In ancient China, the city was a military building, which was built to prevent the enemy from attacking densely populated areas on a large scale. However, the construction of the city has also experienced a long history of development, such as the well-known city walls. In fact, most of the city walls we see now were built after the Ming Dynasty, because people learned to build cities after the Ming Dynasty in ancient times. So how did people build cities before the Ming Dynasty?

The case is also very simple. Many people will ask, if you use adobe, will it be washed away when it rains? The answer is yes. In ancient times, especially before the Ming Dynasty, city walls were generally damaged when it rained. After all, at that time, the walls made of adobe were far from strong and durable, so in order to heighten and strengthen them, they often had a great thickness, such as Ying, the capital of Chu State.

The method of building a city with soil is also very simple. As early as the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, our ancestors had mastered the method of building cities with plates. For example, Mencius mentioned in his article "Born in Worry, Died in Happiness": Fu Shuo held between boards, and board building was a method of building city walls in ancient times. He clamped the sides with two boards, and then tamped the soil in the middle of the boards. Later, people mastered the more elevated hanging board construction method, and so did the way of building city walls.

There is also the use of adobe, which we have mentioned before, including the practice of many people in the 1980 s. In rural areas, they customize adobe into bricks and then cover them with mud for reinforcement. This way of building a city with adobe is higher than the original version, so that the slope originally built outside the city wall can be removed.

These two construction methods of tucheng are the wall styles we saw in ancient times and even before the Ming Dynasty. Even at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, although the capital of the Yuan Dynasty was the political center of the whole country, it was still a tucheng, which looked bare on the surface. The most successful earthen city in history is Wantong City built by Helian Bobo, King of Xixia. Of course, many people died because of the harsh construction process.

Generally, the construction of cities is in line with wartime military needs, so there are generally watchtowers dedicated to observing the enemy's situation in the distance. And the construction of the whole city is very complicated, both inside and outside the city. Smaller cities will design the city gates as suspension bridges, dig moats outside to prevent the enemy from attacking, and larger cities will set urns. When the enemy invades, the inner and outer doors will be closed, trapping the enemy in the urn.

It has also been said that if a slope is built outside the city, the enemy will be at a disadvantage in pretending to attack. In fact, most of the cities set up by various dangers are like this. Because of its geographical position, the enemy's attack can only be a frontal attack, which brings great difficulty to the attack. Of course, generally speaking, cities on the plains will not be built in this way. The purpose is to prevent the enemy from rushing through the sloping highlands quickly.