NEWSOM TREKS GREAT WALL OF CHINA

Photos courtesy Kai Ping Liu

By Luke Thomas

November 30, 2005

Shanghai, China - Mayor Gavin Newsom on Monday took time out of a whirwind schedule to visit the Great Wall of China, known locally as The Great Wall of 10,000. What resembles a 3,946 mile stone dragon, is one of the world's greatest wonders, built to keep marauding Mongols and Turkic tribes from invading a once defenseless China.

The current incarnation of the Great Wall was built during the Ming Dynasty between 1368 and 1620, around the same time when Chinese explorers first discovered the Americas, some seventy-two years before Christopher Columbus staked his claim.

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