Nanjing (Nanking) City Tour Package
Zhonghua Gate
Zhonghua Gate (Chinese Gate) is the south gate of
Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province. A
precious cultural relic, Zhonghua Gate has the double distinction of
being the biggest castle-style city gate in China and a structural
element of the most complicated castle in the world. It is the
castle's magnificent scale, delicate structure, and the great skill
with which it was built that bequeath it an important place in
China's military and architectural traditions.
Construction of the castle took twenty-one years, from
1366 to 1387. The gate, originally called the 'Gate of Gathering
Treasure' carries a legend from the time of its creation in the
early Ming Dynasty. According to the legend, when Zhu Yuanzhang, the
first emperor of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), had the gate built,
the ground kept sinking. The gate collapsed again and again. It was
not until a treasure bowl was buried under the gate that it stood
firm. In 1931, to commemorate the revolution of 1911 and the
Republic of China (1919-1949) that emerged as a result, the Gate of
Gathering Treasure was renamed Zhonghua Gate. In Chinese Pinyin,
Republic of China is written as Zhonghua Minguo.
Nanjing was the capital of China during the Ming
Dynasty under the reign of Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang. (Zhu Di, the son
of Zhu Yuanzhang, moved the capital to Beijing in 1420.) In 1366,
Zhu Yuanzhang began to build a wall around the city of Nanjing to
defend it from attack. The Gate of Gathering Treasure (Zhonghua
Gate) was built on the site of a previous gate, the south gate of
the city built during the Later Tang Dynasty (923 - 936). The new
gate, the grandest among the thirteen gates of the new castle, was
an architecturally complex structure composed of three closed
courtyards and four arched doors serving as the entrance. There were
double paneled wooden doors and with additional stone door set
behind. If the enemy broke through the wooden doors, they could be
separated and trapped in the three closed courtyards upon dropping
the stone doors.
Twenty-seven tunnels were built in the castle to store
large quantities of food and weapons and to hold approximately 3000
soldiers. Wide and steep ramps were built on the east and west side
to allow people to carry materials upward. The entire structure was
built with massive bricks mortared together with special cement made
from lime, sticky rice juice and tung oil. In order to guarantee the
quality of the construction, every brick underwent a strict quality
control process. The brick makers and builders were ordered to mark
their names on each brick. Even today, it is possible to find
Chinese characters and numbers on the bricks. No doubt, this
detailed attention to quality of construction is one of the reasons
why the condition of the castle remains so remarkably good today.
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