Great Wall - West End - View Postcard

Great Wall - West End - View was taken in Jiayuguan. Here is the west end of the Great Wall on the silk road between Tibet and the desert Gobi. The Great Wall is Chinese people's greatest cultural icon The Great Wall is the product of countless labours over a period of 2,000 years, and is a feast of engineering. It also reflected the collision and exchanges between the agricultural and nomadic civilizations. In the Yuan Dynasty (1272-1368), the Juyong Pass functioned as a major traffic artery from Beijing to Inner Mongolia. Since Yuan emperors often took this route between those places, temporary imperial palaces, temples, and gardens were constructed. The Great Wall is the largest man-made building in the world. The complete route is over 20000 km, stretching from the east seaside to the west desert in northern China, winding up and down across mountains and plateaus like a dragon. The Great Wall is not a single-structured wall, it includes beacon towers, barriers, barracks, garrison stations, and fortresses along the walls, together forming an integrated defence system. Next to Jiayuguan the Jiayu Pass is famous for being the first frontier fortress at the western end of the Great Wall of China in the Ming Dynasty. Among the hundreds of passes of the Great Wall, Jiayu Pass is one of the most well-preserved passes in existence. The Great Wall is the product of countless labors over a period of 2000 years, and is a feast of engineering. It also reflected the collision and exchanges between the agricultural and nomadic civilizations. In the Yuan Dynasty, the Juyong Pass functioned as a major traffic artery from Beijing to Inner Mongolia. Since Yuan emperors often took this route between those places, temporary imperial palaces, temples, and gardens were constructed.