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117-469: Pan Gate is part of the ancient city wall built in 514 BCE that surrounded and protected Suzhou. Pan Gate was the only entrance to the wall that surrounded ancient Suzhou. It is also known in China for its architecture. It is so famous for its complex of both land and water city gates that many times, people directly refer to it as the "Land and Water Gate". In order to attract more tourists, in recent years,

234-539: A barbican ( Chinese : 瓮城 ; pinyin : wèngchéng ). In its final form during the Ming and Qing dynasties, the archery tower was an elaborate construction, of comparable height to the main gatehouse, which stands some distance in front of the main gatehouse. At its base was a gate. The archery tower is so-named because of its rows of archery (and later cannon) placements, from which defenders could fire projectiles on attackers. Auxiliary walls, running perpendicularly to

351-417: A moat surrounded the wall. This could be connected to canals or rivers both in the city and outside, thus providing both a defense and a convenient transportation route. Nearby waterways might be adopted or altered to connect to, or form part of, the moat. Before the introduction of modern artillery, city walls were almost indestructible. Their solidity made any attempt to breach them by mining or bombardment

468-452: A bit more than a third the width of a major wall in China. According to Philo the width of a wall had to be 4.5 metres (15 ft) thick to be able to withstand artillery. European walls of the 1200s and 1300s could reach the Roman equivalents but rarely exceeded them in length, width, and height, remaining around 2 metres (6 ft 7 in) thick. It is apt to note that when referring to

585-490: A cost benefit hypothesis, where the Ming recognized the highly resistant nature of their walls to structural damage, and could not imagine any affordable development of the guns available to them at the time to be capable of breaching said walls. Even as late as the 1490s a Florentine diplomat considered the French claim that "their artillery is capable of creating a breach in a wall of eight feet in thickness" to be ridiculous and

702-444: A couple kilograms at most for the small ones during the early Ming era. Guns themselves had proliferated throughout China and become a common sight during sieges, so the question has arisen then why large guns were not first developed in China. According to Tonio Andrade , this was not a matter of metallurgy, which was sophisticated in China, and the Ming dynasty did construct large guns in the 1370s, but never followed up afterwards. Nor

819-710: A definition in apocryphal texts related to the Hétú 河圖 , the Yellow Emperor "proceeds from the essence of the Yellow God". As a cosmological deity, the Yellow Emperor is known as the "Great Emperor of the Central Peak" ( 中岳大帝 Zhōngyuè Dàdì ), and in the Shizi as the "Yellow Emperor with Four Faces" ( 黃帝四面 Huángdì Sìmiàn ). In old accounts the Yellow Emperor is identified as a deity of light (and his name

936-446: A difficult task. Their height, ranging mostly from five to fifteen meters, made an escalade difficult and hazardous, even though the escalade for military use had been invented as early as the fourth century BCE. A city resolutely defended could withstand attack from the largest armies, and Chinese history includes many tales of famous sieges and heroic defenses. To raze the walls of a city was considered such an exhaustive task that even if

1053-524: A divine heritage would positively affect their claim to legitimacy. Harvard University historian Michael Puett writes that the Qi bronze inscription was one of several references to the Yellow Emperor in the fourth and third centuries BC within accounts of the creation of the state. Noting that many of the thinkers who were later identified as precursors of the Huang–Lao – "Huangdi and Laozi" – tradition came from

1170-405: A farmer and tamed six different special beasts: the bear ( 熊 ), the brown bear ( 罴 ; 羆 ), the pí ( 貔 ) and xiū ( 貅 ) (which later combined to form the mythical Pixiu ), the ferocious chū ( 貙 ), and the tiger ( 虎 ). Huangdi is sometimes said to have been the fruit of extraordinary birth , as his mother Fubao conceived him as she was aroused, while walking in the country, by

1287-554: A figure paradigmatic of emperorship. In his Shiji , Sima Qian claims that the state of Qin started worshipping the Yellow Emperor in the fifth century BC, along with Yandi , the Fiery Emperor. The altars were established at Yong 雍 (near modern Fengxiang County in Shaanxi province), which was the capital of Qin from 677 to 383 BC. By the time of King Zheng , who became king of Qin in 247 BC and First Emperor of

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1404-571: A god who could reveal new teachings – in the form of texts such as the sixth-century Huangdi Yinfujing – to his earthly followers. The Yellow Emperor became a powerful national symbol in the last decade of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) and remained dominant in Chinese nationalist discourse throughout the Republican period (1912–1949). The early twentieth century is also when the Yellow Emperor

1521-460: A hammer blow could make a depression in them an inch deep, he would have the responsible worker killed. He also had the earth used to make the wall boiled with rice to harden it. While Chinese city walls always had an earthen core, the outer facings could be of either baked bricks laid in lime mortar, or stone where it was commonly available, such as in Sichuan . Bricks were also used for constructing

1638-593: A highly compact state, and once that was completed the frameworks were removed for use in the next wall section. During certain time periods such as the Song dynasty and later, rammed earth walls were covered with an outer layer of bricks or stone to prevent erosion, and during the Ming, earthworks were interspersed with stone and rubble. Most Chinese walls were also sloped, which better deflected projectile energy, rather than vertical. The defensive response to cannon in Europe

1755-577: A later transformation and systematization of Shang mythology ." In her view, Huangdi was originally an unnamed "lord of the underworld" (or the "Yellow Springs"), the mythological counterpart of the Shang sky deity Shangdi. At the time, Shang rulers claimed that their mythical ancestors, identified with "the [ten] suns, birds, east, life, [and] the Lord on High" (i.e., Shangdi), had defeated an earlier people associated with "the underworld, dragons, west." After

