Chinese city walls () 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 the walls.
Meaning of the word Chengqiang
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, 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 was not a city without walls, however large it may be.
History
Pre-imperial
The invention of the city wall is attributed to the semi-historical sage Gun (鯀) of the Xia dynasty, father of Yu the Great.Spring and Autumn of Wu and Yue (吴越春秋). Nanjing: Jiangsu Ancient Books Press. 1986 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."Biography of Xuanyuan" (轩辕本纪). in Sima Qian. Shiji. Beijing: Zhonghua Publishing. 2005.
A number of Neolithic walls surrounding substantial settlements have been excavated in recent years. These include a wall at a Liangzhu culture site, a stone wall at Sanxingdui, and several tamped earthen walls at the Longshan culture site.良渚文化网
In 15th century BC the Shang dynasty constructed large walls around the site of Ao with dimensions of in width at the base and enclosed an area of some squared.Needham, Volume 4, Part 2, 43. Walls of similar dimensions were also found at the ancient capital of the state of Zhao, Handan (founded in 386 BC), also with a width of at the base, a height of , and a length of 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 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.Needham, Volume 5, Part 6, 446.
An example of walls built the Spring and Autumn to Warring States can include 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.
Han dynasty
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.
Wu bi By the end of 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, the Chinese evidently did not have castles or fortresses, but only city walls for defense:
Sui dynasty Under 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.
Tang dynasty 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.
Jin dynasty Under the Jin dynasty the capital of Zhongdu had walls covering a perimeter of 24 km and reached a height of 12m.
Composition
Material The oldest form of wall construction in China 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 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 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.
Dimensions
Remains of city walls have been found as early as 15th century BC during the Shang dynasty, which constructed large walls around the site of Ao with dimensions of in width at the base and enclosed an area of some 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 at the base, a height of , and a length of along its two rectangular sides. At 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 thick at the base and 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 was the most common, and in the south, 15 cm x 13 cm x 3 cm.
Long-term strategic considerations meant that 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.Chen Zhengxiang (陈正祥). Chinese Cultural Geography (《中国文化地理》)，Joint Publishing, Beijing 1983, pp 68, 74 The City Wall of Nanjing, built during the Ming dynasty, enclosed an area large enough to house an airport, bamboo forests, and lakes in modern times.Ray Huang. China: a Macro History. Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1988.
Gates 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 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, (), which sat against the wall adjacent to the gate.
Barbican
An "archery tower" was often placed in front of the main gatehouse, forming a barbican (). 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 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 the most elaborate system still in existence in China.
Towers 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.
Moat In larger cities, 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.
Effectiveness against artillery
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 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 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 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 thick at the base and at the top.