Great Wall

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The Great Wall has been called "the Ten-Thousand-Li-Long Wall" (万里长城: Wan Li Changcheng) for centuries.The wall was so seemingly conservatively named because of the Chinese love of using the word wan [pronounced: wann] meaning 10,000 for describing things. Wan also means 'a great number'. Over the dynasties the Great Wall was eroded, built, rebuilt and extended many times. The latest construction took place in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and the length was then over 6,000 kilometers. This is the wall often referred to when we talk about the Great Wall. If all the fortified walls built in the different dynasties around northern China are included, the total length would exceed 50,000 kilometers (31,000 miles).