BEHIND THE GREAT WALL/Qi Jiguang Documentary

imagine that you are faced with an enemy you cannot defeat mongol tribes descendants of the great genghis khan fast ferocious hungry determined to take what they want and spare no one we could call it the the september 11th of this period of being history china's richest dynasty seems powerless in the face of terror to survive they have to fight they have to build we need a defensive solution if you can come up with that they might just listen from the ranks of the common soldier comes a hero his name is chiji guam and this is the story of his vision to protect his nation this will be unlike anything seen before a living breathing entity the great wall investigating ancient documents and the latest research that reveal how the wall was with built access to the first guardians of the wall china's mighty people's liberation army and exploring parts of the wall never seen before this is the story behind the great wall of china over 3 000 miles long so extensive that the sun rises nearly 90 minutes later on the western end than at its eastern tip containing enough bricks and stone to circle the earth five times the great wall is a man-made wonder of the world now its greatest secrets are being brought to light for the very first time it's a story that begins almost 500 years ago in the heart of china's ming dynasty it is september 1550 beijing is the capital of the richest most advanced empire of the age at its center lies the emperor's palace closed to everyone except the royal court it's known as the forbidden city inside the military training academy young officers are being schooled in martial arts but they are about to learn a painful lesson from their real enemies a few miles north mongol horsemen crossed the border heading straight for beijing is an invasion force 100 000 strong uh all right the outer suburbs of beijing are quickly overrun and every man in the city is mobilized for defense but tens of thousands of chinese already lie dead citizens are fleeing in panic to the gates of the forbidden city and in the heart of the palace the sound reaches the ming emperor jing it is the sound of humiliation his own citizens terrorized screaming for safety open the city gates let as many in as we continue the mongols haven't yet reached the palace itself but the fact that they've gotten this close means something somewhere has gone seriously wrong the defenses of this great capital have totally collapsed inside the forbidden city the government is in turmoil i have been humiliated in my own court by your failure i have had to listen to my people begging to be led into the city because they fear for their lives i have had barbarians banging on the ending gate the so-called gauge of safety and security now i want some answers the problem is no one has any idea how the mongols broke through historian david spindler has come to beijing to try to discover just how the mongols broke down the capital's defenses for the last 15 years he's traced every inch of the original fortifications matching each section to historical accounts of the attack the main defenses lay just 70 miles north of the capital for centuries they've been thought adequate to withstand any threat now david spindler thinks he's worked out just what went wrong early in the day on september 26 1550 several thousand mongols attacked the main river valley just to our east here at kubeco that was really a typical mongol maneuver it was a diversionary thing what the mongolians did is they simply can't a small commando unit up this valley their purpose was to get behind the main group of chinese defenders and as it were unlock the door and let the main mongol force in all that stood in their way were narrow and weak defenses this is it the only thing separating mongolia and china the mongols came through here several hundred mongols broke over this wall picked it apart with picks and shovels one raider later said that getting in here was as easy as walking into a room and that's just what they did they went over this ridge here around back behind the chinese defenders routed them and then thousands of mongols poured into the beijing suburbs the chinese casualties are very heavy 60 000 chinese killed 40 000 taken prisoner hundreds of thousands of head of livestock were lost we could call it the the september 11th of this period of being history not only have the fortifications proved inadequate to beat off the mongol attack the imperial army has crumbled too where in all these matters is my army where are the soldiers who are supposed to be protecting the city where is the minister for war because clearly we are in the middle of one we assume it's fighting the mongols highness you assume go fight them in fact the minister of war has given up the fight he's tracked down and faces the ultimate penalty in china's national archive professor robin yates examines the forty thousand pages of the ming dynasty's own records they give a graphic account of the penalty for failing the emperor shot so according to the ming history the minister of war yangshuo chien was considered to have committed a crime and was cast away in the marketplace which means that he was executed so the minister of war was the scapegoat for this debacle but why are the mongols attacking beijing are they just after plunder or something more lasting the answer arrives through the gates of the forbidden city it is a chinese prisoner sent by the mongol leader with an ultimatum for the emperor a seemingly simple demand that will change mongol and chinese relations forever and will lead to the launch of the largest single construction project ever seen it is october 1550. the mongol invaders have withdrawn from the edge of beijing but they have sent an ultimatum to the emperor of china it is carried by a blinded prisoner just a year ago the mongols demanded diplomatic recognition and trading rights the request was arrogantly dismissed the mongol and boys were killed the wealthy chinese don't want to trade with their