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64-415: The first Ming emperor was proclaimed in 1368 and a great deal of preparation was done prior to this to have an imperial city and all the imperial trappings ready. The name of the city was changed again to Yingtianfu (responding to heaven). A "new city" was built to the east of the old one to be used as a new palace or "forbidden" city. This city was laid out in much the same pattern as Beijing; indeed Nanjing’s

128-670: A Jesuit missionary in China, wrote the first book that used the Latin alphabet to write Chinese, entitled Xizi Qiji ( 西字奇蹟 ; 'Miracle of Western Letters') and published in Beijing in 1605. Twenty years later, fellow Jesuit Nicolas Trigault published 'Aid to the Eyes and Ears of Western Literati' ( 西儒耳目資 ; Xīrú ěrmù zī )) in Hangzhou. Neither book had any influence among

192-404: A tone number at the end of individual syllables. For example, tóng is written tong . Each tone can be denoted with its numeral the order listed above. The neutral tone can either be denoted with no numeral, with 0, or with 5. Briefly, tone marks should always be placed in the order a, e, i, o, u, ü , with the only exceptions being iu and io where the tone mark is placed on

256-637: A GB recommendation in 1996, and were last updated in 2012. In practice, however, published materials in China now often space pinyin syllable by syllable. According to Victor H. Mair , this practice became widespread after the Script Reform Committee, previously under direct control of the State Council , had its power greatly weakened in 1985 when it was renamed the State Language Commission and placed under

320-400: A common practice in some sub-dialects, is rarely used in official publications. Even though most initials contain a consonant, finals are not always simple vowels, especially in compound finals ( 复韵母 ; 複韻母 ; fùyùnmǔ ), i.e. when a "medial" is placed in front of the final. For example, the medials [ i ] and [ u ] are pronounced with such tight openings at the beginning of

384-498: A final that some native Chinese speakers (especially when singing) pronounce yī ( 衣 ; 'clothes'), officially pronounced /í/ , as /jí/ and wéi ( 围 ; 圍 ; 'to enclose'), officially pronounced /uěi/ , as /wěi/ or /wuěi/ . Often these medials are treated as separate from the finals rather than as part of them; this convention is followed in the chart of finals below. The conventional lexicographical order derived from bopomofo is: In each cell below,

448-473: A front high rounded vowel, namely after the letters j , q , x , and y . For example, the sound of the word for 'fish' ( 鱼 ; 魚 ) is transcribed in pinyin simply as yú , not as * yǘ . This practice is opposed to Wade–Giles, which always uses ü , and Tongyong Pinyin , which always uses yu . Whereas Wade–Giles needs the umlaut to distinguish between chü (pinyin ju ) and chu (pinyin zhu ), this ambiguity does not arise with pinyin, so

512-773: A transliteration system for Chinese, his discussion ultimately led to a proliferation of proposed schemes. The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and further improved by Herbert Giles , presented in Chinese–English Dictionary (1892). It was popular, and was used in English-language publications outside China until 1979. In 1943, the US military tapped Yale University to develop another romanization system for Mandarin Chinese intended for pilots flying over China—much more than previous systems,

576-652: Is a renowned ancient city gate in China and the city gate with the most complex structure in the world. The city wall of Nanjing was built from 1360 to 1386 under the founder of the Ming dynasty , the Hongwu Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang. In 1368, Zhu Yuanzhang was crowned Emperor, and made Nanjing his capital. The southern and eastern sections of the old city wall from the Tang dynasty were incorporated into

640-662: Is based on the phonological system of Beijing Mandarin. Other romanization schemes have been devised to transcribe those other Chinese varieties, such as Jyutping for Cantonese and Pe̍h-ōe-jī for Hokkien . Based on the "Chinese Romanization" section of ISO 7098:2015, pinyin tone marks should use the symbols from Combining Diacritical Marks , as opposed by the use of Spacing Modifier Letters in bopomofo. Lowercase letters with tone marks are included in GB 2312 and their uppercase counterparts are included in JIS X 0212 ; thus Unicode includes all

