
The oldest section of the Great Wall was begun in 221 B.C., not long after
China was unified into an empire from a loose configuration of feudal states.
The first Chinese emperor, Qin Shi Huang, restored the ruins of older walls and
linked them with new construction to create a massive 3,000-mile-long
fortification meant to protect China's northern frontiers against attack by
marauding nomads.
But Qin Shi Huang was no benevolent ruler looking out for his people. He was
a staggeringly repressive tyrant who tried to standardize human thought in the
same way he standardized laws, weights and measures. His followers believed that
people were inherently evil and needed to live by a strict set of rules. So they
burned most of the Confucian literature in the country, believing that it
encouraged free thinking. In fact, the emperor made nonconformist thought a
capital offense and sentenced thousands of intellectuals to years of forced
labor on the Great Wall.
The harsh Qin regime thought its strict rules regarding Chinese life would
allow the dynasty to last for generations. But that was not to be. In 209 B.C.,
just one year after the emperor's death, an army of peasants, bristling under
decades of oppression, rose up in revolt. Provincial officials, knowing they'd
be executed for merely reporting the rebellion, kept silent. When the central
government finally learned of the uprising, it was too late. In the end, Qi Shi
Huang's dynasty fell victim to the fear and mistrust bred by its own despotic
excesses.

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