poorer neighbors the mongols but now that the mongols have a stranglehold on the capital the power balance has fundamentally shifted who is this what is this i was a prisoner of the kyle i've been sent with a message for the serene highness a prisoner of the khan with a message for your serene highness what do they want it's a request to pay tribute to your highness in effect the demand for trade i know what that means no the chinese still don't want to be forced into trade on mongol terms but they could use the situation as a delaying tactic we might perhaps be able to buy ourselves some time we should send it back yes send it back let's have the bear dance to our tune for a change but just buying time isn't going to save china they have a fundamental problem this is a nation that has forgotten how to defend itself using the official records of the ming dynasty professor robin yates is trying to answer a question which has long occupied historians how the richest dynasty in china's history could lack a credible defense the ming empire in fact was relatively successful and as a consequence people started to become interested in money and becoming merchants and uh the military were disdained nobody wanted to become a soldier but this was exactly the point because of the wealth of the ming that foreigners such as the mongols wanted to get a bit of the action themselves so just at the point when the ming was being successful then it was under the greatest threat one month after their devastating attack on beijing the mongols have gone they've made their point and have returned home to await the chinese emperor's response they remain ready to strike chiji guang is a young officer in what's left of the imperial army although he is only 23 years old this is the man who will mastermind the great wall of china witness to the slaughter his burning ambition is to stop the mongolian threat forever she was born into a military family his father spent his life fighting the mongols on the northern border and for generation after generation sun has followed father in a seemingly endless guerrilla war it is clear to chi that the great imperial army cannot defend the nation he begins to plan what to do if this is to be ended then we must put up a real fight not just here but out there they must be taught a lesson that can be felt from here to the edges of the world she had come up with more than 10 strategies to drive out the mongols but unfortunately there is nothing which tells us what those 10 plans were and there's nothing in the ming history either so why is this it seems that she was just too keen to take the fight to the enemy let's go when china barely had the stomach to defend itself his plans were far too forceful i think he wanted to go and have an active attack plan offensive plan against the mongols the young soldiers ambitious plans might have dealt with the mongols once and for all but it would be another 17 years before chi would take his revenge on the destroyers of beijing this is the great wall of china as we know it today dating back nearly 500 years to the time of the ming dynasty but the surprising truth is that the chinese have been building walls to protect themselves from the age-old threat of mongol invaders for over 2 000 years and not just around beijing but all across the north of china for thousands of miles long before the ming dynasty the land became studded with haphazard pieces of wall remnants of these earliest walls still mark the landscape of northern china historian david spindler has been studying the evolution of the great wall he has traveled a thousand miles from beijing to the wild west of china 500 years ago this was the border with mongol territory and until very recently still closed to foreigners spindler wants to know how the border was guarded in 1550 and understand the nature of the powerful enemy that threatened it his research has unearthed the town of jacao a perfectly preserved time capsule that was once a ming border town and as their first ever western visitor spindler is given a formal civic reception these are the last traces of a mongol culture that once defined this border region they dance to the freedom of the horsemen on the prairie a wild romantic and dangerous presence a presence forged in century after century of uneasy coexistence with their chinese neighbors how the region was defended against mongol attacks the first surprise is how few soldiers were ever housed in this garrison to cover a vast stretch of border this really wasn't a massive garrison force by ming dynasty standards there were originally supposed to be about 500 men garrisoned in this little fort right here and the purpose of those men was to supply people for border defense all along the wall and to serve as as a reservoir of people to go out to hot spots along the wall when they were attacked but the bigger surprise is the wall itself this is it no bricks no mortar a lot different from the wall that most people think of this wall is made of rammed earth layers of tamped earth on top of each other it was really just a thin high earth wall the defenders couldn't get on top of it to fight off the mongols so the main purpose of it was just to slow the mongol attack spindler has discovered that raids here as elsewhere along the wall were not military invasions they were large-scale hit-and-run heists for the mongols their power lay in their speed and surprise they would have been several tens of mongols maybe several hundreds of mongols they'd come to the border dig open a section of this rammed earth wall and then they would amass all things that the mongols wanted and needed but couldn't produce in their own economy it really was like a mugging they were there very quickly the next minute they were gone and at that point the chinese really had a very hard time fighting back though mongol raids affected thousands of miles of frontier the combination of walls and garrison soldiers had always been enough to contain an essentially local problem but in the great