1872-484: A lightning bolt from the Big Dipper . She delivered her son on the mount of Shou (Longevity) or mount Xuanyuan, after which he was named. Another story states that "Huang Di came into being when the energies that instigated the beginning of the world merged with one another, and created human beings by placing earthen statues at the cardinal points of the world and leaving them exposed for 300 years. During that time,

1989-479: A massive migration of his people into China around 2300 BC and founded what later became Chinese civilization. European sinologists quickly rejected these theories, but in 1900 two Japanese historians, Shirakawa Jirō and Kokubu Tanenori, omitted these criticisms and published a long summary that presented Lacouperie's views as the most advanced Western scholarship on China. Chinese scholars were quickly attracted by "the historicization of Chinese mythology " that

2106-582: A medical classic, and the Huangdi Sijing , a group of political treatises – were thus attributed to him. Having waned in influence during most of the imperial period , in the early twentieth century Huangdi became a rallying figure for Han Chinese attempts to overthrow the rule of the Qing dynasty, remaining a powerful symbol within modern Chinese nationalism . Until 221 BC when Qin Shi Huang of

2223-701: A modern translator of the Records of the Grand Historian , states that Huangdi was originally the head of the Youxiong clan, which lived near what is now Xinzheng in Henan. Rémi Mathieu, a French historian of Chinese myths and religion, translates "Youxiong" as "possessor of bears" and links Huangdi to the broader theme of the bear in world mythology. Ye Shuxian has also associated the Yellow Emperor with bear legends common across northeast Asia people as well as

2340-621: A settlement may be; if not properly defined and enclosed by walls, it is not a city in the traditional Chinese sense. Thus, for instance, Shanghai (outside the "native town"), the most important commercial centre of modern China, is, to the old-fashioned Chinaman, not a real city, only a settlement or a huge trading centre, grown out of a fishing village. And the same is true of several other comparatively modern commercial centres without encircling walls; they are not ch'engs, or cities, according to traditional Chinese conception, whatever modern republican officials may choose to call them. The invention of

2457-639: A total of 25 sons, 14 of whom began their own surnames and clans. The oldest was Shaohao or Xuan Xiao, who lived in Qingyang by the Yangtze River . Changyi , the second son, lived by the Ruo River . When the Yellow Emperor died, he was succeeded by Changyi's son, Zhuan Xu . The chronological tables found in chapters 13 of the Shiji represent all past rulers – legendary ones such as Yao and Shun,

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2574-463: A unified China in 221 BC, Huangdi had become by far the most important of the four "thearchs" ( di 帝 ) who were then worshiped at Yong. The figure of Huangdi had appeared sporadically in Warring States texts. Sima Qian 's Shiji (or Records of the Grand Historian , completed around 94 BC) was the first work to turn these fragments of myths into a systematic and consistent narrative of

2691-477: A very thick wall in medieval Europe, what is usually meant is a wall of 2.5 metres (8 ft 2 in) in width, which would have been considered thin in a Chinese context. There are some exceptions such as the Hillfort of Otzenhausen , a Celtic ringfort with a thickness of 40 metres (130 ft) in some parts, but Celtic fort-building practices died out in the early medieval period. Andrade goes on to note that

2808-525: A wall at a Liangzhu culture site, a stone wall at Sanxingdui , and several tamped earthen walls at the Longshan culture site. In 15th century BC the Shang dynasty constructed large walls around the site of Ao with dimensions of 20 metres (66 ft) in width at the base and enclosed an area of some 2,100 yards (1,900 m) squared. Walls of similar dimensions were also found at the ancient capital of

2925-403: A work on the sovereigns of antiquity, commented that Xuanyuan was the name of a hill where Huangdi had lived and that he later took as a name. The Classic of Mountains and Seas mentions a Xuanyuan nation whose inhabitants have human faces, snake bodies, and tails twisting above their heads; Yuan Ke , a contemporary scholar of early Chinese mythology, "noted that the appearance of these people

3042-635: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article about a building or structure in China is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Chinese city wall Chinese city walls ( traditional Chinese : 城牆 ; simplified Chinese : 城墙 ; pinyin : chéngqiáng ; lit. 'city wall') refer to defensive walls built to protect important towns and cities in pre-modern China . In addition to walls, Chinese city defenses also included fortified towers and gates , as well as moats and ramparts around

3159-444: Is a "novel etymology" likening huang 黄 to the phonetically close wang 尪 (the "burned shaman" in Shang rainmaking rituals), Lewis suggests that "Huang" in "Huangdi" might originally have meant "rainmaking shaman" or "rainmaking ritual." Citing late Warring States and early Han versions of Huangdi's myth, he further argues that the figure of the Yellow Emperor originated in ancient rain-making rituals in which Huangdi represented

3276-437: Is also a mirror called the "Xuanyuan Mirror". In the second century AD, Huangdi's role as a deity was diminished because of the rise of a deified Laozi . A state sacrifice offered to "Huang-Lao jun" was not offered to Huangdi and Laozi, as the term Huang-Lao would have meant a few centuries earlier, "yellow Laozi". Nonetheless, Huangdi kept being considered as an immortal: he was seen as a master of longevity techniques and as

3393-497: Is characteristic of gods and suggested that they may reflect the form of the Yellow Thearch himself". The Qing dynasty scholar Liang Yusheng ( 梁玉繩 , 1745–1819) argued instead that the hill was named after the Yellow Emperor. Xuanyuan is also the name of the star Regulus in Chinese, the star being associated with Huangdi in traditional astronomy. He is also associated to the broader constellations Leo and Lynx , of which

3510-548: Is credited with teaching his people how to build shelters, tame wild animals, and grow the Five Grains , although other accounts credit Shennong with the last. He invents carts, boats, and clothing. Other inventions credited to the emperor include the Chinese diadem ( 冠冕 ), throne rooms ( 宮室 ), the bow sling , early Chinese astronomy , the Chinese calendar , math calculations, code of sound laws ( 音律 ), coins and

