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A 600-year-old brick bearing Hong Kong superstar Andy Lau Tak-wah’s name has gone viral on social media in mainland China.
Three characters, identical to the actor and singer’s Chinese name, were carved into the city wall of Nanjing, the ancient capital of the early Ming dynasty (1368-1644).
The inscriptions, carved into a brick now preserved at the Nanjing City Wall Museum, offer clues about the identity of the ancient namesake – whose name is pronounced “Liu Dehua” in Mandarin.
The Ming-era Liu, who hailed from what is now Jiangxi province, was a brickmaker, People’s Daily reported on Saturday, citing heritage officials.
The inscription gained attention online after a film marking the 660th anniversary of the construction of the Nanjing Ming City Wall was released earlier this month. The brick was featured to illustrate an ancient quality-control method that required artisans to inscribe their names on their products.
“All the bricks … are marked with Chinese characters recording their origin, the official in charge of their making and the individual maker,” according to information submitted to Unesco by the National Cultural Heritage Administration. It added that the practice was unique to the city wall of Nanjing.
Calling the wall an example of the “heyday” of ancient capital construction, the agency said Nanjing’s city wall was the oldest still standing in the world.
The administration added that the wall contained “the biggest group of brick records ever found in China”.
It said that the use of brick and stone structures during the Ming and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, including for parts of the Great Wall of China, was influenced by Nanjing’s city wall.

With over two-thirds, or 25km (15 miles), of the original wall still standing, the site preserves four of its original gates, one water pass and eight gates that have been conserved or built since 1911.
Another detail of the inscription that generated discussion online was that it used the simplified Chinese character for the surname “Liu” and traditional characters for the given name.
Many social media users thought the entire name should be written in traditional characters due to the age of the inscription. Simplified Chinese script, which reduces the number of strokes in some characters, is widely associated with the literacy-boosting reforms implemented by the Communist Party in the 1950s.
However, Xia Hu, a cultural heritage official with the Nanjing City Wall Research Institute, told People’s Daily that ancient brickmakers often used simpler folk characters – some of them identical to the simplified characters used today – as they were easier to carve.
She said the early Ming imperial court was not strict about which characters were used. As a result, more than 300 colloquial characters, including simplified and variant characters, can be seen on the wall.
“The brick inscriptions are the ‘original archives’ that come with the bricks of the Nanjing city wall. They have rich and diverse cultural heritage value,” she said.
“They are not only important materials for studying the administrative divisions, official system and corvée system in the early Ming dynasty, but also an important reference for the study of Chinese surnames and the history of immigration at the time.”
CCTV commentator Xiang Ligang wrote on his blog that the practice of inscribing brickmakers’ names showed that China had achieved a high level of quality control.
“What is now called a ‘quality traceability system’ can be traced back ... more than 2,000 years ago,” he wrote. “This is a sign of China’s high level of technological advancement.”


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The inscription – identical to the Hong Kong star’s name – reveals ancient quality-control system and early use of simplified characters


The inscription – identical to the Hong Kong star’s name – reveals ancient quality-control system and early use of simplified characters.


Archaeology and palaeontology

Hong Kong

Andy Lau Tak-wah

Why is Andy Lau’s name carved on a 600-year-old brick from the Ming dynasty?

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The inscription – identical to the Hong Kong star’s name – reveals ancient quality-control system and early use of simplified characters

The inscription – identical to the Hong Kong star’s name – reveals ancient quality-control system and early use of simplified characters