"Gold Bricks"

Palace halls and courts have been paved with bricks for 2,000 years since the Spring and Autumn Period, and this has become a distinctive feature of classical architecture. Today one can see brick-paved floors and grounds in the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, the Ming Tombs and similar places elsewhere. The bricks so used are called "jinzhuan".

Naturally not made of real gold, they are so-called because, when knocked, they produce a metallic sound. Another explanation for the name is that they were officially called during the Ming and Qing dynasties jingzhuan (capital bricks) because bricks of this quality were meant only for the imperial house in the capital, In time, jingzhuan came to be known as jinzhuan or gold bricks. Whatever the reason for the unusual name, they did involve great costs and difficult skills to make and in this sense, the name might not be a great exaggeration.

The area around Suzhou used to be the home of these "gold bricks". Lying close to the Grand Canal, it abounds in a kind of fine clay most suitable as the material for compact bricks. To make those meant for the palace buildings, a strict procedure of manufacture must be adhered to. It included selecting the clay, pugging, setting, moulding, drying in the shade and, finally, firing in the kiln. This last process was the most complicated one.

The laying of the bricks, like their manufacture, must follow strict prescriptions. A bricklayer assisted by two helpers could only lay five in a day. Every piece must be ground and polished on site in such a way that, when paved, they fitted perfectly with other pieces, leaving no crevices. The bricks must also be soaked with raw tung oil so that they became lustrously dark like black jade.

Worn by several hundred years of time and trodden during the last decades by millions upon millions of sighteers, these bricks have largely remained intact, thanks to their rock-like hardness. Now they are from time to time mopped with a kind of high-quality vegetable oil to get a new layer of protection.