3627-540: Is explained in the Shuowen jiezi to derive from guāng 光 , "light") and thunder, and as one and the same with the "Thunder God" ( 雷神 Léishén ), who in turn, as a later mythological character, is distinguished as the Yellow Emperor's foremost pupil, such as in the Huangdi Neijing . The Chinese historian Sima Qian  – and much Chinese historiography following him – considered

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3744-544: Is often regarded in the West as arising from Laozi , many Chinese Taoists claim the Yellow Emperor formulated many of their precepts, including the quest for "long life". The Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon ( 黃帝內經 Huángdì Nèijīng ), which presents the doctrinal basis of traditional Chinese medicine , was named after him. He was also credited with composing the Four Books of the Yellow Emperor ( 黃帝四經 Huángdì Sìjīng ),

3861-567: Is rooted in the hearts of the descendants of the Yellow Emperor," whereas in 1986 the PRC acclaimed the Chinese-American astronaut Taylor Wang as the first of the Yellow Emperor's descendants to travel in space . In the first half of the 1980s, the Party had internally debated whether this usage would make ethnic minorities feel excluded. After consulting experts from Beijing University ,

3978-490: Is unclear, but historians have formulated several hypotheses about it. Yang Kuan , a member of the Doubting Antiquity School (1920s–40s), argued that the Yellow Emperor was derived from Shangdi , the highest god of the Shang dynasty . Yang reconstructs the etymology as follows: Shangdi 上帝 → Huang Shangdi 皇上帝 → Huangdi 皇帝 → Huangdi 黄帝 , in which he claims that huang 黃 ("yellow") either

4095-802: The Yellow Emperor's Book of the Hidden Symbol ( 黃帝陰符經 Huángdì Yīnfújīng ), and the "Yellow Emperor's Four Seasons Poem(軒轅黃帝四季詩)" included in the Tung Shing fortune-telling almanac. "Xuanyuan (+ number)" is also the Chinese name for Regulus and other stars of the constellations Leo and Lynx , of which the latter is said to represent the body of the Yellow Dragon. In the Hall of Supreme Harmony in Beijing's Forbidden City , there

4212-547: The 1911 Revolution , which overthrew the Qing dynasty. In 1912, for instance, banknotes carrying Huangdi's effigy were issued by the new Republican government. After 1911, however, the Yellow Emperor as national symbol changed from first progenitor of the Han race to ancestor of China's entire multi-ethnic population. Under the ideology of the Five Races Under One Union , Huangdi became the common ancestor of

4329-836: The Chinese Academy of Social Science , and the Central Nationalities Institute , the Central Propaganda Department recommended on March 27, 1985, that the Party speak of the Zhonghua Minzu  – the "Chinese nation" broadly defined – in official statements, but that the phrase "sons and grand-sons of Yandi and the Yellow Emperor" could be used in informal statements by party leaders and in "relations with Hong Kong and Taiwanese compatriots and overseas Chinese compatriots". After retreating to Taiwan in late 1949 at

4446-580: The Dangun legend . Sima Qian 's Records of the Grand Historian describes the Yellow Emperor's ancestral name as Gongsun ( 公孫 ). In Han dynasty texts, the Yellow Emperor is also called upon as the "Yellow God" ( 黃神 Huángshén ). Certain accounts interpret him as the incarnation of the "Yellow God of the Northern Dipper " ( 黄神北斗 Huángshén Běidǒu ), another name of the universal god ( Shangdi 上帝 or Tiandi 天帝 ). According to

4563-548: The Eastern Han dynasty local gentry, clansmen, and villagers built more confined defensive structures in the form of square forts known as wū bì (塢壁). These were erected in remote countrysides and had particularly high walls, cornered watchtowers, and gates to the front and back. According to Stephen Turnbull, the wū bì are the closest approximation to the concept of a European castle that has ever existed in Chinese history. According to Jan van Linschoten, writing in 1596,

4680-685: The Five Regions Highest Deities ( Chinese : 五方上帝 ; pinyin : Wǔfāng Shàngdì ) in Chinese folk religion . Regarded as the initiator of Chinese culture , he is traditionally credited with numerous innovations – including the lunar calendar ( Chinese calendar ), Taoism , wooden houses, boats, carts, the compass needle , "the earliest forms of writing ", and cuju , a ball game. Calculated by Jesuit missionaries , as based on various Chinese chronicles, Huangdi's traditional reign dates begin in either 2698 or 2697 BC, spanning one hundred years exactly, later accepted by

4797-579: The Former Han capital of Chang'an , the city wall constructed around 200 BC by Yang Yangcheng was 15m tall and 12m wide. It was also protected by a moat 45m wide with a depth of 4.5m. During the Yuan dynasty , Suzhou 's walls were over 7m tall and, 11m thick at the base, and 5m thick at the top. During the Ming dynasty , prefectural and provincial capital walls were 10 to 20 metres (33 to 66 ft) thick at

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4914-457: The Great Wall of Qi , which was built with a variety of different materials and construction techniques - such as one section being made of stones and another section being made of rammed earth. The walls of Han dynasty Chang'an were completed in 189 BC and covered a perimeter of 25.5 km while the later Eastern Han capital of Luoyang measured 4.3 km by 3.7 km. By the end of

5031-728: The Han Chinese , the Manchu people , the Mongols , the Tibetans , and the Hui people , who were said to form the Zhonghua minzu , a broadly understood Chinese nation. Sixteen state ceremonies were held between 1911 and 1949 to Huangdi as the "founding ancestor of the Chinese nation " ( 中華民族始祖 ) and even "the founding ancestor of human civilization" ( 人文始祖 ). The cult of the Yellow Emperor

