Photos! Lanshiguan Photos

[Kim]

[FreddyMusic]

This wall appears not a successful engineering.
The bricks are not regular as standard square box.
The structure is not good, so it fails early.
Is it Ming wall or earlier ?

[Kim]

There are two types of towers here - a standard brick tower and a less common stone tower. I guess the brick tower is a late Ming addition and the stone tower is the original tower from early/middle Ming.

This is indeed successful engineering - to use local materials and build a wall that still stands several hundreds years later! The wall is not in worse condition than most brick walls

There are numerous examples of how local material was used to build the wall. This is actually the case in great parts of Hebei, so it is important not just to think square grey bricks when thinking about the construction of the Great Wall.

[FreddyMusic]

Kim,

how many times you visit GW and how long you has coved in kilometer, approximately ?

Another question, I see some wild grass are growing on GW.
It seem all wall are built in bricks, how can the grass grow out?
Three are some thin earth layer on bricks?

[Kim]

Originally Posted by FreddyMusic

Kim,

how many times you visit GW and how long you has coved in kilometer, approximately ?

Another question, I see some wild grass are growing on GW.
It seem all wall are built in bricks, how can the grass grow out?
Three are some thin earth layer on bricks?

You can see a list of the places I've visited here: http://greatwall.se/blog/?page_id=21 (plus a few places in Gansu)

I have no idea how many kilometres I've covered. To me it's not so important how many kilometres I walk on the wall rather than to get an understanding of how the wall was constructed and see the different ways the wall was build and the different materials used. Some places I've visited more than once like Baiyangyu (5 times). As the list show I mainly travel to the wall in eastern Hebei which is some of the most difficult terrain of all the Great Wall.

Regarding the grass the wall have been covered in a lot of dust in all the hundreds of years it have existed. Also a lot of leaves and other organic things will find its way to the cracks and finally turn into soil. This is more than enough for the grass to grow which will itself turn into soil later.