Nanjing Part 2 - the City Wall and tea shop.

Nanjing has a beautify city wall  Wikipedia. designed by the Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang after he founded the Ming Dynasty (1368 - 1644) and establishing Nanjing as the Capital 600 years ago. It took 28years to complete and used one million labourers to move 7million cubic metres of earth. It is among the largest city walls in China and when completed enclosed a city of some 55 square kilometres. Today its remaining 26km is the longest city wall in the world.

According to the material all the brick makers had to put their mark on each brick they made. One can only imagine the fate of suppliers of substandard bricks.

What I noticed was that once outside a 200m distance of the access points we pretty much had the wall to ourselves. This is because most visitors are part of tours which simple do not allow for people to wander far form the bus and the schedule. Views from the wall are spectacular and we wandered for many kilometres along a fairly even surface.

Above and below one of the access points.

Looking towards Xuanwu Lake and Xuanwuhu Park (below) 

One of the gates in the wall, this one at the entrance to Xuanwuhu Park 

At one point we came across a stairway leading down from the wall and found one of the most tastefully decorated tea houses I've ever seen. It was constructed in one of the former storage areas  for ammunition used in the defence of the city.  Sadly given what must have been a massive undertaking to build this shop we were the only ones there on a normal week day.