5148-807: The Mausoleum of the Yellow Emperor in Huangling , Yan'an , in mainland China. Gay studies researcher Louis Crompton has cited Ji Yun 's report in his popular Notes from the Yuewei Hermitage (1800), that some claimed the Yellow Emperor was the first Chinese to take male bedmates, a claim that Ji Yun dismissed. Ji Yun argued that this was probably a false attribution. Today, Xuanyuanjiao based on Taiwan represents an organised form of Yellow Emperor worship married to Confucian orthodoxy. As with any myth, there are numerous versions of Huangdi's story, emphasizing different themes and interpreting

5265-484: The Qin dynasty coined the title huangdi ( 皇帝 ) – conventionally translated as " emperor " – to refer to himself, the character di 帝 did not refer to earthly rulers but to the highest god of the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BC) pantheon. In the Warring States period (c. 475–221 BC), the term di on its own could also refer to the deities associated with the five Sacred Mountains of China and colors. Huangdi ( 黃帝 ),

5382-491: The Tongmenghui , featured the Yellow Emperor on its cover and called Huangdi "the first great nationalist of the world." It was one of several nationalist magazines that featured the Yellow Emperor on their cover in the early twentieth century. The fact that Huangdi meant "yellow" emperor also served to buttress the theory that he was the originator of the "yellow race". Many historians interpret this sudden popularity of

5499-699: The Yan Emperor were both leaders of a tribe or a combination of two tribes near the Yellow River . The Yan Emperor hailed from a different area around the Jiang River , which a geographical work called the Shuijingzhu identified as a stream near Qishan in what was the Zhou homeland before they defeated the Shang. Both emperors lived in a time of warfare. The Yan Emperor proving unable to control

5616-717: The Zhou dynasty overthrew the Shang dynasty in the eleventh century BC, Zhou leaders reinterpreted Shang myths as meaning that the Shang had vanquished a real political dynasty, which was eventually named the Xia dynasty . By Han times – as seen in Sima Qian 's account in the Shiji – the Yellow Emperor, who as lord of the underworld had been symbolically linked to the Xia, had become a historical ruler whose descendants were thought to have founded

5733-473: The "yellow di ", was one of the latter. To emphasize the religious meaning of di in pre-imperial times, historians of early China commonly translate the god's name as "Yellow Thearch" and the first emperor's title as "August Thearch", in which "thearch" refers to a godly ruler. In the late Warring States period, the Yellow Emperor was integrated into the cosmological scheme of the Five Phases , in which

5850-464: The 1920s by historians such as Gu Jiegang , one of the founders of the Doubting Antiquity School in China. In their attempts to prove that the earliest figures of Chinese history were mythological, Gu and his followers argued that these ancient sages were originally gods who were later depicted as humans by the rationalist intellectuals of the Warring States period. Yang Kuan , a member of

5967-615: The 1950s. But apart from the Forbidden City, whose walls remain well-preserved, city walls from the Ming dynasty have suffered wholesale demolition in the decades since. The only surviving sections are Qianmen 's gate and arrow tower, Deshengmen 's arrow tower, a section of the wall and Southeast Corner Tower preserved in the Ming City Wall Relics Park , and the Xibianmen corner tower. The Yongdingmen Gate

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6084-480: The Chinese Communists could not take the city of Tatung is a puzzle, although they besieged it for 45 days last summer. All you need to do is to look at the outer wall, and then the inner ones.... In places, the masonry is at least 50 feet thick. Communist artillery shells may have been able to play havoc with the old wooden drum tower above one gate, but they could not make more than dents and scratches on

6201-546: The Chinese evidently did not have castles or fortresses, but only city walls for defense: All the Townes in that Countrie are walled about with stone Walles, and have Ditches of water round about them for their Securitie; they use no Fortresse nor Castles, but onely upon every Gate of the Towne they have strong Towers, wherein they place their Ordnance for the defence of ye Towne. They use all kinde of armes, as Calivers, etc. Under

6318-549: The Communists, sponsored the production of the movie Children of the Yellow Emperor ( Huangdi zisun 黃帝子孫 ), which was filmed mostly in Taiwanese Hokkien and showed extensive passages of Taiwanese folk opera . Directed by Bai Ke (1914–1964), a former assistant of Yuan Muzhi , it was a propaganda effort to convince speakers of Taiyu that they were linked to mainland people by common blood. In 2009 Ma Ying-jeou

6435-453: The French "braggarts by nature." In fact twentieth century explosive shells had some difficulty creating a breach in tamped earthen walls. We fought our way to Nanking and joined in the attack on the enemy capital in December. It was our unit which stormed the Chunghua Gate. We attacked continuously for about a week, battering the brick and earth walls with artillery, but they never collapsed. The night of December 11, men in my unit breached

6552-410: The Ming dynasty, enclosed an area large enough to house an airport, bamboo forests, and lakes in modern times. Gates were placed symmetrically along the walls. The principal gate was traditionally located at the centre of the south wall. Gatehouses were generally built of wood and brick , which sat atop a raised and expanded section of the wall, surrounded by crenellated battlements. A tunnel ran under

6669-436: The Sui dynasty, the capital of Chang'an was renamed Da Xingcheng and its outer wall was expanded to cover a perimeter of 35 km. Under the Tang dynasty, the capital of Chang'an's outer walls measured 9.72 km east to west by 8.65 km north to south. Under the Jin dynasty the capital of Zhongdu had walls covering a perimeter of 24 km and reached a height of 12m. The oldest form of wall construction in China

6786-428: The Xia. Given that the earliest extant mention of the Yellow Emperor was on a fourth-century BC Chinese bronze inscription claiming that he was the ancestor of the royal house of the state of Qi , Lothar von Falkenhausen speculates that Huangdi was invented as an ancestral figure as part of a strategy to claim that all ruling clans in the " Zhou dynasty culture sphere" shared common ancestry. Explicit accounts of