mongol assault on beijing in 1550 the problem stopped being local something far greater was needed to stop this happening again back in beijing the emperor is trying to find a simple solution to keep the mongols at bay for the time being a series of trade deals have been prepared but the young officer chiji guang believes this is only a short-term solution he's desperate to persuade the imperial advisers that they should take the fight to the mongols i said to plan for the emperor's approval has he read it yet no but i have are you keeping it from him no i'd like him to read it just as i'd like him to read rather more important documents i hardly think you have a rank to judge that master chuck i have it back please you forget yourself master chi and the folly of an impetuous war i think i know about warfare but you don't know about the court a plan for an all-out war will not find favor nor the money to make it happen we need a defensive solution now if you can come up with that they might just listen the court may want a defensive solution but she knows that if china is ever going to beat the mongols his countrymen must learn how to fight again and so he begins to lay the first foundations of his great legacy an efficient professional fighting force the basis of the largest standing army in the world beijing is still reeling from the mongol raids of 1550 the imperial court has decided to buy time and appease the attackers with a short-term solution a series of trade deals secretary zhang takes the agreements to the emperor to sign he's our papers for his highness to sign important treaties please tell his highness the emperor however has his mind elsewhere now that the immediate threat from the mongols has receded he returns to his normal daily routine taking drugs and having sex with as many concubines as possible but the time being national security has become a low priority your highness if i could interrupt for the briefest of moments zhang begins to realize that it may take a while to get the deal signed and even then trade alone may not protect them for long they will still be at the mercy of mongol aggression unable to reject any future demands he starts to see the value of a maverick someone not yet corrupted by the failures of the system a soldier perhaps with vision he begins to reevaluate chiji guang given time could he be the man to rebuild the nation's defense if he is zhang knows he will have to prove his leadership skills first in the spring of 1553 she finds himself a thousand miles from the mongol border with a new challenge to rid the country of japanese pirates after cheese 10-point plan had been rejected by the court he was pretty much in limbo but then the japanese pirates and started raiding all the way along the coast and the court decided well you know why don't you try tj guang send him down see if he can fix the problem for hundreds of miles japanese pirates loot and plunder coastal sediments and so far all military responses have come to nothing now chiji guang has been given the chance to succeed where others have failed and the man who will one day build the great wall is about to lay its foundations by creating an army able to defend it on paper there are a hundred and twenty thousand men to fight the japanese but they are men like gung zhou as local farmers joe's family has owed military service to the district governor for generations and so like many others he's listed as a soldier in the official records that's all everyone is here give me those papers and the weapons where all the weapons they're supposed to have this is all we have sir have any of you ever fought the japanese with these weapons no sir we're farmers my orders say you're soldiers we're not trained to be soldiers then you will be get them to the barracks start tomorrow do not pay to be soldiers then you will be that too chiji guang realized that the military organization of the ming really could not solve the problem and so what he decided to do was to take and train a group of peasants and use this manual to train them to fight against the japanese these original documents are one of china's greatest historical treasures written by chiji guang himself as an instruction book for creating a modern professional army in them every step of his soldiers training is written out in common chinese language and illustrated for easy learning it was a very very carefully thought out plan to use the the skills the native skills of the ordinary farmers coupled with the latest military technology she then trained essentially an army of 3 000 men who were completely devoted to him and it was known as cheese family army the measure of his success is this the people's liberation army the largest standing army in the world four hundred years after chi the army he founded still calls itself the great wall of iron and steel robin yates has come to meet serving military commander general zhao shin at his base in central china it's the first time a western academic has been allowed into the heart of china's military zhao is a soldier and a historian he wants to share his insights into the man he regards as the father of china's military five hundred of zhao's men demonstrate part of their basic training collective martial arts a practice that began with chiji guang general jar basically feels that there were sort of three main elements to chi chi guang's achievement and the first is in a sense creating a people's army the second is the importance of the training making sure that the individual obeyed the commanding officer so his eyes his ears his heart his legs his limbs all of them were working for the commanding officer the third point is that all of these men have to work as a unit and the modern chinese army has to be trained in the same way the morale or the spirit the technology and the physical training has to work all together and chi chi gong's main achievement was linking all these three elements to create a sort of new modern army she knew that a viable army would be the first