Mr. Taylor: It is amazing that the Chinese built the entire palace by hand! How many people took part in the construction?

Wang: At its peak, construction involved 100,000 artisans and 100,000,000 civilians.

Judy: Goodness! What about building materials?

Wang: Materials needed for building the palace came from all over the country. In the Ming Dynasty, most of the timber came from Sichuan, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Yunnan, while in the Qing Dynasty, timber was cut from pine trees in northeast China. The gold bricks came from Suzhou, while other bricks came from Linqin, in Shandong province.