6903-429: The Yellow Emperor as a reaction to the theories of French scholar Albert Terrien de Lacouperie (1845–94), who in a book called The Western Origin of the Early Chinese Civilization, from 2300 B.C. to 200 A.D. (1892) had claimed that Chinese civilization was founded around 2300 BCE by Babylonian immigrants. Lacouperie's " Sino-Babylonianism " posited that Huangdi was a Mesopotamian tribal leader who had led

7020-401: The Yellow Emperor started to appear in Chinese texts during the Warring States period . The earliest extant mention of Huangdi is an inscription on the Chen Hou Yinqi dui ( 陳侯因齊敦 ), cast during the first half of the fourth century BC by the royal family (surnamed Tian 田 ) of the state of Qi , a powerful eastern state. As the Tian family had usurped the throne of Qi , establishing such

7137-407: The Yellow Emperor to be a more historical figure than earlier legendary figures such as Fu Xi , Nüwa , and Shennong . Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian begins with the Yellow Emperor, while passing over the others. Throughout most of Chinese history, the Yellow Emperor and the other ancient sages were considered to be historical figures. Their historicity started to be questioned in

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7254-605: The Yellow Emperor's "career". The Shiji ' s account was extremely influential in shaping how the Chinese viewed the origin of their history. The Shiji begins its chronological account of Chinese history with the life of Huangdi, whom it presents as a sage sovereign from antiquity. It recounts that Huangdi's father was Shaodian and his mother was Fubao ( 附寶 ). The Yellow Emperor had four wives. His first wife Leizu of Xiling bore him two sons. His other three wives were his second wife Fenglei ( 封嫘 ), third wife Tongyu ( 彤魚 ) and fourth wife Momu ( 嫫母 ). The emperor had

7371-476: The Yellow Race ( Huangshi 黃史 ), which was published serially from 1905 to 1908, Huang Jie ( 黃節 ; 1873–1935) claimed that the "Han race" was the true master of China because it was descended from the Yellow Emperor. Reinforced by the values of filial piety and the Chinese patrilineal clan , the racial vision defended by Huang and others turned vengeance against the Manchus into a duty owed to one's ancestors. The Yellow Emperor continued to be revered after

7488-622: The availability of resources and the time period - ranging from stones to bricks to rammed earth. Sometimes, different sections of the same wall used different materials and construction techniques - such as one section being made of stones and another section being made of rammed earth. By the medieval period, Chinese walls with rammed earthen cores which absorbed the energy of artillery shots were common. Rammed earth walls also helped prevent intrusion by mining since only localized sections would collapse. Walls were constructed using wooden frameworks which were filled with layers of earth tamped down to

7605-410: The base and 5 to 10 metres (16 to 33 ft) at the top. Most Chinese walls were sloped rather than vertical. Sometimes the walls were raised on a plinth or supporting platform. Aside from the wall itself were attached watch towers and gate towers, usually two or three stories tall. Wall bricks came in many dimensions depending on regional variations. In the north, 30 cm x 23 cm x 15 cm

7722-437: The brick work. Andrade goes on to question whether or not Europeans would have developed large artillery pieces in the first place had they faced the more formidable Chinese style walls, coming to the conclusion that such exorbitant investments in weapons unable to serve their primary purpose would not have been ideal. The city walls of Beijing , the last imperial capital of China, survived in substantially complete form into

7839-399: The character chéng (城) denoted the defensive wall of the "inner city" which housed government buildings. The character guō (郭) denoted the defensive wall of the "outer city", housing mainly residences. The phrase chángchéng (長城), literally "the long wall", refers to the Great Wall. Colloquially chéng referred to both the walls and city so that both were synonymous with each other. A city

7956-426: The city of Suzhou has renovated the old wall and built many other attractions around the original gate in the Pan Gate Scenic Area. The present structure was built in the 11th year of the reign of Zhizheng (1333-1370 AD) at the end of the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368). 31°17′21″N 120°36′43″E  /  31.28917°N 120.61194°E  / 31.28917; 120.61194 This Suzhou -related article

8073-435: The city wall is attributed to the semi-historical sage Gun (鯀) of the Xia dynasty , father of Yu the Great . The traditional narrative tells that Gun built the inner wall to defend the prince and the outer wall to settle the people. An alternative narrative attributes the first city wall to the Yellow Emperor . A number of neolithic walls surrounding substantial settlements have been excavated in recent years. These include

8190-422: The city wall of Shanghai is visible today. Here is a full list of cities with intact city walls: Yellow Emperor The Yellow Emperor , also known as the Yellow Thearch or by his Chinese name Huangdi ( / ˈ hw ɑː ŋ ˈ d iː / ), is a mythical Chinese sovereign and culture hero included among the legendary Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors , and an individual deity ( shen ) or part of

8307-408: The city walls protecting the Confucian compound in Qufu are authentic, the rest having been demolished in 1978 and rebuilt in recent years. Some isolated gates of Hangzhou and Suzhou (especially Panmen Gate) have either survived or been rebuilt. Substantial remains of the gates of Zhengding in Hebei have survived but the walls have largely been stripped to their earthen core. One small section of

8424-529: The color yellow represents the earth phase , the Yellow Dragon , and the center. The correlation of the colors in association with different dynasties was mentioned in the Lüshi Chunqiu (late 3rd century BC), where the Yellow Emperor's reign was seen to be governed by earth. The character huang 黃 ("yellow") was often used in place of the homophonous huang 皇 , which means "august" (in

8541-530: The concept of money , and cuju , an early Chinese version of football. He is also sometimes said to have been partially responsible for the invention of the guqin zither , although others credit the Yan Emperor with inventing instruments for Ling Lun 's compositions. There are other major traditions where Fuxi was the one who invented the calendar and the Yellow Emperor merely reformed and intercalated it. In traditional accounts, he also goads