essential part of any national defense the first foundation stone in the great wall but laying that foundation would not be easy on one recorded occasion trying to retake a position from japanese pirates qi faces defeat knowing that for his new army to succeed discipline is everything she must decide how far he's prepared to go to instill that discipline the leader said we can't do it they're better than us now stop there uh well you can die like dogs or you can fight like men but you don't run now let's go the skill and discipline she instills in his army leads to victory after victory over the japanese the first solid success for nearly a century against either of china's military threats but while the enemy in the south is being vanquished the enemy in the north has returned the mongols are back for years the old emperor tried to back out of his trade deals with the mongols without the defenses to withstand the backlash once more those defenses have failed and once again the outskirts of beijing are being plundered tens of thousands have been slaughtered the job of responding to the renewed threat now falls to minister zhang jiu zhang i will of course keep you duly informed and now there is a new and inexperienced emperor on the throne 31 year old long ching the emperor is brought up in the palace by concubines and eunuchs completely untested exactly the moment when of course the mongols could see that this was their opportunity to exert a little more pressure to get what they wanted out of china zhang knows they need to solve the mongol problem once and for all so he turns to the young soldier he first sponsored 17 years ago now general chiji guang in late 1567 having accomplished his mission in the south chi returns north to beijing the leader of a victorious army he is now ready to face the ultimate challenge defeating the mongols he recalls his first instinctive response to their savagery they must be taught a lesson that can be felt from here to the edges of the world but she's no longer sure an army on its own will be enough in the past the generals really had decided well they thought you know if they could just get enough soldiers get enough cavalry drive out into the the steps you know they could defeat the enemy but the problem was what tended to happen with uh with an offensive plan was that the soldiers would ride out but then after two or three days they'd run out of supplies and the mongols could just run around them and cut them down so uh t realized that you had to have a better system of integrating the different types of forces before he reaches beijing she comes up with the beginnings of a new solution he first tries to imagine a way of containing the mongols then starts to conceive a structure that will resist attack but allow his own forces through to engage the enemy and an image forms not just a single wall but layer upon layer of fortresses connected by walls a vast defensive network a new great wall complex chiji guang's vision will change the face of china where there had been ramparts of bare earth will stand a great wall of brick and stone what had once been simple platforms to stand on would now be complex towers fortresses for his men storehouses arsenals gun platforms beacons refuges home to tens of thousands of soldiers and where dynasty after dynasty had built pieces of wall to keep out the mongols now finally in cheese vision the ming wall would be complete no gaps no weak links and built along the most formidable mountain ranges a man-made fortress on top of a natural barrier a truly great wall and the most ambitious project in china's history if there is to be any chance of getting the court to pay for it must first persuade the emperor and he has plenty of other solutions to consider and next fiduciary false to invade the steps from here and here to teach them a lesson and we have means to do it with the cheese armor if we win but if we launch your wall and we lose what then with your army gone we'll have no protection and risk bringing down the wrath of the khan on us all perhaps we should hear from our general about his intentions please general tell them my preference is always to attack an enemy you see so you agree with the idea of a great offensive campaign no i think there's a more effective solution rather than chasing after mongols we let them come to us they do it now and they take what they want but if next time we make them pay an unacceptable price we make them think again it really is just a matter of basic economics more basic than that if you come to rob my home and i know you are coming and i am waiting for you and armed i can strike you with all my force where i am strong and protected therefore my solution is to use my army the most powerful army this nation has ever had as a repulsion force and where do you put your army to general here in the capital no on the wall the key is hollow towers three thousand of them each one with a platoon of 50 soldiers each one linked with a signal system of beacons to warn of enemy approach and who will pay for this new war and the army on it who's paying now who's paying for our inability to defend ourselves this new wall will be unlike anything seen before it will be a living breathing entity without my men on it it cannot work and without it i cannot protect you everyone knows that the resources needed to build a wall on the scale she demands will be astronomical but offered the possibility of a final solution to the mongol problem the emperor gives his consent the wall will be built it is 1569 and chiji guang's great wall project begins with bricks hundreds of new brick factories are hurriedly set up to supply the first phase of tower construction at the height of production an average factory is producing half a million bricks a week requiring 10 pounds of earth and lime and 15 pounds of wood for every one there is no secret formula to the bricks each site must use local materials fired with wood from surrounding forests and as part of the great wall every single one must be