Donald Trump loves a good construction project, so it's no surprise that he's a fan of the Great Wall of China. A couple of months ago, Trump said this about the feat: “The Great Wall of China, built 2,000 years ago, is 13,000 miles long, folks. ... And they didn't have ... tractors, they didn't have cranes, they didn't have excavation equipment.” Last night, Trump compared his own planned wall on the border with Mexico to the famed barricade: The dishonest media does not report that any money spent on building the Great Wall (for sake of speed), will be paid back by Mexico later! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017 In that tweet, and on the campaign trail, Trump famously promised that Mexico will foot the bill. But that country has repeatedly declined the invitation, and Congress has other ideas. This week, Republican leaders said construction could start as soon as April — and that it would be paid for by American taxpayers, at least at first. That means Trump's “Great Wall” shares something else with its namesake: its funding source. China's Great Wall was started by Emperor Qin Shi Huang in the 3rd century B.C. to keep barbarian nomads out. The project lasted thousands of years, one of the most massive construction projects ever undertaken. Like most projects of huge ambition and overrun, it was also tremendously expensive. Historian Walter A. McDougall estimated that the Ming Dynasty alone spent “several million ounces of silver” on construction costs during its reign from the 14th to 17th centuries A.D. All that silver came from taxes and other government revenue, including the huge amounts of silver the Chinese mined in Peru and shipped back across the Pacific via Southeast Asian trade routes. [Some facts for Donald Trump about the Great Wall of China] How much Trump's wall may cost depends a lot of who you ask. Trump has said it'll run about $8 billion, while CNBC predicts that the real price will run between $15 and $25 billion, plus maintenance costs. Of course, China's Ming dynasty was also able to “control” costs thanks to a relatively cheap labor force. Most construction was done by soldiers, convicts or commoners who were essentially forced to work. It was dangerous and often deadly work, keeping workers in cold and remote places for months or years at a time. The wall earned the nickname of “the longest cemetery on Earth” because there were so many deaths — 400,000 by one estimate. Another reason for Trump to take note? Historians agree that China's Great Wall was a major boondoggle and probably not worth it in the end. It didn't really keep foreigners out. Anyone could sneak in — they just needed to find an unmanned entrance or gap. Eventually the military conscripts sent to guard the wall started mingling and trading with the Mongols, giving the barbarian hordes what they really wanted all along: customers for their wares. Or, as historian Arthur Waldron told Mother Jones: “the Great Wall was bad fiscal and foreign policy, mainly paid for with pain.”

The year 2016 was a big one for marijuana in the United States. Several states passed new legislation allowing legal use of cannabis in some capacity and states that were already approved for legal pot use saw huge dividends from marijuana sales. In fact, the industry as a whole generated more than $6.7 billion in marijuana sales, according to a Tuesday Forbes report. Despite the action being taken to end marijuana reform throughout the country, there’s still a lot of opponents of the plant, many of whom don’t actually know or understand the many positives a little bit of weed can bring. That may be why the hashtag, #MarijuanaFunFacts, started to trend on Twitter Thursday, as many people on social media took a moment to educate the masses on a few fun facts and myths surrounding one of Earth’s most popular plants. Check out a few interesting facts about marijuana below: 1. No one actually knows marijuana’s true origins. The first time pot was referenced in written text, it was apparently used for its medicinal properties. However, the actual origins of weed’s first textual reference is a little unclear. The first document discussing weed lies in the Drug Enforcement Administration Museum in Arlinton, Virginia, according to LiveScience, and it states the first time cannabis was used was in 2727 B.C. by Chinese Emperor Shen Nung. It’s unclear if Nung was actually an emperor in China, because the first documented emperor came much later in 260 B.C. when Qin Shi Huang gained power. Not to mention, the earliest written documents from the Chinese empire date to the Shang Dynasty between 1200 B.C. and 1050 B.C. 2. Hemp and pot are not the same. Industrial hemp plants are in the same botanical species as marijuana plants, but they’re don’t produce tetrahydrocannabinolic acid (THC), which is the psychoactive ingredient associated with cannabis’ high-effect. 