Tongwancheng

Tongwan city was first built in 413 AD and completed in five years. It is the capital of Daxia state of the Xiongnu nobles in Eastern Jin and Southern Jin. Because its wall is white, the local people also call it baichengzi. Because it was built by Helian, it is also called Helian city. Tongxia city is the earliest and most famous capital in northern China, and also the only capital site left by the Huns in history. Today, some walls, gates, horsefaces and turrets can still be seen in the ruins, but the buildings and roads in the city have disappeared, leaving only the high rammed earth platform.

Tongwancheng site

synonym

Tongwancheng generally refers to Tongwancheng site

Tongwancheng is located in baichengze village, hongdunjie Township, 58 kilometers north of Jingbian County, Yulin, Shaanxi Province. It is the capital site of Xiongnu people. Because of its white wall, the local people call it baichengzi. It is also called Helian city because it was built by Helian city.

In the Eastern Jin Dynasty, the capital site of the great Xia state, which was established by the southern Hun aristocrat heliansheng, is also a capital site left by the Huns in the long history of human beings, and is the earlier capital in northern China,

It has a history of nearly 1600 years. Tongwan city was built in 413 AD and completed in 418 ad. it was rebuilt from Han Sheyan city. Later, during the period of the Northern Wei Dynasty when the Taiwu emperor tuobatao unified the north, Tongwan city was conquered, and from then on it was set up as Tongwan military town.

Tongwan city is composed of inner city and outer city. The inner city is divided into East city and west city. The perimeter of the east city is 2566 meters, and that of the west city is 2470 meters. All the sites are rammed earth buildings. The western city was the inner city at that time, with one door on each side, a horse face on the outside of the city wall, and a widened platform for the four corner towers. There is a rectangular palace building platform in the south of the central part of the city. There are decorative square bricks unearthed nearby. The north and south walls of Guocheng are unknown. The East and west walls are 5 kilometers apart, but there are few relics. With its cultural characteristics, Tongwancheng has extremely important historical research value and humanistic tourism value.

The discovery of Tongwancheng site provides important material materials for the study of the culture of the Sixteen States and the changes of local ecological environment.

In 1992, Tongwancheng site was announced as a provincial key cultural relics protection unit, and in 1996, Tongwancheng was listed as a national key cultural relics protection unit. In November 2012, it was included in the preliminary list of China's world cultural heritage.

Historical evolution

① According to shuijingzhu, Tongwan city was built on the basis of or near the Sheyan city in the Western Han Dynasty. It can be proved by the two Han seals unearthed in the city, the emperor's son-in-law Du Wei and the Western Wei Yin. The scale and layout of Sheyan city is now unknown.

② It was the capital of Daxia in the period of Sixteen States. In 407 ad, heliansheng of Tiefu tribe of Xiongnu established Daxia based on Ordos. According to the records of the biography of Liu Hu in the book of Wei and the biography of Helian shengzai in the book of Jin, in 413, Helian shengzai took Chigan Ali as the general, and sent 100000 people from the northern part of the five ridges to build the capital in the north of Shuofang River and the South of Heishui River, which was called "Tongwan" in Ming Dynasty. He said to himself: "I will unify the world, and the king will come to all nations, so I can rule all nations for fame." "Ali's nature is particularly skillful, but cruel and violent. He built the city by steaming the earth. He tapered it into an inch and killed the author and built it together.". The construction of Tongwancheng took six years. After the completion of Tongwan City, Hu Yizhou, the Secretary Supervisor, wrote a praise article, which said that the completed Tongwan city was "Gaoyu Yinyue, Chongyong Jiyun, Shiguo Tianchi, zhoumianqianli", and "Hualin lingmarsh, Chongtai secret room, Tongfang Liange, chidao Yuanyuan". At this time, Tongwan city reflected its importance in geographical location and strategic position in terms of scale, layout and construction methods. During this period, Tongwan city achieved unprecedented prosperity.

