The Wall

A Teaser: I hardly ever saw a wall in Vancouver at the first day I came to Canada. It really surprised me!


                                                              
I noticed a very interesting thing at the first day I came to Canada: I hardly ever saw a wall in Vancouver! It really surprised me because it is so different to my home country, China.

The Great Wall is the most famous wall in the world (34,600km long, 12m high). It was built over 2,000 years ago, by the first emperor of China—Qin Shi Huang. He hoped that it could be a solid protection against invading nomads’ tribes from the north.  

In the past, from the whole country to every city, an emperor’s big palace to a farmer’s small house was surrounded by all kinds of walls. In nowadays, even every factory, hospital, company, school, library, park, and apartment is still surrounded by high walls.

Walls stand everywhere from ancient to modern times. comparing with other ways, to build walls might be a good idea to forestall break-ins. I’m not worrying about this; I’m worrying about something else—the invisible walls between people.

Owing to the uneven development of the economy, we build a rather thick wall in our hearts—distrust. We don’t trust each other any more because we can’t. How could we trust each other when some of us became the haves and the other are still the have-nots?

A wall might be able to protect ourselves, but also it might be able to shackle us. How to break those political, institutional, and religionary walls might be an international task. I wish some day there is no any wall in the world except The Great Wall of China.