"Chinese wall"," hide behind the Chinese wall " - these and similar expressions in our language have become popular, have become widely used. Their meaning is clear to everyone: to protect yourself with a wall and live behind it (of course, the "wall" here is often just a metaphor), to isolate yourself from all others, to withdraw into yourself and take very little interest in what is happening around you. The roots of these expressions go back centuries, and they are connected with the ideas about Chinese civilization that developed among Europeans after the first contacts with China and strengthened when Europe became aware of the existence of a powerful structure that covers China almost all along its northern land borders, from the shores of the Yellow Sea to Tibet.

The Great Wall of China ("Wanli chang-cheng" - "wall with a length of 10 thousand li") is one of the most grandiose structures of antiquity. Over the millennia of its existence, it has been repeatedly repaired, rebuilt, and changed its appearance. New sections and additional branches were added to the wall, bringing the total length of all its lines (3,930 miles) to twice the original length (1,850 miles).1 . However, the main profile of the structure from Shan-haiguan in the east to Jiayuguan in the west, with all its watchtowers, signal towers and garrison settlements, acquired its complete forms in the III century BC, during the time of the Qin Emperor Shi-Huangdi.

This ruler went down in history as a domineering and cruel despot, who with an iron hand broke the old and established new orders in the empire he created. The habitual foundations of life were being destroyed, ancient books were being burned at the stake; former appanage princes and aristocrats were losing their influence and property, and their peasants, becoming subjects of the emperor, were becoming more and more acutely aware of the growing pressure of new taxes and duties with disastrous rapidity. Millions of peasants were torn from the land and their families to carry out the Emperor's gigantic program of public works. Along with the construction of imperial palaces and the construction of the capital, the largest object in this program was the Great Wall.

What prompted us to take up its construction? The question is not as simple as it may seem at first glance. It is generally accepted that the wall was built to protect against nomad raids. Indeed, the tribes that lived north of the fertile North China plains were

1 R. Silverberg. The Great Wall of China. Philadelphia. 1965, p. 49.

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The steppe peoples of ancient times made occasional raids on the ancient Chinese kingdoms. To protect against such attacks, defensive ramparts were built long before Qin Shi-huangdi. Similar ramparts were built in the Zhanguo era ("Warring Kingdoms", V - III centuries BC) and on the northern and southern borders and served as a defense against the invasion of not only steppe nomads ,but also the troops of neighboring Chinese kingdoms. 2 However, there were relatively few wallwalls on the southern borders, while the northern borders of the North Chinese states were almost completely covered by them already at the turn of the IV - III centuries BC. This fact is a strong enough argument against the generally accepted view that the Qin Shi-Huangdi wall was built primarily and mainly to protect against nomadic raids. The protective rampart, built before the first emperor, was quite strong and fully met the requirements that could be imposed on structures of this kind. It should be added that the nomadic tribes living to the north of China were weak and fragmented during the Qin Shih-Huangdi era, were still undergoing a period of gradual consolidation, and did not represent a serious source of anxiety and anxiety, as was the case somewhat later, from the beginning of the Han era. Sinologists who have studied the history of the wall and the relationship of the Chinese with their northern neighbors have drawn particular attention to some other aspects of the problem, which sometimes remain in the shadows, despite their primary importance. First of all, this concerns the role of the wall as a powerful barrier not only for nomadic peoples, but also for the Chinese themselves .3 The wall was supposed to serve as the extreme northern line of possible Chinese expansion, the line that protected the subjects of the" Middle Empire "from switching to a semi-nomadic way of life, from merging with the"barbarians". Of course, defensive ramparts alone were not enough for this; a strong barrier was required, reliably separating the territory of China. In addition, the wall, which sharply delineated two different natural zones, two types of economy - agricultural and cattle-breeding, was designed to clearly fix the boundaries of Chinese civilization, to help consolidate a single empire just made up of a number of conquered kingdoms, which opposed itself to the" barbarian " world. In this regard, one of the legends that exist in China about the reasons for the construction of the wall is interesting. Once the soul of the sleeping Qin Shi-huangdi flew up to the Moon and from there looked down at the Earth. From the sky - high heights, his empire was just a small dot. It was then that the emperor came up with the idea to build a wall that would surround the entire empire, thus turning it into a "single family"4 .

