Passive or Active?
The Great Wall of China
The Great Wall of China …………….. (start) more than 2,000 years ago. Emperor Qin Shi Huang (start) a project to join together many small walls in northern China. He …………….. (want) to develop the land in the north and create a barrier against invaders. Construction …………….. (take) around ten years and resulted in a wall that was nearly 5,000 km long. This means that around 40 km …………….. (build) every month.
Three million people (nearly 70% of China’s population at the time) ……………..(help) to build the wall, although for many it was a punishment. Instead of going to prison, people ……………..(send) to help build the wall for anything from four to ten years. More than 1 million people ……………..(die) during construction. The wall …………….. (become) known as Wang-Li Chang Cheng in Chinese, which means ‘The 10,000-Li Long Wall’ (10,000-Li = 5,000 km).
The next period of great development of the Great Wall was during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). The wall that we see today comes mainly from that time. The wall …………….. (strengthen) and lengthened (to 7,300 km). On average the wall …………….. (make) 7.5 m high and between 4.5 and 9 m thick. Guard stations and watchtowers …………….. (place) at regular intervals.
Today only 30% of the Great Wall is still standing. Much of it …………….. (destroy) by nature and by man. However, it is still the longest man-made structure in the world. In 2003 astronaut Yang Liwei ……………..(discover) that it is not possible to see the wall from space (as it …………….. (believe)) after orbiting the earth for 21 hours in his spacecraft Shenzou V.
Some rebuilding …………….. (take place) in the 20th century and in 1987 the Great Wall of China …………….. (make) a World Heritage Site. Thousands of tourists ……………..(visit) the Great Wall every day – the most popular site is a portion about 80 km outside of the capital, Beijing.
