page_title: Chinese city wall
section_title: Meaning of the word Chengqiang
hierarchical_section_title: Chinese city wall / Meaning of the word Chengqiang
caption_attribution_description: 日本語: 石頭城 2004年撮影 撮影者:権作中文（中国大陆）‎: 参照：http://px820.onmitsu.jp/kankou/shitoucheng/shitoucheng.html南京石头城，鬼脸照镜
context_page_description: Chinese city walls refer to defensive systems used to protect towns and cities in China in pre-modern times. In addition to walls, city defenses often included towers and gates.
context_section_description: The most specific Chinese word for a city wall is chéngqiáng (城墙), which can be used in two senses in the modern Chinese language. It broadly refers to all defensive walls, including the Great Wall of China, as well as similar defensive structures in areas outside of China such as Hadrian's Wall. More specifically Chengqiang refers to defensive walls built around a city or town. However, in classical Chinese, the character chéng (城) denoted the defensive wall of the "inner city" which housed government buildings. The character guō (郭) denoted the defensive wall of the "outer city", housing mainly residences. The phrase chángchéng (長城), literally "the long wall", refers to the Great Wall.
  Colloquially chéng referred to both the walls and city so that both were synonymous with each other. A city was not a city without walls, however large it may be.
  There is no real city in Northern China without a surrounding wall, a condition which, indeed, is expressed by the fact that the Chinese use the same word Ch'eng for a city and a city wall: for there is no such thing as a city without a wall. It is just as inconceivable as a house without a roof. It matters little how large, important, and well ordered a settlement may be; if not properly defined and enclosed by walls, it is not a city in the traditional Chinese sense. Thus, for instance, Shanghai (outside the "native town"), the most important commercial centre of modern China, is, to the old-fashioned Chinaman, not a real city, only a settlement or a huge trading centre, grown out of a fishing village. And the same is true of several other comparatively modern commercial centres without encircling walls; they are not ch'engs, or cities, according to traditional Chinese conception, whatever modern republican officials may choose to call them.
  — Osvald Síren
caption: The Stone City is a wall in Nanjing dated to the Six Dynasties (220～589). Almost all of the original city is gone, but portions of the city wall remain. Not to be confused with the City Wall of Nanjing.
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