guaranteed of the highest possible quality the advantages of using brick as a construction method are that brick is a standard size easily movable you can build wall in a variety of terrains you can build in steep terrain because you can hold it in place you can build peepholes you can build crenellations the u-shaped openings for archers to look out of the brick wall has the advantage of being much more flexible and to get those bricks to where they can be used an army of laborers is needed chiji guang's own army gong zhao started his military career in the south transformed from peasant farmer to skilled soldier as part of chi's new model army now like thousands of his comrades he's on the northern border assigned to building the wall this is an example of a brick that was used in a late ming dynasty wall building project it's very heavy it's about 20 kilograms we don't know how they were moved i've seen one reference in all of my readings to a brick carrying horse other than that probably lots of human power was used in moving these bricks up into the hills if i was faced with the task of having to bring one of these up to the wall i'd think it's pretty heavy that it's not a job i'd want cheese plan calls for thousands of towers spaced every few hundred yards along a wall 3 000 miles long 30 feet high and 10 feet wide in some places new towers are added to old sections of wall and the wall rebuilt elsewhere solid turrets are replaced with open towers and new wall built between but always the wall follows the strongest strategic line across the tops of the mountains for this monumental task she is given just five years and 20 000 men so she decides that in order to achieve this he's got to organize his men into companies of about 250 men each and they are going to build for him 70 towers in that year that means that each company has to build one tower every five days these men have got to work day and night without stopping for the entire year but she had the great advantage of using the troops that he had disciplined trained himself and brought them up and he could rely on their competitiveness to build the wall within the time limit that the court had given him the great wall project is more ambitious than anything the ming empire has ever undertaken by the late 1570s it is consuming more than three quarters of the government's income but there is another cost that doesn't appear in the accounts the human cost they were you know far from their families they were just working together as an entire unit it must have been extremely hard extremely difficult very very heavy work and exhausting beyond speech but the pressure is on qi to deliver and the one force he knows he can keep driving as hard as he needs is his own army for the soldiers sent to build the great wall malnutrition exhaustion and disease become the new enemy and for those who die far from home fellow workers become family scattering token money to pay for a friend's passage to the next world to rest at last we buried fong today he was from the south like me he had a family somewhere my love we're so hungry and exhausted all the time i sometimes think death would be a relief but that would be betrayal of you so i carry on for your sake i've heard so make a stay and serve on the wall when it is finished so even if i survive building the damn thing i may have to stay and defend it for centuries workers like gongzhao have been the forgotten heroes of the wall who they were and where they came from has rarely been recorded histories of these men have been almost totally unknown until now wang tao is an archaeologist from london university used to digging in the ground for evidence of the past in the great wall he faces a challenge the most revealing insights are found not so much in the bricks as in the descendants of the people who laid them he takes a tour with local historian and 500 years back to the heart of the wall building project here the past lives on because of the efforts of men like zhang 40 years ago he discovered the building records of each tower carved on stone steely or monuments inside the stones themselves were removed during the cultural revolution but not before zhang had made copies the most important stone steely was placed in one of these towers just over there and the names of all the important officials who are involved in this construction or recorded here including general chi ji guang and on the back they are all the names of the ordinary workers builders carpenters all related to reconstruction and their descendants may actually live in a local village become a part of the local history the actual lives of the soldiers can only now be reached through the folk memory of the villagers and because every village name has a tower and a history to go with it zhang has started recording the oral history of the entire village one family at a time starting with mr lau most interestingly is that mr law's great great grandfather's tomb is still there still very close to the war and that can go back to ming dynasty and they have about almost over 20 generations all kinds of lived in this village so far and when they come here they were southerners and they actually they didn't mix up with the northerners and the story they were talking about was that one year there was a feminine and no food and all the locals were coming to the wall and the zhang family tower and the lower family tower they were kind of fighting over basically it's fighting over a very little food to survive and i can probably imagine many people would die for a project as fast as the great wall team discipline is vital and when it breaks down for whatever reason it must be seen to be restored examples however painful must be set for the good of the wall get them on your knees pass down draw your sword what's going on here why have you stopped working sir that was the fight we're making an example of the ringleaders but don't worry sir we'll make up the last time that depends how many times you have to do this doesn't it