8658-456: The empire, but all these paled in comparison to contemporary Chinese walls, which could reach a thickness of 20 metres (66 ft) at the base in extreme cases. Even the walls of Constantinople which have been described as "the most famous and complicated system of defence in the civilized world," could not match up to a major Chinese city wall. Had both the outer and inner walls of Constantinople been combined, they would have only reached roughly

8775-713: The end of the Chinese Civil War , Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang (KMT) ruled that the Republic of China (ROC) would keep paying homage to the Yellow Emperor on April 4, the National Tomb Sweeping Day , but neither he nor the three presidents that succeeded him ever paid homage in person. In 1955, the KMT, which was led by Mandarin speakers and still poised on retaking the mainland from

8892-575: The first ancestors of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties, as well as the founders of the main ruling houses in the Zhou sphere – as descendants of Huangdi, giving the impression that Chinese history was the history of one large family. The Dai Dai Liji ( 大戴禮記 ), compiled by Dai De towards the end of the Western Han dynasty , carries a quote attributed to Confucius: 生而民得其利百年, 死而民畏其神百年, 亡而民用其教百年, 故曰三百年. When [the Yellow Emperor]

9009-410: The gatehouse, with several metal gates and wooden doors. Camouflaged defensive positions are placed along the tunnel (in an effect similar to murder holes ). Gatehouses were accessed by ramps, called horse ramps or bridle paths, ( Chinese : 马道 ; pinyin : mǎdào ), which sat against the wall adjacent to the gate. An "archery tower" was often placed in front of the main gatehouse, forming

9126-636: The historian Cangjie into creating the first Chinese character writing system, the Oracle bone script , and his principal wife Leizu invents sericulture and teaches his people how to weave silk and dye clothes. At one point in his reign the Yellow Emperor allegedly visited the mythical East sea and met a talking beast called the Bai Ze who taught him the knowledge of all supernatural creatures. This beast explained to him there were 11,522 (or 1,522) kinds of supernatural creatures. The Yellow Emperor and

9243-406: The latter is said to represent the body of the Yellow Dragon ( 黃龍 Huánglóng ), Huangdi's animal form. Huangdi was also referred to as "Youxiong" ( 有熊 ; Yǒuxióng ). This name has been interpreted as either a place name or a clan name. According to British sinologist Herbert Allen Giles (1845–1935), that name was "taken from that of [Huangdi's] hereditary principality". William Nienhauser,

9360-668: The main character's significance in different ways. According to Huangfu Mi (215–282), the Yellow Emperor was born in Shou Qiu ("Longevity Hill"), which is today on the outskirts of the city of Qufu in Shandong. Early on, he lived with his tribe near the Ji River – Edwin Pulleyblank states that "there seems to be no record of a Ji River outside the myth" – and later migrated to Zhuolu in modern-day Hebei . He then became

9477-476: The main wall, connect the archery tower with the main gatehouse, enclosing a rectangular area. This area serves as a buffer zone, should the first gate be breached. Its Chinese name, "jar walls", refers to the intended strategy whereby attackers coming through the archery tower would be trapped in the barbican, open to attack from all sides. In large gates there may be multiple barbicans – the main gate of Nanjing ( Gate of China, Nanjing ) had three barbicans, forming

9594-443: The mid-twentieth century a European expert in fortification commented on their immensity: "in China … the principal towns are surrounded to the present day by walls so substantial, lofty, and formidable that the medieval fortifications of Europe are puny in comparison." Chinese walls were thick. Ming prefectural and provincial capital walls were 10 to 20 metres (33 to 66 ft) thick at the base and 5 to 10 metres (16 to 33 ft) at

9711-414: The most elaborate system still in existence in China. Towers that protruded from the wall were located at regular intervals along the wall. Large and elaborate towers, called corner towers (角楼, Jiǎolóu ), were placed where two walls joined (i.e. at corners). These were significantly higher than the wall itself, and gave defenders a bird's eye view over both the city and its surroundings. In larger cities,

9828-404: The power of rain and clouds, whereas his mythical rival Chiyou (or the Yan Emperor ) stood for fire and drought. Also disagreeing with Yang Kuan's hypothesis, Sarah Allan finds it unlikely that such a popular myth as the Yellow Emperor's could have come from a taboo character. She argues instead that pre-Shang "'history'," including the story of the Yellow Emperor, "can all be understood as

9945-581: The racial consciousness they thought was missing from their compatriots, and thus depicted the Manchus as racially inferior barbarians who were unfit to rule over Han Chinese . Chen's widely circulated pamphlets claimed that the "Han race" formed one big family descended from the Yellow Emperor. The first issue (Nov. 1905) of the Minbao 民報 ("People's Journal"), which was founded in Tokyo by revolutionaries of

10062-435: The rank of the city in the administrative hierarchy. The size of the enclosed area of the typical walled city decreases southward, indicative of the magnitude of regional urbanization in Ming times or earlier. At later dates, an outer wall was often erected to enclose settlement that had spread outside the city, and in many cases "multiple cities" were developed at the same locality. Long-term strategic considerations meant that

10179-607: The same current of historiography , noted that only in the Warring States period had the Yellow Emperor started to be described as the first ruler of China. Yang thus argued that Huangdi was a later transformation of Shangdi , the supreme god of the Shang dynasty 's pantheon . Also in the 1920s, French scholars Henri Maspero and Marcel Granet published critical studies of China's accounts of high antiquity. In his Danses et légendes de la Chine ancienne ["Dances and legends of ancient China"], for example, Granet argued that these tales were "historicized legends" that said more about

10296-516: The same plan created by Wu Zixu in the 5th century BC. and lasted until their demolition in the 1960s and 1970s. Sieges of city walls (along with naval battles) were portrayed on bronze 'hu' vessels dated to the Warring States (5th century BC to 3rd century BC), like those found in Chengdu , Sichuan , China in 1965. An example of walls built the Spring and Autumn to Warring States can include

