dynasties became especially famous for wall building. In 221 BC, Qin Shihuang declared himself emperor, and during his reign he commanded the construction of three thousand miles of barriers of tamped earth and fieldstone. His dynasty, the Qin, became notorious for such forced labor projects, and popular songs and legends outlasted most of the earthen walls themselves, which gradually deteriorated over the centuries. Whereas the Qin walls survive primarily in the popular imagination, the Ming dynasty built structures that have lasted by virtue of their materials. The Ming came to power in 1368, and in the Beijing region they eventually constructed fortifications of quarried stone and brick. They were the only dynasty to build extensively with such durable materials—these are the impressive walls I’d seen in Hebei Province. But the Ming defenseworks are a network rather than a single structure, and some regions have as many as four distinct barriers.
In the eighteenth century, Western explorers and missionaries began to visit China in greater numbers. They heard the Qin stories, and they saw the Ming walls; inevitably they connected the two in their minds. This imaginative line from the Qin to the Ming became what we now think of as the Great Wall: supposedly, a single structure of brick and stone, two thousand years old, that stretches across China as neatly as a marking on a map—
The only Chinese studying the Great Wall do so outside of academia. In Beijing, small communities of amateur historians try to combine fieldwork with textual research, and occasionally in the provinces there’s somebody like Old Chen. He told me that eventually he hoped to find a provincial publisher for his book. After he showed me his writings, and the artifacts that he had collected, he offered to take me out to see the local walls.
We climbed into the City Special and drove north along a dirt road. A couple of miles outside the village, we stopped and Old Chen led me through a high valley of scrub grass. He walked slowly, with the thoughtful pose that’s common among men in the countryside: head down, hands clasped behind his back. He stopped at a distinct grass-covered ridge.
“That’s from the Northern Wei,” he said, referring to a dynasty that ruled this region from AD 386 to 534. Over the centuries the structure had been worn down by wind and rain, until now it was nothing more than a two-foot-tall bump stretching northeast across the hills. It was intersected by another ridge so faint that I wouldn’t have seen it without his help. “That’s the Han wall,” he said. It was even older: the Han ruled from 206 BC to AD 220. High in the hills, a third wall dated to the Ming. The Ming fortifications were six feet tall and ran clear to both horizons, east and west. In this landscape of ancient barriers, the Ming wall was a relative newcomer—only four centuries old.
“Over the years, I saw these things so many times, until I finally got curious,” Old Chen explained. “Where did they come from? What was the system behind it? That was my main reason for starting the research.”
I drove him back to his home, where we had another cup of tea. He explained that the village name had been shortened from Ningxi Hulu, which means “Pacify the Hu.” In ancient times, hu was a term used by the Chinese to describe the nomadic peoples of the north. It wasn’t specific to a certain tribe or ethnicity, and it was derogatory—a slur that encompassed all outsiders. The final character, lu, was even blunter: “barbarians.”
“Basically, the name of our village means ‘Kill the Foreigners,’ ” Old Chen said with a smile. “Look at this.” He opened my book of Sinomaps and pointed out another village ten miles to the east: Weilu, or “Overawe the Barbarians.” Nearby was the town of Pohu: “Smash the Hu.” Other villages were called “Overawe the Hu,” “Suppress the Barbarians,” and “Slaughter the Hu.” Modern maps use the character for hu that means “tiger”—a substitution first made during the Qing dynasty, whose Manchu rulers were sensitive to the portrayal of people from outside the walls. But the change was cosmetic, and the original meaning is still as obvious as the old forts that tower over the village.
I left Ninglu in late afternoon, when the sun began to fall low over the fields. Old Chen escorted me to the City Special, and a dozen locals followed out of curiosity. Many of the men wore military castoffs, and the collected uniforms—worn, dirty, ill-fitting—made me feel if I were being sent on some desperate mission. My next destination lay to the north, where hills loomed high along the borderlands, a line of dry peaks that seemed to have been bled of all color. Old Chen shook my hand and wished me good luck. “Next time you come,” he reminded me, “try to bring an archaeologist.”
I drove past neat lines of poplars turning gold with the season, and then the road began to climb through the bare mountains. There weren’t any other cars. At an elevation of six thousand feet, the pavement pierced the Ming wall, which represented the Shanxi provincial boundary. The ancient structure had been broken to make room for the roadway, and a cement pillar marked the entrance to Inner Mongolia. This is the last region in north-central China, and it was the least populated place I had visited thus far.
I continued driving until I reached a pass, where I found a dirt track branching off the main road. The track ran along the ridge for a few hundred yards, and then I pulled over. In the back of the Jeep, I carried a tent and sleeping bag. It was a perfect night for camping—the air was so clear that the stars seemed to pulse above the valley. In the tent, I fell asleep thinking about the border towns that I intended to visit the next day. Smash the Hu, Slaughter the Hu: just another quiet drive in the countryside.
At midnight the tent was suddenly bathed in light. Startled, I awoke and sat bolt upright, thinking that it was the headlights of an approaching car. Fumbling with the tent flap, I looked outside and realized that the full moon had just broken the horizon. Everything else was normal: the empty dirt track, the parked City Special. Down below, the lights of Ninglu village had been extinguished, and the rising moon cast shadows across the steppe. For a moment I sat still, waiting for my fear to settle, hearing nothing but the wind and the pounding of my heart.
IN THE EVENINGS I worried about visitors, especially the police. There wasn’t yet a tradition of cross-country driving in China, and rules were strict for foreigners. I wasn’t supposed to take the City Special outside of Beijing, and some parts of the west were closed completely to outsiders, because of poverty, ethnic tensions, or military installations. And a foreign journalist was technically required to apply to local authorities before traveling anywhere in the country. That was one reason I brought my tent—I hoped to avoid small-town hotels, which hand over their guest lists to the police.
On the road I followed my own set of guidelines. I waited until sunset to pitch my tent, and I left at first light; I never started a campfire. If I needed to stay in a small town, I looked for a truckers’ dorm, where foreign guests are so rare that they usually don’t have police registration forms. I carried enough water to last for days. I generally drove under the influence of caffeine and sugar—the City Special was fully stocked with Coca-Cola, Gatorade,