Apparently, the need for political consolidation really played a role as one of the motivating reasons for the construction of the wall. Of course, the construction of such a grandiose object also raised the prestige of the new emperor and was an instrument of his economic policy. It is important, however, to mention one more circumstance, which at first glance is somewhat unexpected for a serious scientific analysis, which one of the first researchers of the problem, W. Gale, drew attention to as almost the main incentive for the construction of the wall. Qin Shi-huangdi was very superstitious. Having a negative attitude towards Confucianism, in which the emperor saw a hostile ideology, the emperor sympathized with the supporters of the Taoist religion, believed in their search for immortality, astrological calculations, interpretation of dreams, and was generally inclined to mysticism. There is such a legend: the emperor had a dream that one hare holds the sun in his hands, and another wants to take it away, then a third, a black hare, appears and takes the sun for himself. When the emperor awoke, he demanded, under pain of death, to explain to him the meaning of what he had seen. Then one of the confidants suggested that it was about how two warring Chinese kingdoms were defeated by an alien from outside. To avoid this kind of danger, you should build a wall 5 .

2 Zhu Xie. Ваньли чанчэн сюцзянь ды яньгэ. (History of the construction of the wall in 10 thousand li). "Lishi jiaoxue", 1955, N 12, pp. 17-18; R. Silverberg. Op. cit., pp. 17 - 25.

3 This circumstance was brought to the attention of O. Lattimore (O. Lattimore. Origins of the Great Wall of China: A Frontier Concept in Theory and Practice. In: O. Lattimore. Studies in Frontier History. "Collected Papers, 1928 - 1958". P. 1962, pp. 98 - 99, 110, 117 etc.).

4 W. E. Geil. The Great Wall of China. L. 1909, p. 155.

5 Ibid., p. 311.

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This legend appears to be a product of later myth-making; it refers to the threat from the "black hare". The Chinese usually associated the word "black" with nomadic tribes that lived on the northern borders of China in the Middle Ages. It is also no accident that the emphasis is placed on the danger from outside, whereas in the time of Qin Shi-Huangdi, this danger was not yet serious. But the legend is interesting because it connects the decision to build the wall with the prophetic dream of the emperor, that is, with his superstitions and prejudices. Gale's work even raises the question of whether there is any reason to believe that the superstitious emperor saw in the construction of the wall primarily protection from the evil spirits of the harsh northern regions. Can we not see in the broken outlines of the wall the image of a giant, writhing dragon, forever frozen and reliably guarding the peace and well-being of the empire?6 .

Gale's assumptions were not supported by other researchers, who still paid attention to the more "material" reasons for the construction of the wall. However, it is hardly correct to dismiss these assumptions as untenable at all: the superstitious nature of the first emperor recorded by sources, with his penchant for Taoist mysticism, makes Gale's hypothesis quite plausible. And, in any case, it is obvious that it was not an unambiguous impulse, but a very complex set of reasons and circumstances of a very different plan that prompted Qin Shi-Huangdi to decide to erect a wall designed to permanently secure the northern borders of China and isolate the "Middle Empire" from external influences, limiting its contacts with the outside world as much as possible.

