中华门！Zhong Hua Gate

After the first week of school, my classmates asked me if we could all do something on the weekend! I was excited that they already asked me to go out, they gave me a few options as to where they could take me, Nanjing Library, Zoo, Zhong Hua Gate...I decided on Zhong Hua Gate because I always drive under the Zhong Hua Gate everyday, to school, to Xin Jie Kou...almost anywhere really! I thought it was by time I visited the Zhong Hua Gate so we decided on going there. It was a total of six people who came, 4 girls and 2 other boys from my class.

The Zhong Hua Gate is the Southern gate of Nanjing. The construction of the castle took twenty-one years from 1366-1387. It was built early in the Ming Dynasty. The gate was rebuilt over and over because it kept on collapsing, the gate stopped collapsing when a treasure bowl was buried under the gate. In 1366, Zhu Yuanzhang began builging a wall around the city of Nanjing to defend it from attack. The structure of the gate is pretty complex. It has three closed courtyards and four arched doors that serve as the entrance. 27 tunnels were built in the castle to store food, weapons and 3000 soldiers. There is also steep ramps on the west and east sides of the gate. The structure was built with bricks that were put together from lime, sticky rice juice and tung oil. The brick builders were told to mark their names on each brick. One reason why the gate is still so remarkable today is also because you can still see the Chinese characters on many of the bricks!

Zhong Hua Gate entrance!

Chinese writing on the bricks!

Second floor of the gate

The steep ramp on the east side of the gate

Looking down from the second floor

Steep ramp on the west side!

At the very top of the gate. There was a beautiful sunset! It's hard to
 capture a moment like this in China! I've missed this beauty!

From the outside, the Zhong Hua Gate dosen't look as big as it actually is, but once you go inside it is huge! There are different sites you can visit inside. There were places with aincient paintings, a room with a timeline story, a garden, some dark underground areas where I mentioned weapons and food were stored and where soldiers went to hide. The structure of the Gate is amazing also, If you come to Nanjing, you should check it out!