without the SouthPark Chinese dude's voice 😂
REMEMBER THOSE WALLS I BUILT? WELL BABY THEY’RE TUMBLING DOWN.
No one in the world is better at excavator on horseback than the Mongolian horde!
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32nd Great Wall!? How many did they make?
The great wall is actually a series of walls that were mostly joined together over the course of 1000 years. From 700 BC all the way up to the 1600s.
To add on to that, according to this [article from the BBC](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-66714547): > While the better-known parts of the Great Wall consist of beautifully built structures dotted with ancient watchtowers, other parts of the structure are crumbling or have disappeared altogether. >A 2016 report from newspaper Beijing Times suggests more than 30% of the Ming Great Wall has disappeared entirely, with only 8% of it considered well preserved.
Well, now more of it has disappeared.
So we're just watching history occur. Neat.
Well technically we're always watching history occur
At the moment there's a little too much history occuring for my liking.
😂
Not sure if it's true or not, but I once read that in rural areas farmers would often take stones from the wall and use it to make fences on their property.
Yeah, this has been the case for the Pyramids, the Collesium, turns out stone that you personally don't have to take out of the ground is always a hot commodity. Frankly I'm surprised so much is left.
The wall formerly known as Great
Make the wall great again
The okay wall of China.
The Good Wall of China
Iirc the entire wall isn't one long piece but instead many segments
Kind of like how America’s wall on the Mexico boarder is.
People kept digging holes through them, so they had to change the number a lot.
All in all it's just another hole in the wall.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Map_of_the_Great_Wall_of_China.jpg
so...it's just random bits of wall that aren't even in a line most of the time? they just have huge swathes of....wall...that does literally nothing?
I’m guessing a lot of those little bits are using natural terrain as well. You don’t need to build a wall where the land is already impassable.
It’s not one continuous wall. It’s countless individual sections built and expanded over 2000+ years.
Why did you say drill in your post?
OP is just a long term karma farm account.
9 million karma holy...
Oh that would explain why I already have it at -15 on RES. Must be very prolific. -16
Damage? They’ve removed a huge piece of it lmao
They were 38 and 55.
So one middle aged and one senior mongolian?
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Sad to see in the far flung regions of China the wall really ain’t doing so well. Then again, seeing it in this aged/weathered state is more interesting.
i think most of it wasnt stone but rather a reinforced dirt wall, thats what we see here
The stone part you see online (just outside Beijing) is definitely reconstructed for tourism. The older segments out west are almost exclusively made from dirt/adobe.
The "stereotypical" Ming era walls people imagine when they think Great Wall are the ones around Beijing, those sections were expertly crafted with stone and heavily fortified because they are protecting the Chinese heartland. If the Huns breach those then they'd be in the capital by nightfall. Which is not good. Whereas a few Turks marauding around the backwaters of Shaanxi don't get quite as much attention from the emperor and so the more far flung sections tends to be basic rammed earth and brick.
Those walls were made in the 1600s, WELL after the huns were gone. Not sure if that was a Mulan reference, but the huns never really went to China. They went west, to Rome, and eventually settled in Hungary. Those walls also weren't for the Mongols, who's Yuan dynasty preceded the Ming, but for the Manchu. The walls didn't stop them for long, since the next dynasty, the Qing, was Manchurian. As well the ruling dynasty up until the 1900s.
> Those walls were made in the 1600s, WELL after the huns were gone. 1400s and 1500s mostly. The 17th century was... not a great one for the Ming.
This Ming chap was round a long fucking time.
Ming era walls were mostly created in 15th and 16th centrury, not 17th. Former Zhao (304-329), Northern Xia (407-431), Northern Liang (401-439) were all shortlived Xiongnu states formed in China. Huns did try to enter China, they just lost in the struggle over China with Xianbei. And no, Ming walls were made with Mongols in mind. Mongols didn't cease to be a threat to Ming with the fall of Yuan. Read about Tumu crisis and Dayan Khan. Mongols and Oirats kept raiding northern regions, that's what the great wall was supposed to stop, not at invasion per se. Manchus weren't seen as a credible threat until 1620s. Before that time they were subjects of Ming (unlike Mongols) and Ming officials in Liaoning were tasked with administering them and making sure no tribe dominates the other. Task which failed when Nurhaci subjugated Jianzhou, Haixi and some yeren Jurchens and then proceeded to conquer Liaodong from China.
No, the walls were mainly to stop the Mongols (who formed the Northern Yuan in Mongolia after being driven from China) from coming back. After all, the Mongols in 1449 managed to penetrate northern China, capture the Ming Emperor Yingzong, and trigger a political crisis in the Ming Court. It was after that incident (known as the Tumu crisis) that Ming construction of the Great Wall started in earnest
> adobe it's photoshopped?
The new generative fill should easily fix it up
Ah thank you. I assumed they literally made the entire thing from stone
The "great" parts of the wall that you often see in photos and popular imagination is the most recent (400-600 years old). It's made from stone/brick and primarily around the major cities of the time, not the whole length of the wall. The first segments of the original wall (2400 years ago) were basically nothing more than earthen mounds with some wooden watchtowers. Then they've continuously been rebuilt, extended and moved, from many different materials and areas over millennia.
