Ancient City Wall

Legend has it that the wall of “Helv City” was made with the earth dredged from city moat and Lvjiang River. It is recorded in the Lost History of Yueh that “Wu Yuan builds Helv City with earth excavated from Lipu and Huangdu.” According to the recent earth drilling here, the soil in the city wall is of the brown-cinnamon secondary soil, and is hard, suggesting that it has been rammed. However, there is no such soil in Helv City, suggesting that it is delivered from outside. It is very likely that the soil is taken from nearby mountains, for its texture and color are similar to those of soil in the Xu Mountain and Baiyao Mountain in the east. The drilling performed in well preserved section shows that the original foundation of the city wall was at least 20 meters wide and about 8 meters high. It is said by local villages that in the early post-liberation period, this ancient city wall still stood over three meters despite of disrepair for many years, and had clearly-visible outline. However, since the production team built up two brick kilns in the west of the ancient city, most of the earth was excavated from the city wall to be used to make bricks, thus causing a great damage to it. The existing city wall runs for only about 1,000 meters, about 4 meters wide and 1 to 2 meters high.