Characteristic Bricks of the Nanjing Rampart

 

Over 350 million gigantic bricks constitute the major part of the world's longest age-old rampart. Each brick is 40-50 cm long, some 20 cm wide and over 10 cm in thickness. The most distinctive feature of the colossal bricks is that most bricks have the producer's name, the supervising official's name, as well as the producing place, sculpted on its surface. Withstood more than 600 year's weathering, some embodied characters on the bricks are still conspicuous. Through these characters, you could learn by whom and where the bricks were manufactured in the Ming Dynasty by yourself.  The purpose of marking characters on the surface of the bricks is to insure the quality of each brick. These bricked are made by millions of labors from 115 counties in 5 provinces under the order of the first Ming Dynasty emperor—Zhu Yuanzhang. The emperor Zhu consider the rampart as an quintessential defense of its capital thus emphasized its quality. Once one brick was testified shoddy, all the people concerning the manufacture of the brick could be easily found out in the light of the characters on the brick. A reproduction would be ordered. If the reproduced brick was in poor quality again, the producer and the official in charge would both be sentenced to death. Characters says produced by Huangzhou County in Huangzhou State

2010-12-13

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