The construction of the wall was carried out at an exceptionally fast pace and took no more than 9-10 years. By order of the emperor, a three-hundred-thousand-strong army was sent to the northern borders of the country in 221 BC, led by the general Meng Tian, who was entrusted with the task of building the wall. This hard work cost a lot of money and effort. Meng Tian did not just have to connect the existing defensive ramparts, filling in the gaps between them: his task was to create a fundamentally new structure, mainly made of stone and brick, with various kinds of fortifications. At the same time, it should be borne in mind that a significant part of the wall was located in mountainous areas, access to which was difficult. Meng Tian began by creating 34 main bases in the immediate vicinity of the wall line along its entire front, which were connected by roads to the southern regions of the country. Endless carts with construction materials and food were sent to the bases under strict protection, as well as peasants mobilized to service the construction site. From there, materials, food, and human resources were distributed to nearby garrison villages where construction workers lived. Each of the villages, in turn, sent builders, equipment and supplies to the front line of construction, to the areas where the watchtowers were built. With the construction of towers, the number of which reached 25 thousand, and the construction and reconstruction of the former protective ramparts began. The towers were different in size and were built, like the entire wall, from different materials, but each of them was an impressive structure in the form of a truncated square pyramid with a width and height of about 12 meters. The towers were located at a distance not exceeding "two flights of an arrow", and were connected by a thick vertical wall with a height of about 7 m and a width sufficient for a line of eight people to pass along it .7
How was the border demarcated and the route of the future wall chosen, especially in cases where the wall was built anew? The legend, known to almost every Chinese, says that the first emperor had a magical white horse that easily overcame both mountains and valleys. On this horse, Qin Shi-huangdi personally rode along the route of the future border. Where the horse stumbled (and this happened about three times during each li, that is, half a kilometer), a watchtower was erected. Of course, in reality, everything was both simpler and more complicated. "Wanli Changcheng" passed along the northern border of China and was created taking into account the already existing

6 Ibid., pp. 207 - 217.

7 R. Silverberg. Op. cit., pp. 44 - 47. The remains of the original wall built by Meng Tian are still preserved in a number of areas, especially in the western part of the country.

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the ramparts, which at one time also separated with sufficient care the fertile territories of the agricultural plains from the mountainous and steppe desolate areas, unsuitable for agriculture and inhabited by relatively rare hordes of nomads. In cases when the route was created anew, the builders took into account the natural conditions of the area, the degree of its accessibility, habitability, the availability of roads, and the possibility of delivering materials. As far as the results show, the wall line should have served as the most well-chosen watershed between the indigenous areas of China and the" barbarian " territories lying to the north. The implication was that the land north of the wall was no longer Chinese. The line of the wall from the coast (Shanhaiguan) to the Yellow River Bend ran roughly along the 40th parallel, leaving the fertile valleys of the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River to the south. After crossing the river, the wall went south, separating from the south the desert and steppe lands of Ordos located in the bend area. Then, after crossing the Yellow River for the second time, the wall line again rose to the north, reaching the same 40th parallel at its final point (Jiayuguan).

The researchers specifically emphasize that from the point of view of natural and geographical conditions, the area of the wall's location was and still is a kind of transition zone, consisting of a number of strips that essentially define the boundary between the nomadic north and the agricultural south. At the same time, it should be borne in mind that the wall, despite its pronounced linearity, in fact was a fairly wide strip of defensive and defensive structures. So, on the Chinese side, the wall was preceded by garrison settlements of guard guards, an extensive network of various warehouses and bases. On the outside, not far from the wall, there were signal towers, a kind of lookout points of the watch guard. Even further in the direction of the steppes went special towers (up to 15 thousand in number), which played the role of advanced outposts of the border line 8 . In addition, after the construction of the wall, part of the territory beyond the wall, especially in Ordos, was colonized by Chinese settlers .9
The construction of the wall was mostly completed in 213 BC. It cost the Chinese people dearly. In addition to Meng Tian's three-hundred-thousand-strong army, hundreds of thousands of conscripted peasants took part in the construction of the wall. Separated from their families, suffering from hunger and deprivation, and working almost to the limit, they could not stand it for long. New ones were sent to replace the dead, but they also met the same fate. Literally the entire route of the wall was covered with the bones of the dead. According to some sources, up to 400 thousand people are buried in this "longest cemetery in the world" .10 In the memory of the people, the construction of the wall was imprinted as a terrible nightmare and was reflected in various kinds of fairy tales, lamentations and legends about the tragic fate of people mobilized for construction. The most famous story is about Meng Jiang-nu, whose husband died in construction. Not knowing about the death of her husband, the woman went to him with warm clothes for the winter. When Meng heard the news of his death, she sobbed so bitterly that the part of the wall under which her husband's remains were buried collapsed. Meng's tragedy was compounded by the fact that she had the misfortune to please the emperor, who expressed a desire to take her in. Having pretended to agree to this in order to be able to give her husband a decent burial, the woman then committed suicide by throwing herself into the river 11 .

