I was under the impression for a while, with few examples left of earlier periods, that before the late Yuan/early Ming Era, Chinese fortifications largely followed the standard of sturdy rammed earth, and afterward widespread conversions to stone and brick were made to fortifications (once again, this is not talking about other structures like pagodas or bridges, which were converted from timber to stone and brick long before the Ming period). My knowledge of Chinese fortifications is very limited, considering the lack of English sources on the web, alongside my inability to read Chinese, the overwhelming source for finding out about anything in China (obviously). However, I was reading up on some Song Era fortifications, and read that the prefecture of Ganzhou has not only hundreds of existing buildings from the Song Dynasty, but also the original Song Dynasty fortifications in both the administrative seat at the City of Zhanggong and also at the ancient pass known as Mei Pass. I couldn't pull up any pictures on English google for Mei Pass at all, and pulled up nothing for Zhanggong as well. When I searched for Ganzhou, I got pics like these:







The last two pics were taken from this site here:

http://www.sino-economy.com/lofiversion/index.php/t393.html

...which describes Ganzhou and gives some pics, one of which showed a city-gate built of stone and looks like the Ming era type stone masonry work from a glance (the one shown above). The site boasts that "Zhanggong District is where the city government of Ganzhou is located, and visitors can find many cultural sites here. Ganzhou boasts 7 cultural relics sites under the national protection, 48 under the provincial protection, and a lot of historic sites, mainly including the well preserved city wall of the Song Dynasty (960-1279), the magnificent Dajing Terrace, the Yugu Terrace, the Temple of Literature and the Tongtian Rock, etc." If anyone has any info and pics on Ganzhou, please provide them here with info of where you got them! I would be grateful.

Eric

One Question is all Rammed earth covered with Stone and bricks?

Most was originaly covered with dried mud, that could be renewed every year or so. Large sections of this type still survive in the arid NW.

Very true, Wang Yun, but there are many areas of China where rock and stone could have been procurred to build defensive walls out of stone, like for the major profincial seats and larger cities, yet they resorted to rammed-earth anyway. What was the mindset against using stone and clay bricks? Apparently that wasn't the mindset with the Song era Chinese who built that gate at Zhanggong in Ganzhou (if that gate in the picture I posted is really of the Song Dynasty as people claim it to be), and it wasn't the mindset of the Chinese people who built brick and stone structures like the Sui era Anji Bridge, the Tang Era Wild Goose Pagoda, the Northern Song era Iron Pagoda of Kaifeng, the Southern Song era Liu-he Pagoda of Hangzhou, etc. So why is it that the Chinese before the late Yuan and Ming periods continued to build rammed earth walls for towns and cities (the Great Wall exlcuded) when there was readily available stone virtually everywhere? Especially in the southern half of China where there are numerous mountains to host rock-quarries at. Was it because they were confident in the cement-like-strength of rammed earth? Your thoughts...

Eric