704-493: Is both a medial and a coda, the nucleus may be dropped from writing. In this case, when the coda is a consonant n or ng , the only vowel left is the medial i, u , or ü , and so this takes the diacritic. However, when the coda is a vowel, it is the coda rather than the medial which takes the diacritic in the absence of a written nucleus. This occurs with syllables ending in -ui (from wei : wèi → -uì ) and in -iu (from you : yòu → -iù ). That is, in

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768-485: Is closed to the public as it is still used as an army barracks. Parts of other gates survive or have been partially reconstructed. The remains of a west gate, Hanzhongmen, originally called Shichengmen, stand in the middle of a plaza. These walls are part of the last of a series of three or four courtyards that made up the gate complex. During the Qing dynasty three more gates were added, including an entrance to Xuanwu Lake from

832-473: Is distinct from the concept of consonant and vowel sounds as basic units in traditional (and most other phonetic systems used to describe the Chinese language). Every syllable in Standard Chinese can be described as a pair of one initial and one final, except for the special syllable er or when a trailing -r is considered part of a syllable (a phenomenon known as erhua ). The latter case, though

896-656: Is less ubiquitous in Taiwan. It is used to teach Standard Chinese, normally written with Chinese characters , to students already familiar with the Latin alphabet . Pinyin is also used by various input methods on computers and to categorize entries in some Chinese dictionaries . In pinyin, each Chinese syllable is spelled in terms of an optional initial and a final , each of which is represented by one or more letters. Initials are initial consonants, whereas finals are all possible combinations of medials ( semivowels coming before

960-519: Is not limited only to pinyin, since many languages that use the Latin alphabet natively also assign different values to the same letters. A recent study on Chinese writing and literacy concluded, "By and large, pinyin represents the Chinese sounds better than the Wade–Giles system, and does so with fewer extra marks." As pinyin is a phonetic writing system for modern Standard Chinese , it is not designed to replace characters for writing Literary Chinese ,

1024-614: Is not ordinarily reflected in pinyin spelling. Standard Chinese has many polysyllabic words. Like in other writing systems using the Latin alphabet, spacing in pinyin is officially based on word boundaries. However, there are often ambiguities in partitioning a word. The Basic Rules of the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet Orthography were put into effect in 1988 by the National Educational and National Language commissions. These rules became

1088-460: Is sometimes used instead by convention. For example, it is common for cellphones to use v instead of ü . Additionally, some stores in China use v instead of ü in the transliteration of their names. The drawback is a lack of precomposed characters and limited font support for combining accents on the letter v , ( v̄ v́ v̌ v̀ ). This also presents a problem in transcribing names for use on passports, affecting people with names that consist of

1152-513: Is written over an i , then it replaces the tittle, as in yī . In dictionaries, neutral tone may be indicated by a dot preceding the syllable—e.g. ·ma . When a neutral tone syllable has an alternative pronunciation in another tone, a combination of tone marks may be used: zhī·dào ( 知道 ) may be pronounced either zhīdào or zhīdao . Before the advent of computers, many typewriter fonts did not contain vowels with macron or caron diacritics. Tones were thus represented by placing

1216-477: The Ministry of Education . Mair claims that proponents of Chinese characters in the educational bureaucracy "became alarmed that word-based pinyin was becoming a de facto alternative to Chinese characters as a script for writing Mandarin and demanded that all pinyin syllables be written separately." Pinyin superseded older romanization systems such as Wade–Giles and postal romanization , and replaced bopomofo as

1280-638: The "father of pinyin". They based their work in part on earlier romanization systems . The system was originally promulgated at the Fifth Session of the 1st National People's Congress in 1958, and has seen several rounds of revisions since. The International Organization for Standardization propagated Hanyu Pinyin as ISO 7098 in 1982, and the United Nations began using it in 1986. Taiwan adopted Hanyu Pinyin as its official romanization system in 2009, replacing Tongyong Pinyin . Matteo Ricci ,

1344-460: The Beijing and the Xi'an city walls was in the ancient style of square or rectangular design. When it was built by the second son of Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, the 12-kilometre long Xi'an city wall became the seat of local government. It could not match the scale of the capital Nanjing at that time. Today the 600-year-old city wall of Nanjing still stands. Experts from Nanjing Cultural Relic Bureau say most of