10413-473: The sense of 'distinguished') or "radiant", giving Huangdi attributes close to those of Shangdi, the Shang supreme god. The Records of the Grand Historian , compiled by Sima Qian in the first century BC, gives the Yellow Emperor's name as "Xuan Yuan" ( traditional Chinese : 軒轅 ; simplified Chinese : 轩辕 ; pinyin : Xuān Yuán < Old Chinese ( B-S ) * qʰa[r]-[ɢ]ʷa[n] , lit. "Chariot Shaft" ). Third-century scholar Huangfu Mi , who wrote

10530-518: The sewer network below the Beijing city wall in the 16th century. In addition to tamped earth, Chinese walls were sometimes reinforced with wood. A study of Han forts in Xinjiang found that they had brushwood and poplar interspersed between the layers of tamped earth. Remains of city walls have been found as early as 15th century BC during the Shang dynasty , which constructed large walls around

10647-430: The site of Ao with dimensions of 20 metres (66 ft) in width at the base and enclosed an area of some 2,100 yards (1,900 m) squared. Walls of similar dimensions are also found at the ancient capital of the state of Zhao , Handan (founded in 386 BC), with a width of 20 metres (66 ft) at the base, a height of 15 metres (49 ft), and a length of 1,530 yards (1,400 m) along its two rectangular sides. At

10764-490: The state of Zhao , Handan (founded in 386 BC), also with a width of 20 metres (66 ft) at the base, a height of 15 metres (49 ft), and a length of 1,530 yards (1,400 m) along its two rectangular sides. Most settlements of significant size possessed a city wall from the Zhou dynasty onwards. The city wall of Pingyao was first constructed between 827 BC and 782 BC during the reign of King Xuan of Zhou . The city walls of Suzhou followed afterward under largely

10881-419: The state of Qi, Robin D. S. Yates hypothesizes that Huang–Lao originated in that region. The cult of Huangdi became very popular during the Warring States period (5th century – 221 BC), a period of intense competition between rival states which ended with the unification of the realm by the state of Qin . In addition to his role as ancestor, he became associated with "centralized statecraft" and emerged as

10998-407: The statues became filled with the breath of creation and eventually began to move [after the 300 years]. Huang Di...received his magic powers when he was 100 years old. He [became a xian ] and, riding a dragon , rose to heaven where he became one of the five [ Wufang Shangdi ]. Huang Di himself rules over the fifth cardinal point, the centre." In traditional Chinese accounts, the Yellow Emperor

11115-469: The time when they were written than about the time they purported to describe. In the "middle of the [20th] century, a group of" Chinese "historians proposed the theory that [the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors ]" were originally Chinese gods who became thought of as human during the later period of the Zhou dynasty . Most scholars now agree that the Yellow Emperor originated as a god who

11232-522: The top. In Europe the height of wall construction was reached under the Roman Empire , whose walls often reached 10 metres (33 ft) in height, the same as many Chinese city walls, but were only 1.5 to 2.5 metres (4 ft 11 in to 8 ft 2 in) thick. Rome's Servian Walls reached 3.6 and 4 metres (12 and 13 ft) in thickness and 6 to 10 metres (20 to 33 ft) in height. Other fortifications also reached these specifications across

11349-415: The twentieth-century promoters of a universal calendar starting with the Yellow Emperor. Huangdi's cult is first attested in the Warring States period , and became prominent late in that same period and into the early Han dynasty , when he was portrayed as the originator of the centralized state, as a cosmic ruler, and as a patron of esoteric arts. A large number of texts – such as the Huangdi Neijing ,

11466-405: The two Japanese authors advocated. Anti-Manchu intellectuals and activists who searched for China's "national essence" ( guocui 國粹 ) adapted Sino-Babylonianism to their needs. Zhang Binglin explained Huangdi's battle with Chi You as a conflict opposing the newly arrived civilized Mesopotamians to backward local tribes, a battle that transformed China into one of the most civilized places in

11583-448: The wall. The morning came with most of our unit still behind us, but we were beyond the wall. Behind the gate great heaps of sandbags were piled up. We 'cleared them away, removed the lock, and opened the gates, with a great creaking noise. We'd done it! We'd opened the fortress! All the enemy ran away, so we didn't take any fire. The residents too were gone. When we passed beyond the fortress wall we thought we had occupied this city. Why

11700-415: The walls had all been destroyed and the enemy thus able to penetrate, their exhausted forces could hardly meet the fresh strength of the defenders. Even in modern warfare city walls continued to play a vital role in the Chinese concept of effective defense. While China was the birthplace of gunpowder the guns there remained relatively small and light, weighing 80 kilograms or less for the large ones, and only

11817-1282: The walls of Pingyao in Shanxi , Dali in Yunnan , Jingzhou in Hubei , and Xingcheng in Liaoning . Smaller garrison towns or fortifications include Diaoyu near Chongqing, Wanping county fortifications near Marco Polo Bridge in Beijing, the garrison town of Shanhai Pass , Jinyuan District in Taiyuan, Wanquan District in Zhangjiakou, Yongtai turtle town, Guangfu Ancient City in Hebei, Zhaoqing in Guangdong, and Qiansuo in Huludao , Liaoning. Isolated remnants and some modern recreations can be seen today in many other cities. The walls of Luoyang in Henan survive as heavily eroded remains. The surviving walls of Shangqiu in Henan , while extensive, have heavily deteriorated over time. Only small parts of

11934-485: The walls of important cities often enclosed an area much larger than existing urban areas in order to ensure excess capacity for growth, and to secure resources such as timber and farmland in times of war. The city wall of Quanzhou in Fujian still contained one quarter vacant land by 1945. The city wall of Suzhou by the Republic of China era still enclosed large tracts of farmland. The City Wall of Nanjing , built during