3. No overdoses have been reported from marijuana use. Although people have died in accidents related to marijuana use, there is no evidence that anyone has actually died from consuming too much marijuana. 4. Cats and dogs can benefit from medical marijuana, too. Like people, animals with debilitating diseases can also get help from cananbis’ medical properties. Veterinarians have reported improved health in cats and dogs who suffer from anxiety and seizures that have been prescribed medical marijuana products like Canna-Pet and other non-psychoactive cannabis-based tinctures. 5. Not all pot is green. Although often referred to as greens or grass, not all marijuana is green in color. Some strains can appear yellow, purple or even blue and can change colors as the buds grow into flowers. Similar to leaves, some strains of pot will change colors when temperatures drop, evolving from greens to reds, orange shades, yellow or gold as colder temperatures start to restrict chlorophyll production. 6. People of color are more likely to be busted for marijuana. A recent ACLU report found that of the 2.2 million marijuana arrests between 2001 and 2010, more than 80 percent of them were for simple possession charges. Although user rates were equal across races, the report also said black people were 3.37 times more likely to be arrested for pot than whites.

This is the tenth in a series of articles by Epoch Times staff describing the foundations of Chinese civilization, and setting forth the traditional Chinese worldview. The series surveys the course of Chinese history, showing how key figures aided in the creation of China’s divinely-inspired culture. This installment outlines the peacetime accomplishments of Emperor Qin Shi Huang. Though Qin Shi Huang ruled for just 12 years, and his dynasty fell soon after his death, the emperor created the concept of China familiar to us today—a vast civilization of varied culture and ethnicity sharing a common identity and the same written language. After unifying the seven states into one dynasty, Qin Shi Huang set out to expand the new empire’s borders and establish the imperial system that would survive for the next two thousand years. Before the Qin Dynasty, Chinese kingdoms—the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties—had few defined boundaries and were in a fluid state of integration, fragmentation, and amalgamation with borderland tribes. Royal power did not reach far beyond the capitals, with much power vested in the hands of feudal vassals. Securing China’s Frontiers In the five centuries of disunity and civil war between the feuding dukes of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, much of China’s population was displaced and its agricultural regions desolated. To the north, the nomadic Xiongnu people took advantage of the chaos to drive south and pillage Central China. Six years after conquering China, in 215 B.C., Emperor Qin ordered General Meng Tian to lead 300,000 men on a punitive expedition against the encroaching Xiongnu. Meng retook lands north of the Yellow River and in today’s Inner Mongolia, establishing dozens of new imperial counties. After dealing with the Xiongnu, Emperor Qin directed his focus southwards, to the Yangtze River and beyond. Half a million people were moved into the area occupied by the Yue race in the southeast, assimilating the local population. These lands were reorganized and eventually became today’s cities of Suzhou and Fuzhou. Further campaigns to the south brought the Baiyue (literally, “the hundred Yue”) tribes into the Qin fold. Qin Shi Huang doubled the size of the empire and gave China its rough territorial boundaries for the next 2,000 years. (New Tang Dynasty Television) Qin Shi Huang doubled the size of the empire and gave China its core territorial boundaries for the next 2,000 years. (New Tang Dynasty Television) The emperor dispatched commander Weitu Sui deep into the regions now known as Guangdong and Guangxi, and set up three prefectures in these new territories. Another general, Chang E (not to confused with the Lady of the Moon, whose name is also romanized as Chang E), penetrated the former lands of Chu State to the mountainous and heavily forested regions of Sichuan and Yunnan in southwest China. He constructed a highway that connected these parts to the rest of the Qin empire. By the end of these campaigns, China’s core territory doubled from the time of the Warring States era (c. 475 – 221 B.C.), and was five times as large as the area ruled by the Zhou Dynasty (1046-256 B.C.). It extended from central Vietnam in the south to Mongolia in the north. The Great Wall