The Lie I Was Taught About the Great Wall of China

Comments · 738

• TH

  @ThePresentPast_ · 4 months ago (edited) · pinned

  Thanks to Odoo for sponsoring this video: <a href="https://www.odoo.com/r/Wzj">https://www.odoo.com/r/Wzj</a>

  9

• OL

  @Olm- · 4 months ago

  didn’t know the age but am shocked more people didn’t know the great wall wasn’t actually a complete wall

  451

• OF

  @OfficialBeeswax · 4 months ago

  This doesn&apos;t feel so much like I&apos;ve been lied to, but much more like &quot;people haven&apos;t actually made any effort to learn anything about the wall&quot; because 80% of this video is covered in the first paragraph of the Wikipedia page about the wall

  252

• DA

  @danielcadwell9812 · 3 months ago

  I&apos;m 43 years old now and the &quot;being able to see it from space&quot; thing was very prevalent when I was a kid.

  65

• MA

  @martinsportfoto2423 · 2 months ago (edited)

  Interesting, I went to China in 1987, the early days of China tourism. I went on a bus excursion to the Great Wall, with a tour guide who only spoke Chinese, but it turned out the bus drivers assistant (a young guy looking like a teenager) spoke a little english and made an effort to tell some stuff to us two foreigners who did not understand Chinese (me a and a Norwegian fellow traveller). <br><br>I do remember him describing that the wall segments we were about to see was &quot;several hundred years old&quot;, but it was partly built on the remnants of much older wall segments who was in turn partly built on even older versions. As I remember it he described it as a on-off project that had been built, abandoned, improved, moved, &nbsp;abandoned again, changed, and improved over a very long time by different emperors and dynasties. He also brought up that there was not really a single wall, but many somewhat overlapping ones. He also described the latest wall version as mix of wall and a communications network. <br><br>Seem like we got a surprisingly accurate description from a guy who was basically there learning how to become a bus driver 🙂

  9

• FI

  @fizilin2821 · 3 months ago

  We can still find sections of the Great Wall that were built two thousand years ago. Some have been incorporated into the Ming Dynasty Great Wall, while others have weathered into mere earthen mounds—structures that can only be viewed from a distance, as they are impossible to climb.

  4

• MA

  @mau_victorino · 4 months ago

  Being wrong about something and being lied to are two very different things….

  185

• DA

  @Dayvit78 · 4 months ago

  The &quot;ancient&quot; part is just a mistranslation. In both Chinese and Vietnamese, the word that gets translated as ancient really just means &quot;old (for things)&quot; which is a different word than old for living things which is probably why they don&apos;t translate it as &quot;old.&quot; You&apos;ll see many &quot;ancient&quot; houses but they are just 100 years old.

  25

• GR

  @greenjoseph4 · 4 months ago

  Depends on which part of the wall you’re talking about…

  167

• JI

  @jimbo-dev · 4 months ago

  In Finland, I do remember that they claimed in school that the wall is the only human made thing visible from space. Which even as a kid felt incorrect since I had already seen the pictures of earth during night. In those pictures cities are clearly more visible.

  69

• OS

  @ostrakos4785 · 4 months ago

  The Ming wall was built upon some of the older walls, so the foundation for parts of it may actually be over 2000 years old

  88

• IA

  @iamthirdyt · 4 months ago

  I have never heard it colloquially called the 伟大长成(literal translation of “the Great Wall”), it’s always known as 万里长城 (“thousand mile long wall”)

  10