Six hundred years ago, some men moved from Shanxi Province to Gansu Province, and spent six years founding four what became known as General’s Columns along the Yangtze River bank in Lanzhou City. After being eroded by wind and rain over the ensuing years, only one column survives today, covered head to toe in rust. It is said that in this dusty region still live the descendants of the builders. We attempted to track them down.

Yongjing County is less than an hour’s drive from Lanzhou. The descendants of the family, surnamed Wang, live there in Gucheng Village. The Wangs are held in great esteem within the locality due to their expertise in manufacturing moulds. The village features neat streets and a tranquil atmosphere, and is actually a model village of the New Village Construction movement.

Upon arriving at the Wang village home, the courtyard was blocked by a huge iron clock, a ten-meter-high incense burner, and an enormous pot – signs that manufacturing is still a booming business. But inside the scene was quite different, with half finished moulds and dull grey sand covering every inch of the yard.

This foundry was set up by a middle-aged man called Wang Yuancai, a descendant of one of the ancient workmen responsible for the General’s Columns along the Yangtze River. Wang Yuancai explained the history of his family: “According to our genealogy, my ancestor was one of the forging workers, and he was conscripted from Shanxi in the early Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).”

In the second half of the 14th Century, during the war with the remnants of Mongolian forces in the Hexi Corridor, General Feng Sheng decided to build a floating bridge to guarantee the delivery of military supplies. To build this, he required iron cables and a firm base onto which they could be lashed. Though the cables were easy to obtain, the base proved more problematic.

The manufacturing technology in ancient times was quite limited, so bases used to be enormous, sometimes dubbed iron cows or iron mountains. Only bases of such size could withstand the forces of the river. Xu Lan of the Ming Dynasty wrote in his book Floating Bridges: “In building Zhenyuan Floating Bridge, two iron cables which were about 756 meters in length each connected 24 wood boats as bases, and two iron pillars on the southern and northern banks were built as cable stakes. These were called the General’s Columns.”