Anyuanmen

This guide to Anyuanmen in Xi'an starts with the eight years of laborers who packed rice paste and quicklime into the city wall in 1370, when the Ming emperor Zhu Yuanzhang ordered it raised to face the steppe. It traces why this northern gate carried the heaviest defenses of the four, built as a trap with a walled courtyard behind its outer door. You'll hear how that trap turned inward in 1911, when Qing troops garrisoned inside during the revolution that toppled the dynasty, and about the decades the gate stood as a burned shell afterward. Stand close to the brickwork as you listen.