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1408-634: The Establishment of Diplomatic Relations between the United States and China in 1979. In 2001, the Chinese government issued the National Common Language Law , providing a legal basis for applying pinyin. The current specification of the orthography is GB/T 16159–2012. Chinese phonology is generally described in terms of sound pairs of two initials ( 声母 ; 聲母 ; shēngmǔ ) and finals ( 韵母 ; 韻母 ; yùnmǔ ). This

1472-546: The Fifth Session of the 1st National People's Congress on 11 February 1958. It was then introduced to primary schools as a way to teach Standard Chinese pronunciation and used to improve the literacy rate among adults. Despite its formal promulgation, pinyin did not become widely used until after the tumult of the Cultural Revolution . In the 1980s, students were trained in pinyin from an early age, learning it in tandem with characters or even before. During

1536-601: The Private Use Areas, and some input methods (e.g. Sogou Pinyin) also outputs the Private Use Areas code point instead of the original character. As the superset GB 18030 changed the mappings of ⟨ḿ⟩ and ⟨ǹ⟩ , this has caused an issue where the input methods and font files use different encoding standards, and thus the input and output of both characters are mixed up. Other symbols are used in pinyin are as follows: The spelling of Chinese geographical or personal names in pinyin has become

1600-465: The Six Dynasties period, and reused many of the bricks from that old wall. Originally, thirteen gates were built through Nanjing’s walls, but this number had grown to eighteen by the end of the Qing dynasty. Of the thirteen original gates, only Zhonghua Gate in the south, originally known as Jubao Gate, and Heping Gate in the north, originally called Shenci Gate, are still standing. Heping Gate

1664-416: The absence of a written nucleus the finals have priority for receiving the tone marker, as long as they are vowels; if not, the medial takes the diacritic. An algorithm to find the correct vowel letter (when there is more than one) is as follows: Worded differently, The above can be summarized as the following table. The vowel letter taking the tone mark is indicated by the fourth-tone mark. Tone sandhi

1728-419: The city to observe the enemy or dodge arrows. Opposite it was the parapet wall used as a balustrade to keep the defenders and horses safe. Standing on the wall, you will see tall ancient trees under your feet. Aside the top wall there are stone sluices to drain rain and near the wall's foundation there are further outlets. The ancient city wall was listed as a key cultural relic under state protection in 1988. It

1792-414: The city was at the foot of a mountain—a natural barrier to control the commanding elevation with the river as its natural city moat. Because of this, the 60-square-kilometre Nanjing city became strategically located and difficult to reach. The wall belonged to a military defensive system too. The difference was that it adopted a winding, free style, based on the city's complicated topography. Construction of

1856-609: The common accented characters from pinyin. Other punctuation mark and symbols in Chinese are to use the equivalent symbol in English noted in to GB 15834. According to GB 16159, all accented letters are required to have both uppercase and lowercase characters as per their normal counterparts. GBK has mapped two characters ⟨ḿ⟩ and ⟨ǹ⟩ to Private Use Areas in Unicode respectively, thus some fonts (e.g. SimSun) that adhere to GBK include both characters in

1920-421: The contemporary Chinese literati, and the romanizations they introduced primarily were useful for Westerners. During the late Qing, the reformer Song Shu (1862–1910) proposed that China adopt a phonetic writing system. A student of the scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan , Song had observed the effect of the kana syllabaries and Western learning during his visits to Japan. While Song did not himself propose

1984-702: The country after the People's Republic was established. Earlier attempts to romanize Chinese writing were mostly abandoned in 1944. Zhou became an economics professor in Shanghai, and when the Ministry of Education created the Committee for the Reform of the Chinese Written Language in 1955, Premier Zhou Enlai assigned him the task of developing a new romanization system, despite the fact that he

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2048-461: The following is an exhaustive table of all possible finals. The only syllable-final consonants in Standard Chinese are -n , -ng , and -r , the last of which is attached as a grammatical suffix . A Chinese syllable ending with any other consonant either is from a non-Mandarin language (a southern Chinese language such as Cantonese , reflecting final consonants in Old Chinese ), or indicates