Shortly after the construction of the wall was completed and the first emperor died suddenly in 210 BC, the Qin Dynasty fell under the blows of a victorious peasant uprising, the leader of which founded a new Han dynasty, which ruled the country until the third century AD.The Han era was a period of strengthening the empire, the growth of its armed forces. It was marked by merciless wars with nomadic tribes, large conquests and the rejection of vast territories that stretched beyond the borders of China. However, it was during the Han era that the significance of the Great Wall as a stable northern border was established

8 R. Silverberg. Op. cit., pp. 46 - 47.

9 About 30 thousand families were settled in Ordos, but due to the fact that the Ordos lands were not suitable for agriculture, it was not possible to develop them at that time. From the Han period onwards, the Xiongnu ruled here (see O. Lattimore. Op. cit., pp. 111 - 112).

10 R. Silverberg. Op. cit., p. 45.

11 The tradition has many variants (see B. L. Riftin. The Legend of the Great Wall and the problem of genre in Chinese Folklore, Moscow, 1961).

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It was fully revealed, because the expansion of the Han emperors was mainly directed to the south and west. True, a number of major military expeditions were also undertaken in the north, where the Xiongnu (Huns) tribes lived in the steppe regions, creating a strong military and political association. During these expeditions, as well as during the expansion towards East Turkestan, the Han emperors used the wall and all its structures as an offensive base. Nevertheless, even in the case of successful campaigns, the territories north of the wall were usually only captured, but not mastered by the victors. Sooner or later, they were again in the possession of nomadic tribes, especially the Xiongnu. The wall continued to be the northern border of the empire, and under the Han Emperor Wu-di, its line was even extended westward, reaching Dunhuang, and several new military settlements and strongholds were established under this cover. The western part of the wall was used to protect trade caravans traveling along the "Great Silk Road" opened during the Han period, connecting China through East Turkestan with Western countries.

With the fall of the Han Dynasty, the situation on China's northern borders changed significantly. The internal weakness of the empire, which was constantly fragmented and ruled by parallel dynasties, combined with the increased onslaught of nomads, led to the decline of the role of the wall as a border line. Nomadic invasions and the "barbarization" of Northern China in the third and sixth centuries indicate the decline of the protective function of the wall. However, this function was far from the only one and, apparently, not even the main one. In fact, the "consolidating" function played a much more important role. Once outside the wall, in inner China with its agricultural population and traditional Confucian culture, the conquering tribes were not only separated from their usual sphere of habitation, but also forced to exist in conditions of limited contact with the outside world, in particular with the world of nomads. The result was a process of Sinicization of the conquerors, which far exceeded the parallel process of" barbarization "and led to the fact that the former" barbarian" dynasty in a short time turned into an ordinary "Chinese" one. The Sinicized descendants of the conquerors took this for granted and, having now become Chinese emperors, in turn took measures to consolidate their power and strengthen state borders. In particular, all of them paid due attention to the repair, restoration and reconstruction of the wall, and sometimes added new sections to it.

The" consolidating " function of the wall became most clearly predominant after the reunification of the empire under the Sui (VI - VII centuries) and Tai (VII - X centuries) dynasties. Thus, at the beginning of the 7th century, the Yan-di Emperor built another section of the wall, to the east of the Yellow River Bend, and carried out restoration work on other sections. According to sources, about a million builders worked on these works. Of these, more than half were killed 12 . It is possible that Yan Di undertook such serious and costly reconstruction of the wall in connection with the activation of the Eastern Turkic khaganate to the northwest of China. However, it was also of great importance that Yan Di sought to raise his prestige as a unifier of the empire and contribute to the consolidation of the country, which had been in a state of fragmentation for many centuries, with the help of this construction and other similar measures (reconstruction of the Great Canal). The policy of the Tang Emperor Taizong, who ascended to the throne some two decades after the completion of the above-mentioned works, also convinces that this assumption has grounds. Taizong was openly dismissive of the wall's defensive capabilities. To his generals who went to war with the Turks, he declared that he considered them "a more effective Great Wall than the one that Yan-di had built." Tai-tsung saw the wall mainly as an element of national consolidation. It was not by chance that he issued an edict forbidding Chinese subjects to go outside the wall without special permission , an edict that prompted the later famous Buddhist traveler Xuanzang to leave the country in 629.-

12 According to the source, Yan-di sent "over a million workers to build the wall", and "out of every ten" of them, "5 to 6 people died" (Sui-shu, Ed. "Ershi si shi soin bonaben". In 24 tt. Beijing, 1958, vol. 9, p. 10916).

