When Tom King gets back home from school one afternoon, this British boy of Chinese descent experiences a very strange series of coincidences….

 

Tom’s father is an avid collector of Chinese antiquities. He has put his latest auction purchase — a large world atlas, published in 1584 — on the table. It lies opened at the page which shows China, with the Great Wall marked in gilt paint. As a beam of sunlight squeezes through a gap in the room’s curtains, it strikes the golden Great Wall, casting a refection of it on the ceiling. Thomas watches the shimmering reflection, dancing like a dragon, while listening to a BBC news item that reports that the Great Wall of China has just been surveyed, and found to be 8851 kilometres long. Finally, the newsreader says, “Knowledge of the Great Wall reached Europe in 1584 when it appeared in the world’s first atlas…”

 

The numbers that Tom just heard amazed him. His iPhone number is 8851-1584! Top opens his ‘Histomap’ App and searches for ‘China 1584’. After gathering up his courage he daringly presses ‘Take me there, back in time…’

 

Tom embarks on a trans-continental journey that leads him to China of the publication year of the atlas, 1584 … at the height of the Great Wall’s operation.

 

Tom is recruited into the Ming Army as a messenger. He joins two other teenagers, a girl named Shuangyu (meaning “Two Languages”, because she’s able to speak Chinese and Mongolian) and a boy named Qianli, meaning “he who sees for one thousand miles” (because he has incredible sight). Their mission is to “report for duty” at The Heart of the Dragon fortress, one thousand miles away.

 

The three teenagers trek along the line of the Wall by camel. On the way, the three adventurers from different worlds learn from each other, about the past, the future, and learn about the Great Wall from the guards stationed along it.

 

When the adventurers arrive at the Heart of the Dragon Fortress, they discover the purpose of their mission. Shuangyu is needed there to work as an interpreter between the Chinese fortress commander and a Mongol chieftain. It’s an historic occasion. An inaugural border market is being held beside the imposing fortress. Hundreds of people from both sides of the Great Wall are meeting to exchange and trade their wares. Horses for wine, precious stones for silk, furs for tea…

 

During one bartering dialogue, a Mongol hunter hears Shuangyu tell her survival story. She was lost as a child in a desert storm in the border area and then found and adopted by a Chinese scouting party. The hunter tells Shuangyu that her family is still alive. Eager to trace her roots, the young adventurers secretly join the Mongol family to journey north with them.

 

But the journey goes wrong as winter comes earlier than usual. A blizzard confines them to the northern grasslands. The following spring they face a hazardous return trek back to China, back across the steppe and the Gobi Desert. Guided by a new addition to their party, a Mongol girl named Khulun, the adventurers, now four in number, eventually reach the border of China, guarded by its Great Wall. Approaching from the “outside” they are arrested, branded as spies, and put to work building the Great Wall.

 

After months of backbreaking labour — cutting down trees, quarrying and moving rock blocks, firing and carrying bricks and pulverising lime to make mortar — another winter arrives, and they appear to be facing a frozen fate…

 

Finally, the construction commander receives a scroll sent from the Great Wall headquarters about three “missing messengers”, and he realises his mistake. He frees the adventurers and honours them by asking them to choose the name for the section of the Great Wall that they helped to build. Tom chooses ‘The Golden Great Wall’.

 

Many years later Tom returns to China by air. He’s a professor of history at Oxford University and his wife’s name is Shuangyu. They visit the Great Wall that Tom built in his past and see the stone that records its name.

 

The Golden Great Wall is a thrilling adventure history story on which the adventures overcome all in their path to impart new insight on the age-old Great Wall conflict between the Chinese and their nomadic enemies of the Mongols. On their journey, the four children build bridges of understanding between past and future, and tolerance between those living inside the Wall and outside it.