2112-447: The foundations use granite, rectangle stones or limestone. The walls were packed layer by layer with broken bricks, gravel and yellow earth. All the brickwork joints were poured with mixed lime, water in which glutinous rice had been cooked, and tung oil because the coagulated mixture was very strong. That is why the city wall has stood for a long time. On top of the outer wall were 13,616 crenellations , or battlements, for defenders of

2176-598: The height of the Cold War the use of pinyin system over Wade–Giles and Yale romanizations outside of China was regarded as a political statement or identification with the mainland Chinese government. Beginning in the early 1980s, Western publications addressing mainland China began using the Hanyu Pinyin romanization system instead of earlier romanization systems; this change followed the Joint Communiqué on

2240-441: The initials ⟨ l ⟩ and ⟨ n ⟩ when necessary in order to represent the sound [y] . This is necessary in order to distinguish the front high rounded vowel in lü (e.g. 驴 ; 驢 ; 'donkey') from the back high rounded vowel in lu (e.g. 炉 ; 爐 ; 'oven'). Tonal markers are placed above the umlaut, as in lǘ . However, the ü is not used in the other contexts where it could represent

2304-772: The method of Chinese phonetic instruction in mainland China . The ISO adopted pinyin as the standard romanization for modern Chinese in 1982 (ISO 7098:1982, superseded by ISO 7098:2015). The United Nations followed suit in 1986. It has also been accepted by the government of Singapore , the United States's Library of Congress , the American Library Association , and many other international institutions. Pinyin assigns some Latin letters sound values which are quite different from those of most languages. This has drawn some criticism as it may lead to confusion when uninformed speakers apply either native or English assumed pronunciations to words. However, this problem

2368-404: The more convenient form ju is used instead of jü . Genuine ambiguities only happen with nu / nü and lu / lü , which are then distinguished by an umlaut. Many fonts or output methods do not support an umlaut for ü or cannot place tone marks on top of ü . Likewise, using ü in input methods is difficult because it is not present as a simple key on many keyboard layouts. For these reasons v

2432-621: The most common romanization system for Standard Chinese . In official documents, it is referred to as the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet . Hanyu ( 汉语 ; 漢語 ) literally means ' Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while pinyin literally means 'spelled sounds'. Pinyin is the official romanisation system used in China, Singapore, Taiwan, and by the United Nations . Its use has become common when transliterating Standard Chinese mostly regardless of region, though it

2496-440: The most common way to transcribe them in English. Pinyin has also become the dominant Chinese input method in mainland China, in contrast to Taiwan, where bopomofo is most commonly used. Families outside of Taiwan who speak Mandarin as a mother tongue use pinyin to help children associate characters with spoken words which they already know. Chinese families outside of Taiwan who speak some other language as their mother tongue use

2560-579: The names of several pinyin letters using -ê finals. According to the Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet , ng can be abbreviated with the shorthand ŋ . However, this shorthand is rarely used due to difficulty of entering it on computers. (Starts with the vowel sound in f a ther and ends in the velar nasal ; like s ong in some dialects of American English) An umlaut is added to ⟨ u ⟩ when it occurs after

2624-507: The new wall. The northern and eastern sections were built afresh. The city wall was 33.676 kilometres long. It was 14–21 m high; 14.5m thick at its base, and 4.9m thick at the top. Thirteen gates were built into the wall, and the enclosed area was the largest of any walled city in China. The gate today known as Zhonghua Gate was then known as Jubao Gate ( traditional Chinese : 聚寶門 ; simplified Chinese : 聚宝门 ; pinyin : Jùbǎo Mén ; lit. 'Gathering Treasure Gate'). It

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2688-459: The north section of it were built 3 soldier staying holes. Erdaomen (the second gate) was 16.14 m away from Toudaomen. Its hole was 8.20 m long, 4.97 m wide and 8.10 m high. The hole of Sandaomen (the third gate) 15.18 m away from Erdaomen was 8.32 m long, 4.82 m wide and 8.1 m high. Sidaomen (the fourth gate) was 19.3 m away from Sandaomen. Its hole was 8.8 m long, 4.8 m wide and 8.1 m high. At

2752-430: The outerside of the east and west of barbican were constructed 14 soldier staying holes (7 facing to the east 7 facing to the west). There are 27 soldier staying holes altogether in all the barbican and two paved ramps by which mounted troops can ride to the top. Zhonghua Gate has weathered wind and rain for 600 years. It still holds its original state except that the wooden structure has been destroyed and some features on

