Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
axle lengths of carts. An enormously ambitious programof construction
projects also fit into his plans for China, as did a huge palace complex
for himself and a large network of roadways to many parts of China.
For these projects he pressed hundreds of thousands of laborers into
work and brutally killed or tortured those who resisted performing
their assigned duties.
Qin Shihuang was, in short, a great emperor who accomplished the
unification of China, but he was enormously brutal and despotic. A
tyrant and a megalomaniac, he took upon himself the title of huangdi,
a title composed of two Chinese characters that together mean some-
thing like “magnificent ruler” or perhaps even “magnificent god.”
(The chief deity in the Shang pantheon was called “Di,” which is
the same character in the compound huangdi.) For better or worse, all
subsequent emperors in Chinese history were called by this title, but
none of them equaled his record of ruthless despotism and brutality.
Many Chinese today have a love-hate attitude toward Qin Shihuang.
Almost all applaud him for unifying China, for imposing standards
of uniformity (in areas other than ideology), and for constructing, with
the help of Legalist advisors, the basic model for governmental
administration that China would follow for more than 2,000 years into
the future. Against these accomplishments and contributions, the vast
majority of Chinese weigh the negatives of his reign: despotism, anti-
intellectualism, and cruelty.
The Great Wall of China: Mostly Myth
Almost every discussion of Qin Shihuang's reign includes the one
accomplishment that seems to typify both the positive and negative
aspects of his reign: the Great Wall of China. According to the typical
account, Qin Shihuang completed earlier Zhou wall construction proj-
ects by connecting them all up to form the Great Wall, which he built
to protect China from the savage and warlike Xiongnu or “Huns” on
China's northern border. He may even have punished laborers who
did not work hard enough on the project by executing them and
having their bodies buried within the Great Wall. When finished, this
Great Wall supposedly extended all the way across China, effectively
dividing the Chinese civilization on the south from the world of the
barbarians, or pastoral nomadic peoples, of the northern steppe lands.
There it remained until the present in one state of repair or another,
periodically undergoing renovation projects. Today it stands as monu-
mental and artifactual testament to the industry of the Chinese people
and the despotic, boundless ambition of Qin Shihuang. It is such a
