Today we drove about an hour north of Beijing to a village called Mutianyu to visit a section of the Great Wall of China, which was simply breathtaking. The scenery on the way there was beautiful – a wide vista¹ of mountains and trees – so the car ride alone was a treat. But then, running along the highest ridges² of the mountains, you see it: The Great Wall – one of the great marvels³ of human history.

今天我们驱车一小时来到北京北部的村庄慕田峪，游览了中国长城的一部分，真是激动人心啊！那里的风景非常美，放眼望去满目青山绿树，单单在车上看风景就已经是种享受了。然后登上群山中的最高峰，你就可以看到人类历史上最伟大的奇迹之一：长城。

In its entirety, the Great Wall stretches from east to west across more than 13,000 miles of Chinese countryside (that's about four times the length of the entire United States from Maine to Oregon!). It is not a single, uninterrupted wall, but rather a series of smaller walls which sometimes overlap⁴ and run parallel to each other.

长城东西总长度有13000英里（约等于从缅因州到俄勒冈州整个美国东西长度的4倍），它并不是独立不间断的城墙，而是时而迂回重叠、彼此平行的一系列小城墙。

Certain sections of the Wall date back as far as the seventh century B.C., but the majority of the Great Wall we know today – including the section at Mutianyu – was built between the 1300s and the 1600s.

长城的某些部分要追溯到公元前17世纪，但我们今天所熟知的长城，包括慕田峪在内的大部分都是在14世纪到17世纪之间建筑的。

To get to the Wall, we rode a cable car up a mountain (and we later rode back down on a long slide!). The section we visited is one of the more popular parts of the Wall for tourists, and it’s easy to see why. At Mutianyu, the Wall is roughly 20 to 25 feet tall and full of stairs, and there’s a watchtower every 100 yards or so. Those watchtowers serve as a reminder⁵ of why the Wall was built in the first place – to defend against attacks from armies descending⁶ from the north. Throughout its history, the Great Wall has gone through decades, even centuries, of ruin and disrepair. But it has always served as not only a physical barrier, but a psychological one to intimidate⁷ potential invaders⁸.

我们乘坐缆车到了长城（回来的时候是通过一个长长的滑道！）我们参观的是长城最受游客欢迎的地方，这里为什么最受欢迎其实一看就知道。在慕田峪，城墙大概有20至25英尺高，上面有很多台阶，同时大约每100码就有一个瞭望台。这些瞭望台是为了纪念最初建筑长城的意义——防御北方敌人入侵。在长城的整个历史中，有几十年甚至几个世纪，长城遭到破坏、年久失修。但现在长城不仅仅是一道实体屏障，还对潜在侵犯起着心理威慑作用。

During our visit to the Wall, I couldn’t stop thinking about what a massive undertaking⁹ it must have been to build it. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and peasants were given the dangerous, painstaking¹⁰ – and often fatal – task of carrying ton after ton of granite¹¹, brick, dirt, and wood through the forests, up over the hills, and down through the valleys to create this incredible structure. They did this year after year, decade after decade – and it’s because of their hard work and sacrifice that the Great Wall remains¹² standing¹³ today.

游览长城的过程中，我不禁思考这是多么大的工程量啊！成千上万的士兵和农民不辞劳苦、不惧危险，把一吨又一吨的花岗岩、砖块、泥土及木材从山林运到山上、再运到山谷，才铸就了如此惊人的杰作。正是劳动人民日复一日、年复一年的辛勤汗水，才铸就了今天屹立不倒的长城。