Dynastic History | Zhonghua Gate 中華門, Nanjing — Seventeen Names on One Brick

The gate the Ming called 聚寶門 — Jubao, "gathering treasure" — was renamed 中華門 in 1931, and the wall it stands in was begun in 1366 by Zhu Yuanzhang, two years before he proclaimed the dynasty. What makes the fabric legible is that the state made its bricks carry names. Under the 物勒工名 rule, each brick was stamped with the people answerable for it. One brick published by Nanjing's municipal heritage authority names seventeen: the supervising official of Ningguo prefecture and his clerk, the deputy magistrate at Nanling county, the kiln master, and nine men listed as 造磚人夫, brick-makers. The stated test was that a brick should ring when struck and show no cavity when broken. A bad one could be traced back to a village.

The labour was not hired in any modern sense. Prefectures across Jiangxi, Huguang and the directly administered region around the capital were assigned quotas, and counties passed them down to households. The figure repeated in the standard accounts is two hundred thousand workers over twenty-one years; that is a round number carried in the record rather than a payroll, and the inscriptions are the better evidence of how the burden was spread.

Zhonghua Gate is a barbican: three enclosed courtyards behind four arched gates, roughly 118 by 128 metres, with chambers cut into the masonry for troops. The municipal heritage record dates the main circuit 1366 to 1386, with brick supply continuing into the 1390s.

The courtyards are ticketed and open daily. The city wall museum opened across the road in December 2021, with inscribed bricks set face-out so the names can be read.

📸 Cover: The Zhonghua Gate complex, southern city wall, Nanjing, User:Vmenkov, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons