We Visited the Nanzing City Wall. It's a huge wall that surrounds the entire city. It still contains the original bricks built during the Ming Dynasty. Still fully intact and not rebuilt.
Apparently the Emperor ordered a hundred thousand brick layers and ordered them to put their name and address on every brick. So that if the wall had a weak spot he knew who to blame. Punishment was death. But most of the brick layers could not write their own names so he ordered 20,000 carvers to do the work on each brick. You can still see the names and addresses on the bricks. Now it wasn't chiseled into the stone, it was done as a relief, the lettering is raised making this way more complicated. The wall took 16 years to build.
The Emperor really thought it was impenetrable until his nine year old son pointed something out. As a result of the boys comment his father wanted the boy killed. Ask me when I get home the rest of the story. It's quite interesting what the Emperor misjudged and how the escaped death and what became of him.
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