2816-558: The pinyin letters assigned to each initial are accompanied by their phonetic realizations in brackets, notated according to the International Phonetic Alphabet . In each cell below, the first line indicates the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) transcription, the second indicates pinyin for a standalone (no-initial) form, and the third indicates pinyin for a combination with an initial. Other than finals modified by an -r , which are omitted,

2880-412: The pinyin system, four main tones of Mandarin are shown by diacritics: ā, á, ǎ, and à. There is no symbol or diacritic for the neutral tone: a. The diacritic is placed over the letter that represents the syllable nucleus , unless that letter is missing. Tones are used in Hanyu Pinyin symbols, and they do not appear in Chinese characters. Tones are written on the finals of Chinese pinyin. If the tone mark

2944-411: The practice to use "LYU" and "NYU" in passports. Although nüe written as nue , and lüe written as lue are not ambiguous, nue or lue are not correct according to the rules; nüe and lüe should be used instead. However, some Chinese input methods support both nve / lve (typing v for ü ) and nue / lue . The pinyin system also uses four diacritics to mark the tones of Mandarin . In

3008-487: The result appears very similar to modern Hanyu Pinyin. Hanyu Pinyin was designed by a group of mostly Chinese linguists, including Wang Li , Lu Zhiwei , Li Jinxi , Luo Changpei , as well as Zhou Youguang (1906–2017), an economist by trade, as part of a Chinese government project in the 1950s. Zhou, often called "the father of pinyin", worked as a banker in New York when he decided to return to China to help rebuild

3072-418: The second vowel instead. Pinyin tone marks appear primarily above the syllable nucleus—e.g. as in kuài , where k is the initial, u the medial, a the nucleus, and i is the coda. There is an exception for syllabic nasals like /m/ , where the nucleus of the syllable is a consonant: there, the diacritic will be carried by a written dummy vowel. When the nucleus is / ə / (written e or o ), and there

3136-443: The sound lü or nü , particularly people with the surname 吕 ( Lǚ ), a fairly common surname, particularly compared to the surnames 陆 ( Lù ), 鲁 ( Lǔ ), 卢 ( Lú ) and 路 ( Lù ). Previously, the practice varied among different passport issuing offices, with some transcribing as "LV" and "NV" while others used "LU" and "NU". On 10 July 2012, the Ministry of Public Security standardized

3200-432: The southern (main) gate of Beijing " Gate of China " to signify its status as "gate of the nation". The gate was made of huge strip stones 0.8 – 1.39 m long, 0.7 m wide and 0.26-0.35 thick and large Chinese brick 0.4 m long 0.2 m wide and 0.1 m thick. Its dimensions were 118.5 m from east to west, and 128 m from south to north. The ramparts were 20.45 m high. The total area enclosed

3264-498: The standard written language prior to the early 1900s. In particular, Chinese characters retain semantic cues that help distinguish differently pronounced words in the ancient classical language that are now homophones in Mandarin. Thus, Chinese characters remain indispensable for recording and transmitting the corpus of Chinese writing from the past. Pinyin is not designed to transcribe varieties other than Standard Chinese, which

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3328-455: The state council in 1988. The site is open to the public from 08:30 to 20:00, with tickets costing 50 yuan. The area is accessible within walking distance north of Zhonghuamen Station of Nanjing Metro . 32°0′52.87″N 118°46′35.35″E  /  32.0146861°N 118.7764861°E  / 32.0146861; 118.7764861 Pinyin Hanyu Pinyin , or simply pinyin , is

3392-405: The surviving walls of stone and brick, an outwall was built along the river and to the south as an additional defensive measure. Old maps show that there were close to twenty gates in this rammed earth wall. This outwall is long gone, but the names of the gates survive as local place names. Part of the wall on the south shore of Xuanwu Lake was built on the foundations of the old Stone City walls from

3456-409: The top step, there used to be a wooden building to defend against the enemy. The middle step was built of brick and stone. It was 65.15 m long, 47.20 m wide and 9.00 m high. In the north section of it were constructed 7 soldier staying holes. In the middle of the lower step was constructed an arched gate leading to barbican. It was 52.60 m long, 5.35 m wide and 8.7 m high. At

