George Jundt  (teacher from Monticello, Minnesota)         

I have seen the wall on four different occasions in my five trips to China over a twenty-six year period.  I, also, saw it from three different vantage points. 

I first saw the wall from the window of a giant Boeing 747 aircraft in a flight from Beijing to Shenyang in northeastern China in 1980. When the pilot announced its presence thousands of feet below us, there was such excitement and enthusiasm to get to a window that I can say with humor "we nearly rolled the airplane".   But sure enough, out of the window the wall appeared much like a giant serpent making its way across the beautiful mountainous landscape of northern China. 

I saw the wall the second time on the ground just north of Beijing.  My third encounter with it was on my return trip from Urumqi in northwestern China.  It was near the city of Dunhuang in Gansu province.  These were the ruins of the ancient wall where one could literally walk or step right over it.  "The Great Wall" is the popular name for the wall that was built to protect China's northern border in the 3rd century BC and for the wall that was built in the 15th and 16th centuries AD, long after the initial structure lay in ruin.  The Great Wall which was designated a World Heritage Site by the UNESCO in 1987, is China's best-known monument and tourist attraction and it is viewed by millions of visitors just north of Beijing at a place called Ju-yong-guan. 

It is not a single continuous wall, but rather a network of walls and towers.  Estimates of its length vary from 1,500 to 4,000 miles depending on which sections are included and how they are measured.  There are many myths about the wall.  The existing wall is not several thousand years old.  And, it is not visible with the naked eye from outer space.  However, astronauts have reported that it is the last man-made structure that they can see as they journey into space.