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chis, at night, under a hail of arrows from the border guard 13 .

Since the tenth century, the political map of Northern China has been undergoing major changes. On the north-western borders of the country appeared Xi-Xia, the state of the Tanguts; on the northern and north-eastern borders-Liao, the state of the Khitan. Both of them were strongly influenced by Chinese culture. However, for the Song Empire, whose main territory was located south of the Yellow River, they were hostile, "barbaric" states, from which the emperors were forced to pay off tribute. Under these circumstances, the wall could no longer play its former role in the history of China. Divided between the Xi-Hsia and the Liao, it turned out to be something of an unattainable dream for the Song Empire proper, a symbol of its former power. On the contrary, for Xi-Xia and especially for Liao, the wall now played a consolidating role. It is characteristic that the Khitan rulers not only paid attention to the repair and restoration of the old lines, but also built new ones, including on the southern borders, that is, where the Liao bordered the Song Empire. The construction of fortifications on these sites radically changed the concept of the wall as the boundary between the nomad world and the agricultural civilization. For the Liao, the wall was simply a border line that had both protective and consolidating functions, so important for the viability of the young state.

The Liao State did not last long. At the beginning of the XII century. It was defeated by the Jurchens who came from the north, acting in alliance with the Song. The Jurchens founded a new state - Jin, adopted much of Chinese culture and statehood, and continued the policy of decorating the wall. True, a significant part of it took place just in the middle of their state. However, the Jurchens built additional lines west of present-day Beijing, which later played a role in their struggle against the Mongols. At the beginning of the 13th century, Mongol tribes began to advance towards China, first conquering the state of Xi-Xia. Then, crossing the wall, they approached the Jin capital of Yanjing (Beijing), whose approach was blocked by the second line of the wall, which is almost impregnable in these mountainous regions of Eastern China.

The Mongols attacked it several times, but it was all in vain. Reinforced with fresh forces, the Mongol army outflanked the Jin forces from the rear, and only then was the passage in the wall opened. After conquering the Jin and later the Song Empire, the Mongol Khans founded the Yuan Empire, which ruled China for a century. The center of the country's political life shifted to the north, and Beijing became the capital of the newly united China.

During the Yuan Dynasty, when the borders of the Mongol Khan's empire extended far beyond China proper, the significance of the wall seems to have been reduced to a minimum. It can be assumed that the political role of the wall was almost negligible. It is significant that Marco Polo, the first European to describe China in his book, does not mention the wall at all. It is unlikely that by this time it had fallen so far into disrepair that it had become something insignificant. Apparently, something else played a role here: the wall in the Yuan era was treated as a useless relic of the distant past. Everything changed only with the expulsion of the Mongols and the establishment of a new, this time purely Chinese Ming Dynasty, whose founder came to power on the crest of a victorious peasant uprising. The former borders of the country were restored, the northern line of which, as of old, ran along the wall. Beijing became the capital of the country again in 1421, and its proximity to the northern borders prompted the Ming emperors to pay special attention to strengthening the wall, which now symbolized the inviolability of Chinese borders and territory.

