The Yangshan Quarry has been worked from the time of the Six Dynasties, the locallimestone being used for construction of buildings, walls, and statues in and around Nanjing. After Zhu Yuanzhang founded the Ming dynasty in 1368, the city of Nanjing became the capital city of his empire. The Yangshan quarry became the main source of stone for the major construction projects that changed the face of Nanjing. In 1405, Hongwu's son, the Yongle Emperor, ordered the cutting of a giant stele in this quarry, for use in the Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum of his deceased father. In accordance with the usual design of a Chinese memorial stele, three separate pieces were being cut: the rectangular stele base, the stele body, and the stele head. After most of the stone-cutting work had been done, the architects realized that moving stones that big from Yangshan to Ming Xiaoling, let alone installing them there in a proper way, would not be physically possible. As a result, the project was abandoned. In place of the stele, a much smaller tablet, known as the Shengong Shengde Stele was installed in Ming Xiaoling's "Square Pavilion" in 1413. The three unfinished stele components remain in Yangshan Quarry to this day, only partially separated from the solid rock of the mountain. The present dimensions and the usual weight estimates of the steles are as follows:
The Stele Base, 30.35 m long, 13 m thick, 16 m tall, 16,250 metric tons.
The Stele Body, 49.4 m long, 10.7 m wide, 4.4 m thick, 8,799 tons.
The Stele Head, 10.7 m tall, 20.3 m wide, 8.4 m thick, 6,118 tons.
According to experts, if the stele had been finished and put together, by installing the stele body vertically on the base, and topping with the stele head, then it would have stood 73 meters tall. For comparison, the Shengong Shengde Stele actually installed in Ming Xiaoling is 8.78 m tall. The Song-dynastyWan Ren Chou Stele in Qufu, which is thought to be one of the tallest in China, is 16.95 m tall, 3.75 m wide, 1.14 m thick.
Cultural references
According to a legend, workers who failed to produce the daily quota of crushed rock of at least 33 sheng would be executed on the spot. In memory of the workers who died on the construction site—including those who died from overwork and disease—a nearby village became known as Fentou, or "Grave Mound". Ann Paludan translates the place name as "Death's Head Valley". In the centuries since the giant stele project was abandoned, a number of Ming, Qing, and modern authors visited the site and left accounts of it. The poet Yuan Mei expressed his feelings in "The Song of Hongwu's Great Stone Tablet", which concludes with "one hundred thousand camels could not move it!". The poem is published in his collection Xiao Cangshan Fang Wenji.
Present day
In 1956, the Yangshan Quarry was entered on the Jiangsu provincial register of protected cultural monuments. It is maintained as a tourist site, although, according to journalists who visited it at the turn of the 21st century, the site was little known even in Nanjing itself, and had few visitors. A small theme park called the Ming Culture Village was constructed at the entrance to the site; as of 2011, it has a stage, children's rides, and various history-themed amusements. A single admission ticket allows one to visit the "village" and then to walk some 300–400 m to the quarry proper on one of several forest trails. The site is open year-round, but still is mostly deserted in winter. Transportation from Nanjing to the Yangshan Quarry is provided by several bus routes, including the Nanjing-Tangshan Line from the Nanjing Railway Station.