3520-441: The use of a non-pinyin romanization system, such as one that uses final consonants to indicate tones. Technically, i, u, ü without a following vowel are finals, not medials, and therefore take the tone marks, but they are more concisely displayed as above. In addition, ê [ɛ] ( 欸 ; 誒 ) and syllabic nasals m ( 呒 , 呣 ), n ( 嗯 , 唔 ), ng ( 嗯 , 𠮾 ) are used as interjections or in neologisms ; for example, pinyin defines

3584-435: The vowel), a nucleus vowel, and coda (final vowel or consonant). Diacritics are used to indicate the four tones found in Standard Chinese, though these are often omitted in various contexts, such as when spelling Chinese names in non-Chinese texts. Hanyu Pinyin was developed in the 1950s by a group of Chinese linguists including Wang Li , Lu Zhiwei , Li Jinxi , Luo Changpei and Zhou Youguang , who has been called

3648-474: The wall constructed of sticks and stones. It is rare in the world for its vast scale and sophisticated style. It is a great engineering project of complex and intricate design, occupying an important place in Chinese construction history, as well as being important in Chinese military history. It was listed on the cultural and scenic spots under careful protection by the Jiangsu provincial government in 1957 and

3712-486: The west built in 1910. Yijiang Gate on North Zhongshan Road was built in 1921, as was the major entrance to the city during Republican times when most visitors to the city arrived by boat at the docks just to the west. Different from ancient city walls in Beijing and Xi'an , its design and construction was unique and changed the old ways of equilibrium and symmetry. The construction concentrated on military defence because

3776-506: Was 15,168 square meters. Three barbicans were connected by four arched gates, each of which was equipped with a Qianjinzha ( traditional Chinese : 千金閘 ; simplified Chinese : 千金闸 ; pinyin : Qiānjīn Zhá ; lit. 'very heavy gate') which could be opened up and down, as well as a pair of wooden doors. The Toudaomen ( traditional Chinese : 頭道門 ; simplified Chinese : 头道门 ; pinyin : Tóudào Mén ; lit. 'first gate') consisted of 3 steps. At

3840-528: Was authored in January 1956 by Ye Laishi , Lu Zhiwei and Zhou Youguang. A revised Pinyin scheme was proposed by Wang Li, Lu Zhiwei and Li Jinxi, and became the main focus of discussion among the group of Chinese linguists in June 1956, forming the basis of Pinyin standard later after incorporating a wide range of feedback and further revisions. The first edition of Hanyu Pinyin was approved and officially adopted at

3904-618: Was built on the site of the south gate of the capital city of the Southern Tang dynasty. It was the largest among the thirteen gates of Nanjing. In 1931, after the Republic of China government established Nanjing as its capital, the gate was renamed to Zhonghua Gate. In one sense, this reflects the triumph of the southern factions led by Chiang Kai-shek over the northern factions of the Beiyang government in Beijing , who had named

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3968-525: Was not a linguist by trade. Hanyu Pinyin incorporated different aspects from existing systems, including Gwoyeu Romatzyh (1928), Latinxua Sin Wenz (1931), and the diacritics from bopomofo (1918). "I'm not the father of pinyin", Zhou said years later; "I'm the son of pinyin. It's [the result of] a long tradition from the later years of the Qing dynasty down to today. But we restudied the problem and revisited it and made it more perfect." An initial draft

4032-402: Was the longest city wall in the world and the city enclosed by it remained the world's largest until the 17th century. Gate of China, Nanjing The Zhonghua Gate ( traditional Chinese : 中華門 ; simplified Chinese : 中华门 ; pinyin : Zhōnghuámén ), is a gate and defensive complex on the city wall of Nanjing , China . This is the southern gate of Nanjing city. It

4096-616: Was the pattern for Beijing’s Forbidden City. In expanding the walls, it appears the Hongwu Emperor intended initially to simply add a bulge to the existing walls and encompass the New City to the east. The main north gate would have been the Drum Tower. However, it was decided to bring Lion Hill to the northwest into the city defenses for strategic reasons, and this almost doubled the area the walls would encompass. In addition to

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