From the beginning of the 15th century, vigorous work began on the general reconstruction of the entire line of the wall. The work was slow but thorough. They continued intermittently for over two centuries and reached their peak during the reign of Wanli, one of the most famous and powerful Ming emperors. In the course of these restoration works, all the watchtowers and signal towers were updated, reinforced and re-erected. In some cases, the towers were upgraded and provided with additional reinforced passages. The appearance of the wall has also changed, the upper part of which has acquired a crenellated parapet and has taken on the appearance that is familiar to almost everyone from numerous photographs. In areas where this didn't happen before-

13 R. Silverberg. Op. cit., p. 116.

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moose, the foundation was reinforced with stones, and the prostration of the wall was lined with stone blocks or large bricks. Up to 1,200 fortified forts and garrison settlements were built along the entire line of the wall. In the area of forts in the XV century. some watchtowers for the first time in the history of the country were equipped with guns, which received the Chinese name "Da Jian-jun" ("Big General"). The garrison service, the outpost guard, the signal patrols, the timely provision of weapons and food supplies to the patrollers - all this was put on a serious basis. After the reconstruction, the protective function of the wall came to the fore. It is not surprising: centuries of domination by foreign dynasties forced this.

The merits of Wanli in strengthening and reconstructing the wall are extremely great. As reported by U. Gale, at the beginning of the 20th century, when he was driving along the wall route, some of the locals considered Wanli the creator of the wall and even deciphered its Chinese name as "Wanli wall" 14 . However, the Wanli era was a kind of "swan song" of the Chinese wall. With his death, the situation in the country has changed markedly. The strength of the empire was undermined, and a period of decline followed, accompanied by an increase in famine, calamity, and deprivation. In particular, the supply of garrisons located along the wall was disrupted. They stopped paying salaries to soldiers. Desertions increased, so that the carefully established guard of the cordon began to collapse. Nearby military settlements fell into disrepair and were abandoned. By this time, a new dangerous enemy had appeared on the northern borders of the country - the Manchus, whose ruler Nurhaci declared himself emperor in 1616. The onslaught of the Manchus increased. As early as 1629, Nurhaci's successor Abakhai launched a daring raid on Beijing, breaking through the fortifications in the Shanhaiguan region. Only a skilful maneuver by the local commander at San Gui, who threatened to cut off Abahai's army and trap it, prompted the Manchu leader to retreat. However, the subsequent military expeditions of Abakhai were more successful, and in 1635, the strengthened Abakhai gave its dynasty the name Qing.

The crisis of the Ming Empire ended with a powerful popular uprising, as a result of which the peasant leader Li Tzu-cheng came to power in 1644. The new emperor was very concerned about the situation on the north-eastern borders, so one of his first steps was to negotiate with the commander of the troops in the Shanhaiguan area, Wu San-gui. However, the outcome of the negotiations was tragic for the fate of the country. According to historians, Wu San-gui's father and beloved concubine were taken over by Li Tzu-cheng. The emperor liked the young woman, and he broke his promise and took her to the harem. Enraged, Wu San-gui conspired with the Manchus, opened a gate in the wall for them, and with the help of the Manchu cavalry, defeated Li Tzu-cheng's army. Wu San-gui and the Manchu leader entered Peking. It was expected that the Ming Dynasty would be restored, but at this point the Manchus declared that they themselves intended to establish a new dynasty. Wu San-gui's attempts to turn the Manchu emperor into his puppet were unsuccessful, and his rebellion against the new dynasty was crushed. In a short time, the Manchus extended their power to the entire country. The era of the new, last in the history of China, the imperial Qi Dynasty has begun."

With the conquest of China by the Manchus and the rise of the Qing, the Great Wall declined in importance. A series of campaigns by the Kangxi Emperor (1661-1722) led to the Manchu Empire's capture of significant territories north of the wall. Kangxi's aggressive policy was continued by his grandson Qianlong (1736-1795). As a result of their expansionist foreign policy, vast territories of Xinjiang, Mongolia, and Tibet were annexed to China proper. In the power of the Manchu emperors, their homeland, Manchuria, remained. The capture of significant territories to the north of the wall deprived it of one of its main functions-defensive, defensive. It was no accident that Qianlong proudly declared that he had established peace in the "Celestial Empire" and that there was no need for watchtowers and no need to light signal lights on the towers of the wall anymore. The consolidating function of the wall was also minimized. The task of the dynasty was not to rally the population of the inner-wall areas as opposed to the population of the outer territories.