snaked from Korea thousands of miles toward the deserts of Central Asia. Qin authority was established along the eastern and southeastern Chinese coast, while imperial armies neared the Himalaya mountains in the west. The Great Wall General Meng’s campaign also allowed the Chinese to connect and expand on various disjointed and incomplete defensive walls built by the former Yan and Zhao states, starting the Great Wall of China. This wall spanned 10,000 Chinese li (one li is about a third of a mile), from the west in today’s Gansu Province east to the Yalu River, which separates China from the Korean peninsula. The Great Wall of China at Jinshanling, Beijing. (Severin.stalder/CC BY-SA 3.0) The Great Wall of China at Jinshanling, Beijing. (Severin.stalder/CC BY-SA 3.0) The Great Wall is one of the First Emperor’s most famous achievements. Sun Yat-sen, the father of republican China, compared its construction with the legendary deeds of Emperor Yu the Great and held that without the protection afforded by the Wall, China would have long been overrun by the northern nomads. Building the Great Wall required hundreds of thousands of conscripted laborers, a point commonly brought up in criticism of Emperor Qin. One famous folktale, the story of Lady Meng Jiang, tells of a woman who spared no efforts in searching for the remains of her husband among the bones of the dead workers. While the tale is typically believed to illustrate the cruel inhumanity of Qin rule, writer Feng Menglong from the Ming Dynasty set the matter straight hundreds of years ago: Lady Meng had indeed existed, but she was the wife of a general from the state of Qi, and the general had died defending a fortification against enemy troops, not in building a wall. Writing and Roads Emperor Qin did much to ensure that China would stay undivided long after his death. Most famously, he standardized the systems of writing and road gauges that would continue to be used for thousands of years. A Chinese idiom that roughly translates as “on books, the same characters; on carriages, the same gauge” pays homage to this achievement. The small seal script promulgated in 220 B.C. (PD-Art) The small seal Chinese script promulgated in 220 B.C. (PD-Art) Chinese characters, in use since legendary ages, were standardized under Qin’s rule into basic brush strokes that are still legible to modern readers. No major changes were made to these forms until the 1950s reform by the communist authorities that mandated the simplification of Chinese writing. Traditional characters are still in use in Taiwan and Hong Kong. While standardized writing brought the nation’s thoughts together, Qin’s revolutionary system of roads physically held the vast territory of the empire together. The emperor, who actively toured his domain, would have massive highways laid down ahead of him on his travels across old country roads. Radiating out of the Qin capital at Xianyang (the modern city of Xi’an), these highways extended to Inner Mongolia, the Shandong Peninsula in the east, what is today Guangzhou in the south, and modern-day Gansu in the west. A Qin-era highway was built with a lime mixture and split into three major sections, with an “imperial lane” in the middle. Road gauges were standardized to a certain carriage of width, and the roads themselves penetrated even high mountains in remote regions. Records from the Han Dynasty say that the highways made it possible to travel over a hundred miles a day. Imperial Order Emperor Qin set subdivisions of prefectures and counties, and tended carefully to the management and development of his conquests. This laid strong political and cultural foundations for the next two thousand years of Chinese civilization. Qin abolished the old position of king and established that the emperor’s authority, granted by Heaven, was second to none in the mortal realm. His queen was not merely the first among many wives, but a paragon of motherhood in charge of all the imperial concubines and their palace quarters. As legal inheritor to the throne, the imperial crown prince was the only person who obtained his post through hereditary succession. All the old hereditary titles and feudal positions were abolished and replaced by appointed officials and ministers. Three lords (among them a chancellor) and nine ministers answered directly to the emperor and held responsibility for the various administrative departments in charge of government, supervision, and justice. The three categories were distinct so as to limit corruption and bureaucratic infighting. For 2,000 years from the time of Qin to the end of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, all dynasties, regardless their culture and origins, inherited the imperial system founded by the First Emperor.