Legendarily 2,200 years old and 4,300 miles long, the Great Wall of China seems to make an overwhelmingly confident physical statement about the country it spans: about China’s age-old sense of itself being an advanced civilization anxious to draw a clear line between itself and the “barbarians” at its borders. But behind the wall’s intimidating exterior—and the myths that have built up around it—is a complex history that has both defined and undermined China. Author Julia Lovell has written a new and important history of the Great Wall that guides the reader through the conquests and cataclysms of the Chinese empire, from the second millennium BC to the present day.
In recent years, the Wall has become an ever more potent symbol of Chinese nationalism, of a determination to resist foreign domination. But how successful was the Wall in reality, and what was its real purpose? Was it a precursor, albeit on a huge scale, of the Berlin Wall—a barrier designed to keep its population in as much as undesirables out? Lovell looks behind the modern mythology of the Great Wall, uncovering a three-thousand-year history far more fragmented and less illustrious than its crowds of visitors imagine today. The story of the Wall winds through that of the Chinese state and the frontier policy that defined it, through the lives of the millions of individuals who supported, criticized, built, and attacked it.

中国长城有2200年的历史，长达4300英里，似乎对它所跨越的国家做出了一个压倒性的自信的物理声明：关于中国的古老意识，即它是一个先进的文明，急于在自己和边界的野蛮人之间划出一条清晰的界限。但是，在这堵墙令人生畏的外表和围绕它的神话背后，是一段复杂的历史，它既定义了中国，也破坏了中国。作者Julia Lovell写了一部新的、重要的长城历史，引导读者了解从公元前二千年到今天的中华帝国的征服和灾难。

近年来，长城已成为中国民族主义的一个更加有力的象征，象征着抵制外国统治的决心。但是，长城在现实中有多成功，它的真正目的是什么？它是否是柏林墙的前身，尽管规模庞大，旨在将其人口挡在外面，而将不受欢迎的人挡在外面？洛弗尔着眼于长城的现代神话背后，揭示了其三千年的历史，远比今天的游客群想象的要零散和不那么辉煌。长城的故事贯穿了中国国家和定义它的边疆政策，贯穿了支持、批评、建造和攻击长城的数百万人的生活。