Abraços

The China 's magazine---Chinese National Geography (www.cng.com.cn).In March(2003) magazine,there is some middle east map are almost as like as NG magazine middele east map (October,2002).Do NG society give the map rights to "CNG" ?

First, the fall of Ming Dynasty was not due to the military insignificance of the wall, as the article seemed to suggest. You could see the reason for the wall once you are on it: on one side you have vulnerable pleatus that was inhabitated by the farmers of Ming, on the other side you have mountains where the nomads roamed. As military fortitude, it sure had served its purpose. At the time when Mind Dynasty fell, there was a rebellion army, or rather a couple rebellion armies, ravaging the country within the wall. One of them succeeded in establish his own dynasty, which lasted only for a couple of years. The leader of that army, Li Chuang, is still a legend among Chinese. It was also him who first captured Beijing, the capital of Ming Dynasty, and the Ming empero hanged himself in his royal garden after killed his own family so as to avoid the fate that would have been imposed on them by Li Chuang. But of course, the trouble over the border with Man, a tribe that eventually established Qing Dynasty and ruled China for almost 300 years, had been going on for a long time. The fatal blow to Ming was when Wu Sangui, a Ming general who was supposed to hold the fortitude of Shanhai Guan went over to Man and led the army of Man through the wall. He did that, of course, for a woman. This woman was not unlike Helen of Troy, only she was a real person recorded in history books. (She even got her own saga, written by a famous poet of Qing.) Anyway, the history of that period is very interesting and full of drama. I do not pretend to be the expert on it, but, I have to say the Great Wall had its ues as a defense system.

Second, the "late" in the slogan 'Marry late and have kids late' is not really late. A women reaches her legally late marriage age when she turns 20. The law was first enssued when marrying young was the common practice, literally teenagers were arranged to marry. And they were really young kids, 13, 15 year old.

Then last, the Great Wall was symbolized at a very troubling time. China was invaded by Janpenese, its people were suffering and in need of something under which to unite, hence the "wanlichangcheng". Of course, people who are not Chinses wouldn't know about this kind of historical burden, thus could scrutinize the accuracy of things.

That said I throughly enjoyed Peter Hessler's snippets of his conversations with the villagers. In very few words Peter coveyed the lively intelligence and humourous cynicism of those supposedly ignorant villagers in a poor backward part of China.