Bamboo in China Annotation #5
Species:
In the world there are about a thousand species of bamboo. They range from plants the size of field grass, to giants of 120 feet in height and a foot in thickness. They grow from the sea-level tropics to 13,000 foot mountain slopes. Though they vary widely in color, shape, and size, they share one common characteristic, the woody stalk. A few are solid but most bamboo is hollow, divided by walled septa. The light, stiff, and strong clum are what make the bamboo so valuable to so many.
Bamboo’s Growth:
The most amazing characteristic of bamboo is its ability to grow at an incredible speed and its incredible strength. In Japan a well-known scientist measured the growth that one bamboo stalks grew four feet in just 24-hours. If you look at it closely you too can actually see it grow.
Using:
A very long time ago some nameless person genius had the idea on how to make a fishing pole. By splitting the bamboo into strips, then gluing them together this make a strong slender and surprisingly flexible springing fishing pole. The Chinese were the first as mastering the artof making things out of bamboo.
Life of Bamboo:
Now bamboo has a very strange life span. Most of bamboo grows 30, 60, or 120 years apart. At about the same time, all bamboo plants wherever they are die. Scientists do not understand why bamboo all at once will die. They think that bamboo has a genetic code that tells it to die at a particular time.
Types of Bamboo:
In China there are some 300 species of bamboo, but the one bamboo used most for making many different types of things is a large cane called MaoChu (Chu meaning bamboo). Of all the bamboo is MaoChu. It is used to make furniture and even reinforcement rods in heavy construction.
Strength:
In engineering the Chinese made bridges from bamboo, the most famous Chinese bridge is the Min Bridge, which has lasted for more than 1000 years and is considered one of engineering marvels of the world. Bamboo cables were also used for towing ancient ships. It is said that bamboo has over 1001 uses.
Food:
Bamboo has another important use for the Chinese people. Some value the bamboo shoots foe food because if it’s crisp texture and as a medicine used in ancient remedies.Some tropical bamboo has a liquid that is used as a cough drop and throat lozenge.
The Great Wall Annotation #6
How Long:
Like a snake, it winds across China, from its starting point below sea level; it wanders west for 13,170 miles. This is the Great Wall of China. It is one of the engineering wonders of the world. It is the only man-made object which astronauts can recognize from a spacecraft 200 mile above the Earth. Yet it was built 2200 years ago.
Builder:
The story of the Great Wall is the story of Emperor Shi Huang Di, who thought of it, and it is the story of many, many Chinese who worked and died to build it. In246 B.C.E., Shi Huang Di became emperor of one of the many states in China. During the Warring States period, that lasted over 200 year, all the states were warring against each other, with rulers fighting for power. Shi Huang Di was ambitious and he set out to bring the states into an empire, his empire. By 221 B.C.E., he had succeeded.
Rewarding the powerful:
Shi Huang Di knew that the men he had defeated would want to overthrow him. So he brought 120,000 of the richest and most powerful to his capital. In a sense, they were his prisoners. But Shi Huang Di built palaces for all of them just like those they had left and loved in. They lived in glory as lords of his court. The emperor’s own palace was the largest and richest of all. It had thousands of room and separate apartments for his wives, some of the most beautiful women in the empire.
Dangers from the North:
Even with all this wealth, Shi Huang Di lived in fear. Always present was the danger from the north. For 500 years, northern barbarians such as the Huns had raided the farms of the Chinese. The raids of the savage horsemen were sudden and terrible. Shi Huang Di could think of only one way to stop raids. That was a giant wall. It had to be so big that no horseman could jump or ride around it. So the Great Wall was begun and legend says that Shi Huang Di himself rode a horse along the route he wanted the wall to follow. Architects followed behind, putting markers in the horse’s hoof prints in the soil.
Who Built it?
To build the Wall, Shi Huang Di needed at least 500,000 workers. Some estimate that it too millions of men. Almost no able bodied person in China escaped the call to work. Men who had never held a tool in their hands were sent to the stone pits. Murderers and thieves were made to work. The Wall became the empire’s jail. Cruel masters with whips held the workers on the job, and those who got sick were left to die and be buried the Great Wall of China.
Dimension of Wall:
The Wall began near the Yellow Sea. The workers cut out two trenched, 25 feet apart. They laid stone squares and bricks in the trenched to a height of 20 feet. The stones and bricks became the sides of the wall. The space between was the soil and paved with bricks. The top of the wall became a roadway for horses (Wide enough for two of today’s cars. Then the workers built up the sides of the wall even higher. On the north side they made notched, narrow openings through which soldiers would shoot arrows or throw spears.