12051-428: The walls of the marketplace of Chang'an were thicker than the walls of major European capitals. Aside from their immense size, Chinese walls were also structurally different from the ones built in medieval Europe. Medieval European walls for castles were mostly constructed of stone interspersed with gravel or rubble filling and bonded by limestone mortar. Chinese walls used a variety of different materials depending on

12168-437: The walls. The most specific Chinese word for a city wall is chéngqiáng (城墙), which can be used in two senses in the modern Chinese language. It broadly refers to all defensive walls , including the Great Wall of China , as well as similar defensive structures in areas outside of China such as Hadrian's Wall . More specifically Chengqiang refers to defensive walls built around a city or town. However, in classical Chinese ,

12285-495: The world. Zhang's reinterpretation of Sima Qian's account "underscored the need to recover the glory of early China." Liu Shipei also presented these early times as the golden age of Chinese civilization. In addition to tying the Chinese to an ancient center of human civilization in Mesopotamia, Lacouperie's theories suggested that China should be ruled by the descendants of Huangdi. In a controversial essay called History of

12402-412: Was a variant Chinese character for huang 皇 ("august") or was used as a way to avoid the naming taboo for the latter. Yang's view has been criticized by Mitarai Masaru and by Michael Puett. Historian Mark Edward Lewis agrees that huang 黄 and huang 皇 were often interchangeable, but disagreeing with Yang, he claims that huang meaning "yellow" appeared first. Based on what he admits

12519-414: Was alive, people benefited from his rule for a hundred years; after he died, people stood in awe of his spirit for a hundred years; after [his spirit] disappeared, people used his teachings for a hundred years. For this reason, people say [that the Yellow Emperor lived for] three hundred years. The Yellow Emperor was credited with an enormous number of cultural legacies and esoteric teachings. While Taoism

12636-550: Was first referred to as the ancestor of all Chinese people . Starting in 1903, radical publications started using the projected date of his birth as the first year of the Chinese calendar . Intellectuals such as Liu Shipei (1884–1919) found this practice necessary in order to "preserve the [Han] race" ( baozhong 保種 ) from both dominance by Manchu people and foreign encroachment. Revolutionaries motivated by Anti-Manchuism such as Chen Tianhua (1875–1905), Zou Rong (1885–1905), and Zhang Binglin (1868–1936) tried to foster

12753-616: Was forbidden in the People's Republic of China until the end of the Cultural Revolution. The prohibition was halted during the 1980s when the government reversed itself and resurrected the "Yellow Emperor cult". Starting in the 1980s, the cult was revived and phrases relating to the "Descendants of Yan and Huang" were sometimes used by the Chinese state when referring to people of Chinese descent. In 1984, for example, Deng Xiaoping argued for Chinese unification saying " Taiwan

12870-564: Was it the lack of warfare, which other historians have suggested to be the case, but does not stand up to scrutiny as walls were a constant factor of war which stood in the way of many Chinese armies since time immemorial into the twentieth century. The answer Andrade provides is simply that Chinese walls were much less vulnerable to bombardment. Andrade argues that traditional Chinese walls were built differently from medieval European walls in ways which made them more resistant to cannon fire. Chinese walls were bigger than medieval European walls. In

12987-451: Was later represented as a historical person. K. C. Chang sees Huangdi and other cultural heroes as "ancient religious figures" who were " euhemerized " in the late Warring States and Han periods. Historian of ancient China Mark Edward Lewis speaks of the Yellow Emperor's "earlier nature as a god", whereas Roel Sterckx , a professor at University of Cambridge , calls Huangdi a "legendary cultural hero". The origin of Huangdi's mythology

13104-476: Was not a city without walls, however large it may be. There is no real city in Northern China without a surrounding wall, a condition which, indeed, is expressed by the fact that the Chinese use the same word Ch'eng for a city and a city wall: for there is no such thing as a city without a wall. It is just as inconceivable as a house without a roof. It matters little how large, important, and well ordered

13221-545: Was of rammed earth . Stone rubble was used for the foundation. Bricks were also used but were less common. From the Zhou dynasty , bricks were made of adobe, until the Han dynasty , when baked bricks became common. It is not certain how common brick faced walls were during the Shang and Zhou dynasties. In the state of Xia (Sixteen Kingdoms) , the Xiongnu engineer Chigan Ali had the workers bake bricks for wall construction, and if

13338-450: Was rebuilt in 2005. Of the walls of other major historical cities, those of Nanjing , Xi'an and Kaifeng are notable for their state of preservation. The walls of Nanjing and Xi'an are Ming dynasty originals with extensive Qing dynasty and modern restorations, while the wall of Kaifeng visible today is largely the result of Qing dynasty restoration. The walls of some smaller cities and towns have survived more or less intact. These include

13455-556: Was the first ROC president to celebrate the Tomb Sweeping Day rituals for Huangdi in person, on which occasion he proclaimed that both Chinese culture and common descent from the Yellow Emperor united people from Taiwan and the mainland. Later the same year, Lien Chan  – a former Vice President of the Republic of China who is now Honorary Chairman of the Kuomintang  – and his wife Lien Fang Yu paid homage at

13572-434: Was the most common, and in the south, 15 cm x 13 cm x 3 cm. Most imperial capitals and many important cities in the north had the walls of rectangular shape. In areas of rugged relief, however, a square form was usually replaced by one of irregular shape, determined in many cases by topographic conditions. The size of the walled area and the elaboration of wall construction were normally directly proportional to

13689-438: Was to build relatively low and thick walls of packed earth, which could both withstand the force of cannon balls and support their own, defensive cannon. Chinese wall-building practice was, by happenstance, extremely resistant to all forms of battering. This held true into the twentieth century, when even modern explosive shells had some difficulty in breaking through tamped earth walls. The Chinese Wall Theory essentially rests on

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