haven't you enough to do without fighting you what's your excuse we haven't got enough wood to go around we'll work to death and treat it like slaves instead what we are no you're my soldiers paid workers all of you we only get half of what we owed what's the point of money when you're dead you're working to protect the empire yes there are hardships but as a soldier i am prepared to sacrifice myself my life to protect my home and my people those of you who have fought with me you know that you know what it means you will not die to prepare our families and our homes but they are a thousand miles away all we see is bricks and stones this is not a battlefield it is not even our home this is just one long headstone for a million graves on his knees we got our thoughts sir on your command the wall will not build itself and it will not defend itself either send them back to work and get them some food from somewhere i don't care where put on your thoughts set them free g's new design was in a way revolutionary it used a new structural form but she realized that without the men to build it and to exploit its potential it was absolutely nothing she issues orders for soldiers families to be allowed to join them and settle along the length of the great wall having once turned farmers into soldiers he returns those soldiers to the land to live build and fight for their homes by 1575 the first sections of chiji guang's three thousand mile wall are complete his dream is becoming a solid impregnable reality on it stands an army he is trained to exploit the wall's strength an army now 20 000 strong devoted to him the young soldier who once dreamed of serving the empire has now created its ultimate defense system not only is it the most ambitious it is also the most expensive project of the age and with the hopes of an entire dynasty riding on its success it had better work by the late 1570s the great wall is advancing at a rate of a new tower every five days yet chiji guang knows it will be tested by mongol attack long before it's complete in the beijing archives is a remarkable set of maps showing how the layout of chi's great wall defenses were designed to work out to the far northwest you see a uh pass between two mountains through which the mongols would normally trade or raid then you have a series of outward observation points then you have a series of uh beacon towers or signal towers and they're on the top of a range of hills then you have the great wall with all the forts then behind that are the headquarters of the various brigades of uh teased soldiers if there was an attack they would march out to the great wall to defend it or even go further so what he was able to develop was a very complex system the wall functioned in different ways and the men had to have an understanding of their function in the total system gong zhao is now part of chi's defense line in an observation unit in front of the wall one of chee's greatest innovations is to introduce cannons copied from western models and now manufactured in china an integral part of wall defense the unit's job is to intercept and slow any attack while at the same time alerting the walls defenders no one knows how well this new system will work but on this march day in 1575 the perfect opportunity to find out is about to materialize organized while mongol raiders charge toward the outer defenses on the wall the alarm signal triggers a well-rehearsed response men and cannon are mobilized in minutes uh up the job of advanced units is to try and slow the attack but the mongols keep their eyes on a bigger prize settlements around the town of dangjoko where chiji guang himself happens to be stationed inside the wall the warning system has alerted the main garrison and the counterforce is mobilized this is cheese moment of truth for him and the wall whether the attacking force might try to scale the wall or break through the unfinished sections no one will ever know the historical records recount that she's force was able to meet the invaders beyond the wall where his superior forces could be made to count the history also recounts mongol prisoners are taken including the brother of mongol leader chang the battle of dongjiako is one it is a defining moment for chiji guang he has proved that his great wall system works with him at its head inspiring the victory at court those who have criticized his project are silenced at least for now and the wall is declared a success for his personal heroics she is rewarded with four pounds of silver and the personal gratitude of the emperor it's an encouraging start but chiji guang is looking to the future when his wall is finally complete he will be the gatekeeper of the north and potentially the most powerful general in china the brooding power of chiji guang's great wall sends a clear and unmistakable message that the ming empire can and will defend itself and over time the growing security brings something new to the border the first signs of peace on some of the towers in dangjoko are the unmistakable marks of domesticity clear evidence that some soldiers had the time and inclination to decorate their homes perhaps as wang tao believes under the influence of their wives before i came here i thought this house was just military tower when i came here and visit this house i feel it's it's home of course it has its function as military device but if you look both sides of the wall you actually see no it's not it's actually a very much part of people's life and home life because when you walk down the cliff you walk in your own fields and you see your wife or young kids and then actually we can see in chinese history it happens all the time people being uprooted re-rooted and i think the great war has re-rooted so many people and has created a new life for so many people gong zhao is now a senior member of cheese garrison and has settled his family in the village below the wall now part of a new and growing frontier population in what was once only a conflict zone inhabited by raiders and