The Super Brick of Jiayu Pass

Jiayu Pass of The Great Wall

Jiayu Pass or Jiayu Guan (Chinese: 嘉峪关; pinyin: Jiāyù Guān) is located in Gansu province of China. It is not only the first pass at the west end of the Great Wall but also the most massive one.

Due to its size and location(it is in a desert and near Jiayu Mountain),the construction of Jiayu Pass cost a great deal of manpower and material resources, which gave rise to a number of interesting stories.The following is just one of them.

Eight Trigrams of Yin and Yang

In Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), there lived a workman named Yi Kaizhan(易开占) who was an expert of Eight Trigrams of Yin and Yang, a traditional Chinese Divination system which demands proficient mathematical skills. (Some believe that the reason that Gottfried  Leibniz could invent binary numeral system is because he was enlighten by Eight Trigrams of Yin and Yang.  )

Yi Kaizhan was so famous that even the general in charge of the construction of Jiayu Pass knew his name. So he was recruited to calculate how many materials were needed for the huge project.

To the general's surprise, Yi Kaizhan gave a very accurate answer,it would take exactly 99,999 bricks to build the pass.

Maybe Yi Kaizhan's self-confidence irritated the general who said that if he had miscalculated by so much as just one brick, then he would be decapitated and his head would be hung on the wall.

After the completion of the project, one brick was left behind the city gate. The general was happy at the sight of the brick and prepared to carry out his threat of punishment.

However Yi Kaizhan said with an authoritative air that the brick had been put there by the God being to stabilize the wall and that even a tiny move would cause the whole structure to collapse.

The Super Brick

Scared by his words, the superstitious general had to let Yi Kaizhan go, and the brick thus remained in place and was never moved. It can still be found there today on the tower of the pass.