The Great Wall of China Coloring Pages

A Long Wall Running Over Mountains

The Great Wall of China is a super long wall in China. Instead of flat land, it is famous for running along the ridges of mountains.
It goes up and down, stretching from one mountain to the next. You can walk on top of the wall, and there are many steep stairs. It was named a World Cultural Heritage site in 1987.

It Is Over 20,000 Kilometers Long

In 2012, a study in China showed that the full length of The Great Wall of China is 21,196 kilometers. That was more than double the length people thought before!
Going once around the Earth is about 40,000 kilometers, so this wall is more than half that long. Of course, it is not just one straight line. That total includes all the walls that branch out in different places.

People Started Building It 2,200 Years Ago

The person who connected the main parts of The Great Wall of China was Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor of China. That was in 214 BC, which is over 2,200 years ago!
But he did not build the whole thing himself. He joined together walls that were already there, and people in later times kept adding more. Most of the wall you can see today was built during the Ming Dynasty (from the 14th to 17th centuries).

The Top of the Wall Is a Road

The Great Wall of China built in the Ming Dynasty is about 7.8 meters high on average. The bottom is 6.5 meters wide, and the top is 5.8 meters wide.
This means the top of the wall is a road where people and horses can walk. When enemies attacked, soldiers could move quickly along this path.

Sending Messages with Smoke Signals

You can see square towers built at set spaces along the wall. These are called watchtowers, and soldiers used them to keep watch.
If they saw an enemy, they lit a fire on top of the tower to make smoke. This was a smoke signal. The next tower saw the smoke and lit its own fire. By repeating this, they sent messages very fast to the capital city far away. It was their way to send news before phones or radio existed!

Can You Really See It from Space?

You might have heard that you can see The Great Wall of China from space with your own eyes. But that is actually not true.
In 2003, Yang Liwei, the first person from China to go into space, said that The Great Wall of China was not visible. Because of this, China took that story out of its school textbooks. Even though it is 20,000 kilometers long, it is only a few meters wide!

Don't color every single brick

The walls of The Great Wall of China are made of stacked bricks, so there are tons of tiny squares all over! If you color them one by one, you'll never finish.
We recommend leaving the line spaces white and coloring the flat parts lightly. Color between the lines quickly with light brown, and make just a few bricks darker. That will make it look like real stacked stones!

Make the front dark and the back light

The most important thing in this picture is perspective! Color the towers and walls in the front dark, and color the walls running over the far mountains light.
The farther away something is, the lighter the color and thinner the lines should be. Just doing that will make The Great Wall of China look like it goes on forever! If you color everything the same shade, your picture will look flat.

The stones aren't just one color

If you look closely at bricks and stones, each one has a slightly different color. That's because they've been baked by the sun or covered in moss over many long years.
Use light brown as your main color, and change a few to yellowish-brown or gray. The trick to making them look like real stone is to not use the same color for everything!

Use two or more colors for mountain greens

The surrounding mountains are covered in trees. If you color them with just one green, they'll look flat.
Try using dark green for trees in the front, and light yellow-green for mountains in the back! Color any visible rocks a grayish brown. When green and brown mix together, it looks just like a real mountain!

Leave the sky white

If you color the sky, the main star, The Great Wall of China, won't stand out as much. It looks best if you leave it white!
If you really want to add color, use a light sky blue just near the top. Making it lighter as it goes down makes the mountains look super tall!

You Cannot See It From Space

For a long time, many people believed that The Great Wall of China was the only building on Earth that you could see from space with the naked eye.
However, this is not true. In 2003, Yang Liwei, the first person from China to go into space, clearly said that he could not see it. After that, this story was removed from Chinese textbooks. Even though it is over 20,000 kilometers long, it is only a few meters wide!

It Is Not a Single Wall

When you hear the name "The Great Wall of China," you might think of one long, single wall. But actually, it is a collection of walls built in different eras and places.
In 2012, a survey found that the total length is 21,196 kilometers. They got this number by adding up all the wall sections left here and there. In some places, the wall stops, or doubles and triples up!

The Materials Change Depending on the Place

The Great Wall of China that you often see in photos is grand and made of stacked bricks. But those were built near the capital city.
In the deserts to the west, bricks were hard to find. So, they made walls by packing down dirt, or layering sand and plants together. They used whatever they could find nearby, which was a simple but very smart idea!

The Smoke Signal Relay

The watchtowers burned fires to create smoke signals, passing the message from one tower to the next.
Records say that the number of smoke clouds told how many enemies were coming. One cloud of smoke meant a few enemies, while many clouds meant a big army! A message could reach the capital hundreds of kilometers away on the very same day.