天安门 (Wen Shien)

The Tian An Men or Gate of National Heaven is a famous monument in Beijing, the capital of China.It is widely used as a national symbol. First built during the Ming Dynasty in 1420, Tiananmen is often referred to as the front entrance to the Forbidden City. However, the Merdian Gate is the first entrance to the Forbidden City proper, while Tiananmen was the entrance to the Imperial City, within which the Forbidden City was located. Tiananmen is located to the north of Tiananmen Square, across the street from the plaza from Chang'an avenue. 

The gate was originally named Chengtianmen  or "Gate of Accepting Heaven Mandate", and it has been destroyed and rebuilt several times. The original building was first constructed in 1420 and was based on a gate of an imperial building in Nanjing with the same name and hence inherited the name Chengtianmen. The gate was damaged by lightning in July, 1457, and was completely burnt down. In 1465, Chenghua Emperor ordered the minister of Engineering Ministry to rebuild the gate, and the design was changed from the original paifang form to the gatehouse that is seen today. It suffered another blow in the war at the end of Ming Dynasty - in 1644 the gate was burnt down by rebels led by Li ZiCheng.Following the establishment of the Qing Dyansty and the Manchu  conquest of Chna proper, the gate was once again rebuilt, beginning in 1645, and was given its present name in 1651 when the construction completed six years later. The Tiananmen gate was reconstructed again between 1969-1970. The gate as it stood was by then 300 years old, and had badly deteriorated, partly due to heavy usage in the 1950s-60s. As the gate was a national symbol, then-Premier Zhou Enlai ordered that the rebuilding was to be kept secret. The whole gate was covered in scaffolding, and the project was officially called a "renovation". The rebuilding aimed to leave the gate's external appearance unchanged while making it more resistant to earthquakes and featuring modern facilities such as an elevator, water supply and heating system.

Great Wall of China (Lim Jia Yi)

The Great Wall is a powerful symbol. It represents the unification of China, because it was linked together as China was unified for the first time in the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC). It represents the ability of the Chinese to work together for the good of the country.

Many legends and myths exist regarding the building of this wall. Some of the famous stories are as follows:

The Legend of Meng Jiangnü

This is a legend about love and devotion. It tells the story of Meng Jiangnü and her anguish after her husband died building the wall. It is said that her bitter weeping caused a section of the wall to collapse.

"Metal Soup" Great Wall

This story tells of the construction of the Huanghuacheng Great Wall. The great general who masterminded this section was beheaded wrongly for his high expenditures, but later redeemed and honored.

Xifengkou / Happy Meeting Mouth

A story of love between father and son and their reunion at Xifengkou. 

The great wall's chinese culture reflects from when Shi Huangdi was ruler, who started the Great Wall from the Yellow Sea in the east to the Gobi Desert in the West. 

The Great wall was also first come together from smaller walls to discourage attacks from nothern nomads. Thus Shi Huangdi was determined to close up the gaps and unify the wall 1,400 miles to the west. His thinking at the time was so if enemies decided to come they would have to gallop halfway to Tibet to get around it. 

He forced peasents to build the wall. If they did not, their only choice other than building the wall was death. Many of them worked on the wall and still died anyway. They did not work for wages, and really did not love the empire. 

Now, since the Great wall is so Huge, that it is one of the few human-made features on Earth visible from space. 

Chinese may proudly to say that “ Great Wall in China is the only manmade structure visible from the moon!” Actually, the Great Wall is the irreplaceable monument in the China. Moreover its representative of the cultural meaning is shown in the national anthem, one part of the lyrics “who will not be slaves our own flesh and blood, to build a new Great Wall!” 

From past until now, Great Wall is the representative of the Chinese people. Nowadays, China starts to break- down the old regulations and open the door to face the outside world. Therefore, people in China are facing the new identity which is “modern Chinese”. In October at 2007, the Italian luxury group Fendi held a fashion show on the Great Wall in China. That is a big event in the world, it symbols the internationalization of China, and the nationality of people being changed from moldy to modern. 

The Great Wall of China (Erlene Chua)

The Great Wall of China is a series of fortifications made of stone, brick, tamped earth, wood, and other materials, generally built along an east-to-west line across the historical northern borders of China in part to protect the Chinese Empire or its prototypical states against intrusions by various nomadic groups or military incursions by various warlike peoples or forces. Several walls were being built as early as the 7th century BC; these, later joined together and made bigger and stronger, are now collectively referred to as the Great Wall. Especially famous is the wall built between 220–206 BC by the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang. Little of that wall remains. Since then, the Great Wall has on and off been rebuilt, maintained, and enhanced; the majority of the existing wall are from the Ming Dynasty.

Other purposes of the Great Wall have included border controls, allowing the imposition of duties on goods transported along the Silk Road, regulation or encouragement of trade and the control of immigration and emigration. Furthermore, the defensive characteristics of the Great Wall were enhanced by the construction of watch towers, troop barracks, garrison stations, signaling capabilities through the means of smoke or fire, and the fact that the path of the Great Wall also served as a transportation corridor.

The main Great Wall line stretches from Shanhaiguan in the east, to Lop Lake in the west, along an arc that roughly delineates the southern edge of Inner Mongolia. A comprehensive archaeological survey, using advanced technologies, has concluded that the Ming walls measure 8,850 km. This is made up of 6,259 km sections of actual wall, 359 km of trenches and 2,232 km of natural defensive barriers such as hills and rivers. Another archaeological survey found that the entire wall with all of its branches measure out to be 21,196 km.