Great Wall of China

"Wow, it goes on forever!"

- Indiana Jones

The Great Wall of China is a large wall built in northern China. While segments of walls and other fortifications had been built prior to 221 BC, Emperor Qin Shi Huang designed to make one continuous 3,000 mile wall to mark off his unified empire and prevent attacks from northern invaders. Sections were built from local materials - some segments were made of rammed earth, while others were made of stone. Watchtowers were created every hundred yards for sentries. Later dynasties expanded and rebuilt the wall, sometimes moving it to fit better borders. The Ming dynasty ordered extensive rebuilding in the 15th and 16th centuries. Common estimates of the current wall's full length usually are slightly less than 4,000 miles.

Around the turn of the 20th century, the Great Wall was the subject of a hoax created by some bored American journalists, who reported that China was planning on dismantling the wall to replace it with a road, and was seeking American companies to bid on the project. The hoax was later added to, claiming that the story has sparked the Boxer Rebellion.

In the 20th century, while some sections of the wall had fallen into disrepair and had been even destroyed for its building materials, the section near Ba Da Ling, outside of Peking, was a popular tourist destination.

Adventures at the Great Wall of China
In 1910, Indiana Jones traveled from Peking to Ba Da Ling with his mother, tutor Miss Seymour and local guide and interpreter Li Shung Sui. On top of the wall, Jones was amazed with its length, and hoped to be the second person to have walked its length. Running along its edge, Jones leaped off the side, an act which scared his mother. He jumped up to surprise her, revealing that at that point, the ground was only a few feet down.

In 1935, while flying away from Shanghai, a Ford Tri-Motor Airplane carrying Indiana Jones, Willie Scott, and Short Round passed by a section of the Great Wall on the way to Chungking.

Behind the scenes
The flight scenes in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom depicting the Ford Tri-Motor flying past the Great Wall of China do not make real-world sense. The Great Wall is located in northern China, and would not be in a direct flight route from Shanghai (eastern China) to Chungking (southern China). Either the plane took an even more circuitous route than indicated, or that in the world of Indiana Jones, part of the Great Wall extends more south than in the real world.

The Temple of Doom scenes with the Great Wall were filmed using a model plane and a miniature landscape diorama of the Great Wall.

Appearances

 * Journey of Radiance
 * Peking, March 1910 comic
 * Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom