April
28
/ 2023
Along the side of Yanmen Shan mountain, located twenty kilometers to the east of Nanjing, China, the legendary Yangshan quarry can be found. Although it is believed to have been in use from at least the time of the Six Dynasties (220 – 589 AD), the majority of the work at Yangshan is still attributed to the wave of construction that took place after the Ming dynasty was founded in 1368 AD, when the new emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang, chose nearby Nanjing to become his capital city. As the story goes, the emperor’s son ordered the construction of a gigantic stele in 1405 AD for the Ming Xiaoling mausoleum; which had been built for his father, by his father, and was