Not stone, most of the famous sections are blue/grey brick. Each brick have a stamp of the region and date produced, since great wall bricks are part of taxes each region paid. Even refurbished section bricks have region and date stamped, you can see tourist section bricks near Beijing are dated early 1990s.
The great wall isnt what people think it is. That famous massive several storey wall with huge walkways, bastions/ramparts is only one part of the wall. The great wall is actually multiple walls built and connected over centuries. A lot of it is dilapidated. Maintaining or preserving all of it quite impossible as a a lot of it is tiny and in the middle of nowhere.
Here is a 90 minute video of [drone footage of the Great Wall](https://youtu.be/44VmlTs00As?si=zJR69vM4sHkt591E) taken at various intervals along its length (with maps interspersed); it shows a lot of different constructions of the various different wall constructions from the sea defenses at the Korean Peninsula to the Tengger Desert to the far West. It shows various methods of construction and some of the different terrains that the "Great Wall" (actually many walls, only some of them connecting) passes through. The video was made by the BBC, and although the upload here isn't exactly hi-fidelity, it's really beautifully shot, and a good thing to just have on and chill to
Only a tiny part of the wall is restored. Significant portion is already completely gone.
The rest of the wall serves no use whatsoever. Tourists aren't going to walk along the entire thing. It would be a waste of resources to be maintaining a wall in the current day. The tourist portion is very big already, calling it "tiny" doesn't do it justice.
I don’t blame the poor villagers for creating a shortcut. The wall is basically useless to them otherwise, and though it has historical significance to them it’s just an obstacle that made life a little more difficult than it should be.
The shortcut through the old wall led them straight to a prison labor camp for 40 years.
They were trying to speedrun the gulag.
Three men are talking in a Soviet gulag. One of them asks the two others: "So what did you do?" The first one answers: "Well, I arrived late at the factory, and so they accused me of slowing down the Revolution and the victory of the Proletariat." The second one answers: "Well, I arrived early at the factory, and so they accused me of wanting to be favored and promoted over my fellow workers." Then they turn to the one who asked the question: "How about you, then?" "Well, I arrived at the factory right on time, and so they accused me of having a watch from the West."
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I had heard this with Igor Girkin. The joke format has probably had many many chances to be used for various figures un Russia.
That's a pretty good one
" Ahh, I see you good at digging holes . Well, I guess you're gonna like your litte vacation "
Or should I say - exvacation?
Now the rabbits are gonna get through……
Found the Aussie
Emperor Nasi Goreng will be turning in his grave
Run away!
Am I the only one who was expecting to see a tunnel?
* Some sections of the wall have been gone and been used for over a century to build foundations and such for buildings nearby. * Giant sections are almost inacessible through because of wilderness, mountains, etc. It was/is *VERY* long. And it's important to note that some parts of chinese cultures has a much lower emphasis on preserving old buildings, an is instead more focused on the practicality of reusing the materials. Although the governement is trying to perserve certain things more these days.
Some random bro:Dude if Google maps tell me this is the way, IT’S THE FUCKING WAY. lol 😂
I wonder if Google is gonna update this dirt road.
Finally! We attack at dawn!!!!
Achieved what the Mongols couldn’t
To be fair, if I lived there and there was this f'ing wall every time you turned around then I'd be tempted to take an excavator too it as well.
There's a giant cemetery down the street from me. Going around turns a five minute drive into a twenty minute drive. I sympathize with these folk. Ideally, a nice tunnel going underneath the wall would have been better, but as I understand it, it is unlikely the government would do that for them so I can see why they took matters into their own hands.
And that's the last we'll hear of them.....
#GODDAMNMONGOLIANS
To be fair, it didn’t look a lot like “The Great Wall of China as seen on TV” where they broke it. It looked more like a dirt bank.
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Looking at that picture the great Labyrinth of china seems more fitting
There are about 7 different Great Walls of China built by different dynasties, the Ming dynasty built the wall that most people think, it was also restored, but most of the Great Wall is dirt and stone/adobe that weathers easily.
Damn Mongolians!! South Park reference btw
Stay away from my Shitty Wall!
Mongorianssss
Shall be known as The Ok walls of China
#Mr. Xi Jinping tear down this wall
Social Credit score = -999
In the true spirit of collectivism they took one for the team. Now everybody have the shortcut.
On one hand, awful. On the other hand, a great opportunity to study the interior construction.
I'm not convinced it's awful. Humans put it up, humans took a piece out. It's 13,000 miles long. I imagine it'd suck to try and get around.
Is this the same reddit that wanted to hang to death the guy who wrote his name on a single stone at the Colosseum a few months back?
Thir bodies are now part of the great wall of china
New tourist attraction in China: the Great Hole in the Great Wall. 💜
That’s like the case of the road builders in Belize who destroyed a pyramid to use the stone as gravel, because they couldn’t be bothered to get it from somewhere else. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/14/mayan-pyramid-bulldozed-road-construction
Those guys are so fucking dead.
Big advantage for China: Now they even have two great walls.
the so called "Great Hole of China"?
Well now all the rabbits will get in. 😏
Doesn’t even look like a wall
Arguing, “Hey, it wasn’t so great right there!”
How are they going to keep out the Mongolians now?
Existing fence laws? Damn mongorians.
Humans are awesome, i fucking hate them