At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, most of the huge expenses needed for the construction of Nanjing City were allocated to the rich in the south of the Yangtze River. Among them, Shen Wanshan, a millionaire in Xing Wu, Zhejiang, only pledged the cost of building a city from Hongwumen to Shuiximen. Legend has it that at the beginning of the construction of Jubaomen, the city walls were repeatedly built and collapsed. Someone offered Zhu Yuanzhang a plan to use the ancestral cornucopia of Shen Wanshan. Zhu Yuanzhang used this plan to forcibly requisition it and buried it under the east wall of the first urn, and the gate was built as expected. So people call this door Jubao Gate.
There is a wall between Shuiximen and Zhonghua Gate in Nanjing, which is much shorter than other walls. Legend has it that this wall was built by people in Taiping County, Anhui Province. The land in Taiping County is barren, and migrant workers are short of clothes and food. Everyone dares to be angry and dare not speak. They are all passive. Seeing that the deadline is up and the city wall has not been completed, migrant workers lie to the officials in charge of inspecting the project; "I don't know what feng shui is broken. Everyone here has yellow disease. They can eat and sleep, but they can't. " Seeing their sallow faces, the officials hurried back to the palace to report to the emperor. In fact, migrant workers use lotus leaves to turn their faces yellow. The emperor then issued an imperial decree: in order to show sympathy for Taiping migrant workers, the unfinished city wall will not be punished. However, if you have jaundice, you must avoid salt. Since then, there is no official salt supply in Taiping County. For this section of the city wall, people call it the low city.
Between Jinchuan Gate and Zhong Xing Gate, there is a wall 100 feet long, which is said to have been built by a favorite of Zhu Yuanzhang. The minister doesn't care about building walls. Seeing that the deadline is only ten days, it is too late to prepare materials, dispatch workers, dig soil, build walls and so on. The minister was so anxious that he came up with an idea to build a big fence from this 100-foot-long place with big bamboo sticks and build it on a wide river outside the city. When the deadline arrived, Zhu Yuanzhang took the minister of civil and military affairs to inspect all the way from Jubaomen and found it here. Because the river was too wide, they looked at it from a distance and no one found the problem. Minister Liu Ji also praised: "Emperor, digging a moat outside the city is a great road! We should order everyone outside the city to dig and connect with it. It is safer to cross the bridge when entering and leaving the city gate! " Zhu Yuanzhang was happy for a moment and rewarded his favorite. But after a period of time, things were exposed, and Zhu Yuanzhang was furious, killing slaves and others to deceive the monarch, tearing down bamboo fences and repairing walls. However, the name of the gate has been handed down.
The southern section of Nanjing city wall from Tongji Gate to Sanshanmen Gate is almost full of stones. In order to build Nanjing City, masons in the early Ming Dynasty were forced to work hard like slaves. Legend has it that masons have to hand over three buckets and three liters of stone slag to the supervisor every day. If they fail to meet the quota, they will be put to death. Now there is another place called grave in Tangshan Town, the eastern suburb of Nanjing. It is said that it is the burial place of masons who were executed in the early Ming Dynasty (including masons who later mined Yangshan stone tablets)