soldiers agriculture thrives and the population grows the prize of the peace brought by the great wall it gives qi the confidence to demand the funds to finish his great project so far only 1200 of the 3 000 towers in his original plan have been built the wall will only continue to work he warns the court if he is allowed to complete it however in beijing the cost is already ringing alarm bells so far 1200 towers and a thousand miles of wall has consumed 550 tons of silver two and a half times the treasury's income for the last decade for many it is proof that cheese project was always over ambitious basically she had in a sense solved the problem but still when it's successful and you can keep the peace for 15 years then people start to say well why are we wasting so much time money and effort uh against what is you know essentially a nuisance maybe you know just a few raids by mongols you know that was not going to be too problematic oblivious to the court's concerns she looks ahead to the next phase he turns once more to the man who has always supported him who has always pulled the strings in court to provide him with funds grand secretary zhang zhu zhang but the more she demands from zhang and the more zhang tries to give him the more their power is seen by the court as a threat she and zhang jujung had their enemies at court they were just simply waiting biding their time and at last that time has come there is a new emperor on the throne who listens to these new counselors the great danger as was always the danger throughout chinese history was if a powerful courtier linked with an equally powerful general in chinese that was the military and the civil getting together this is what always brought down a dynasty looking for ammunition to destroy cheese alliance with the zhang their enemies find it in the financial records of the great wall grand secretary i hope you're not going to ask for more money i can't help you you know what they're saying about me grand secretary zhang has cheated the imperial person he has plagued the population with taxes accepted bribes seoul government offices and advanced his henchmen that's you by the way what they say about me i said majesty those henchmen preserve the empire than your imperial person in continued safety what they want the demand of protection what protection costs you only know it's worth paying for and it doesn't work tell them that tell them we need more towers don't even think it there is an indictment on me for charges of corruption did you know that all it needs is for the emperor to sign it into proclamation and what am i supposed to do if i were you i'd stay away from me as the emperor's former tudor zhang has spared prosecution for the time being but for the next few years chi's ally remains under attack until worn down by the ceaseless strain zhang dies the partnership that built the wall is broken now with his only political ally gone she himself is open to attack and the most effective weapon at his enemy's disposal is his alliance with zhang lamina in chang's employee confessed that chang had placed before in the imperial court ministers rake over the crimes of former grand secretary zhang to show the emperor evidence of a conspiracy with general chiji guam furthermore and i quote general jiji guang is to make his army available we can only surmise what for that before his death grand secretary zhang ji zhang had plotted to take over the throne i find it hard to believe that my old tutor had the intention of usurping me from my throne yet it is clear that he and commander-in-chief chiti guang have had the capacity to do so this is too ominous to be ignored i mourn the loss of grand secretary zhang and can only assume that he has been blinded in his old age by the overwhelming ambition of t guam he has violated the divine principle of balance we have had enough of these demands we have had enough of walls for years after zhang's fall life on the wall has gone on as normal for soldiers like guangzhou yet cheese political enemies in beijing have not been idle and now they are ready to make their moves the emperor has finally been persuaded to get rid of china's greatest living general the only question that remains is how will they do it if a case of treason can be made against chi he will be summoned for trial and public disgrace will be followed by private execution chi has carefully destroyed all the correspondence between him and zhang jiang and he is now ready to defend his record against any criminal charges regional commander chi chi guang is to step down with immediate effect he has underestimated them there will be no trial no chance in court to speak the truth just quietly dismissed oh sure for common soldiers like gung zhao the end of qi defies all reason the army is losing its father he doesn't remember me the great captain is gone retires to his hometown within the year he is dead he leaves behind a thousand miles of great wall and towers the most comprehensive defensive line in china's history the coming centuries are marked by more outside threats yet this time invasions do not come overland from the north but from the wider world across the oceans and so for hundreds of years the fabric of the wall decays today the skeleton of the great dragon is all that remains of the beast that once lived but its spirit lives on not just in the bricks and stones now being restored across hundreds of miles but in the great wall of iron and steel the modern army that protects china today and ultimately in the chinese people themselves i am just emotionally overwhelmed by a creation that has lasted for hundreds of years the great war means so much to the chinese people now it's a symbol of the strength the history the culture the future as well i think you have to say what a wonderful achievement for the chinese people you

Channel: Zhongguo Wu Xue

Views: 761,172

Keywords: Qi, Jiguang, English, Disclaimer

Id: yRKS2b3Ugz8

Length: 86min 35sec (5195 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 09 2012