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The Ming Great Wall was built by a variety of people, using a variety of materials and techniques. While the Ming built off of what previous dynasties had created during their times, the Ming expanded the Wall a significant amount and used several techniques and materials that had never been used before in China for wall building. The living conditions for these builders were not optimal, and many died while building the wall.

There were three main groups of people that made up the builders of the Great Wall during the Ming Dynasty: frontier guards, peasants, and convicts. Towards the end of the Ming period, skilled artisans became a prominent group of wall builders as well. During the Ming period, soldiers were in shortage due to low productivity on the military colonies, called weiso. The northern frontier, the most heavily guarded border of Ming China, was kept at 40% strength, which was equivalent to 300,000 men across a 2,000 mile border. Because of low productivity on military farms and the need for more guards along the frontier, most of the frontier soldiers were from military families that served on the farms. Soldiers were involved in the building of the Great Wall because Ming officials preferred to fight a defensive war on the northern frontier. This took the form of building fortresses and walls along the frontier to protect the empire from invaders. Therefore, the building of the Great Wall fell on the shoulders of the military. Depending on the military colony and the general in charge, labor could be paid or unpaid. If they were paid, it averaged out to six pounds of silver per man per year. But like peasants and convicts, labor was always conscripted by the government, meaning that the government would force people to work on the wall. Like previous dynasties, the Ming officials also recruited peasants from the surrounding areas to work on the wall for seasons at a time. Not much is known about how the peasants were recruited or how they worked, but the labor was often conscripted and paid very little. The last major group of wall builders during the Ming dynasty were convicts. Convicts were the other part of the military that was not conscripted from hereditary military families. At the beginning of the Ming dynasty, only military convicts were sent into frontier exile, but as time went on, civilians convicts were also sent to the frontier. Because Ming officials wanted to create more hereditary military families, unmarried convicts were often given a wife from the female convict population to start a family with. In addition to these main groups of wall builders, there were also masons who were hired by the emperor to build the more sophisticated parts of the wall that were made of brick and mortar instead of the traditional tamped earth method. These workers were paid significantly more by the emperor because of their specialized skills in wall building, including working with kilns to create the bricks and designing the walls to fit the terrain. Several techniques were used to build these walls. For materials, the Ming used earth, stone, timber, and lime like previous dynasties. But they also used bricks and tiles, especially for areas with rougher terrain, which was a new technique in China at the time. These were made with kilns, which were a new invention at the time. Materials were transported hundreds of miles either on the backs of workers, by hand carts or wheelbarrows, or on animal-driven carts.

There were two main techniques for building the wall. The first was the rammed earth method, which was used on level areas, and had been used by previous dynasties as well. Materials at the location were compressed together to build the wall. The Ming dynasty refined this technique by being able to do this on a larger scale than previous dynasties. The Ming builders also created a new technique, the two-layer method, which involved bricks and tiles. This was used on uneven terrain, like hills and mountains. Bricks were stacked diagonally if the incline or decline of the landscape was less than 45 degrees, and were shaped into stairs if the incline or decline was greater than 45 degrees. Living and working conditions for the wall builders were miserable and often fatal. Traveling to the Great Wall itself was a dangerous journey that many would die on. This difficult journey would also make supplying the garrisons with food and other supplies extremely difficult. Once at the wall, workers lived in “inhumane conditions” that were rampant with disease, lacked basic needs, and was incredibly dangerous to navigate. These factors, combined with the harsh working climate instituted by the generals in charge of the wall building, lead to a high mortality rate among wall builders, which is why many call the Great Wall “the longest cemetery in the world”.