14 W. E. Geil. Op. cit., p. 71.

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However, this did not mean that the differences between them disappeared. On the contrary, they remained very significant. Colonization of remote territories was carried out primarily by military settlements and civil administration. Mass migrations of the peasantry were not observed until the end of the 19th century, and the Chinese were not allowed to enter the territory of Manchuria at all. Perhaps the only serious function that the wall continued to perform under the Manchus was restrictive, that is, limiting the spread of subjects of the "Middle Empire" outside the wall. In other words, despite the annexation to China of the territories conquered by Kangxi and Qianlong to the north of the wall, all these lands in their status and in essence were not equated with the lands of inner-wall China. 15 There was a wall between the two, which was still, though not nearly as complete as before, the boundary between the original Chinese lands and the newly conquered colonies, which were mostly inhabited by non-Chinese people, who were ethnically very different from the Chinese. Moreover, not only foreigners, but also the Chinese themselves, even at the beginning of the XVII century, continued to consider the wall as a border, as this is convincingly evidenced, for example, by the data of the report on the trip to China of the first Russian expedition led by I. Petlin (1618): "And we asked the Chinese people: what is this wall for? the wall is made from the sea to Bukhara and towers are often placed on the wall? And the Chinese people told us that the wall was built from the sea to Bukhara because there were two lands - one Mughal land, and the other Chinese, and then between the lands of the border... " 16 .

Thus, the political and military-strategic importance of the wall has almost sharply decreased. In addition, over the centuries, the role of the wall as a great monument of the past, a kind of symbol of Chinese civilization, has increased. It is no coincidence that while many sections of the wall fell into disrepair and collapsed, those parts of it that stood near the roads were carefully preserved and restored. Foreigners who came to China by land necessarily crossed the passages in the wall, built into powerful watchtowers and surrounded by impressive fortifications. And it always made a strong impression on them. It is known, for example, how the Russian Ambassador N. Spafari described such a passage through the wall, who paid tribute to this grandiose structure in his report on the embassy. The first British ambassador, McCartney, who arrived from the south by sea, was also taken to the wall, and he also did not fail to tell us about it in detail, saying that if the entire fifteen hundred-mile wall was like the part he had seen, then it was "the most amazing work of human hands." 17
The prestigious and representative function of the wall continued not only to be preserved, but also to increase. This became especially noticeable as imperial China weakened and declined, as it stubbornly clung to archaic ideas about the extraordinary role of the " Middle Kingdom "and the first place of the" Middle State " among other countries of the world. Everything that lay outside the " Middle Kingdom "was considered a territory inhabited by" barbarian " peoples who could not have any influence on the exclusively original ancient Chinese culture. The Great Wall became, as it were, the personification of power and grandeur, a symbol of the isolation and arrogance of the formidable empire, which always considered itself the center of wisdom, truth and culture. As in the distant past, for many centuries and millennia, the wall was a symbol of China itself, a measure of the achievements of its civilization, a personification of the unity of its territory, an expression of the potentials of its population.

It is worth noting that if for all other peoples the "Chinese wall" was closely connected with the concept of "shutting yourself off from everyone", "shutting yourself off", then for the Chinese themselves the Great Wall is a symbol of power, firmly connected to the world.-

15 In a number of works, much attention is paid to the problem of relations between the Chinese and the population of the northern, remote areas conquered by the Qing Dynasty. Experts have convincingly shown that all the talk that Mongolia has been Chinese for "hundreds of years" has no basis in fact. If we do not talk about the times when China itself was under the rule of the Mongol Khans, we should consider the Mongols only as allies of the conquerors of China, that is, the Manchus (O. Lattimore. Open Door of Great Wall? In: O. Lattimore. Studies in Frontier History, p. 78).

16 N. F. Demidova, V. S. Myasnikov. The first Russian diplomats in China, Moscow, 1966, p. 46.

17 R. Silverberg. Op. cit, pp. 200, 206.

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security, inaccessibility. So over time, the Prestige-representative function of the wall has replaced the rest. Of course, the importance of the wall as a cultural monument is paramount. However, a constant reminder of this does not exclude the need to assess the geographical, social, and military-political role of the wall throughout China's history.

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