③ In 427 ad (the fourth year of Shiguang in the Northern Wei Dynasty), the Wei army conquered Tongwan City, and in 431 ad, the Wei army destroyed Daxia. In 433 ad, Tongwan town was set up. Because of its abundant water and grass, it was used as pasture. In 487 ad, xiazhou was established, and Tongwancheng was the governing seat of xiazhou. According to shuijingzhu, Tongwancheng at that time "though its battlements were long, its reverence for yongruo was new". It shows that the preservation of the city is quite complete.

In Sui Dynasty, Tongwancheng was under the jurisdiction of Shuofang County, which was the governing body of Shuofang county. In 617 A.D. (the 13th year of Daye), Shuofang County rebelled against Liang Shidu, who was called emperor according to Tongwancheng, and was named Liang, Jianyuan Yonglong. In 628 A.D. (the second year of Zhenguan of Tang Dynasty), the army of Tang Dynasty pacified the capital of Liangshi, restored it to xiazhou, and unified Wancheng as xiazhou. In 742 ad (the first year of Tianbao), xiazhou was changed into Shuofang County, and in 758 ad (the first year of Qianyuan), xiazhou was restored. During the Five Dynasties, xiazhou was a separate regime of the Dangxiang Li family, during which there were wars, but Tongwancheng still played an important role in military and transportation. In the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty, Tongwancheng was occupied by Xixia people, cutting Xia state. Later, song and Xixia attacked and occupied each other. In 994 ad (the fifth year of Chunhua), the song army captured xiazhou, and Taizong ordered the people to move to destroy the city. The city wall of tongwanchengtoudaocheng (waikucheng) was destroyed at this time. According to the present situation of the remains and historical records, there should be no large-scale construction activities in Tongwancheng at this stage, and the shape and scale of Tongwancheng still basically maintained the situation of the capital of the great Xia Dynasty.

City scale

Tongwan city site is composed of outer city and inner city. Inner city is divided into East city and west city. From east to west, it is veranda City, east city and west city. Veranda city is a rectangle with a perimeter of about 4700 meters. The East and West cities are separated by a wall in the middle. The perimeter of the east city is 2566 meters, and that of the west city is 2470 meters. There are rectangular or square piers protruding from the four corners of the East and West cities, which are all higher than the city walls. The piers in the southwest corner are more than 40 meters high, and the remaining city walls are about 1-10 meters above the ground.

Tongwancheng is the only well preserved capital site of the early Northern Minority kingdom. The white walls, the horse faces, the towering turrets, the unique "secret room" structure and the majestic Palace Louguan site clearly lead to the outline and scale of the capital of the great Xia state, which is named after the meaning of "ruling the world, king in all nations"

. (source of Atlas)

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City site remains

The Tongwancheng site is all the remains of rammed earth architecture, which is located on the Wuding River platform. The basic pattern of the city remains. The remains of some walls, gates, horse faces and turrets can be clearly identified. The main buildings and roads in the city have disappeared, leaving only the high rammed earth foundation. According to the aerial image analysis, we can still see the traces of the moat in the northwest corner of the city and the diversion channel in the city.

The traces of inner city and erdaocheng can be seen from the excavated Tongwan city. Erdaocheng has a 506 meter long site, which is well preserved in the South and northwest. The inner city is 527.1 meters long from north to South and 608.9 meters long from east to west, slightly square. The inner and outer cities are made of gray and blue clay. The boards are clear and solid. The height of the Chengbi site ranges from 1.6 m to 10 m, and the width from 0.07 m to 0.19 M. There are also many piers and abutments connecting the city in a week, including 11 in the East, 8 in the west, 6 in the north and 11 in the south.

Only a few of them stand out in the West. They are a little far away from the city wall, about 8 meters high. There are rafter holes in the slab building every 10 to 13 floors. The pier in the southeast corner is about 7 meters high. Only the pier in the northwest corner is tall and big, about 20 meters high. The slab building has a row of rafter holes every 10 to 18 floors. There are 10 rafter holes up and down. There are wooden rafter heads in the middle of the rafter holes, which are not completely decayed. It seems that is what he Bingxun refers to "Eaves eight layers, rafter holes, layers can be counted." There is a cave in the middle of the pier, which seems to be opened by later generations. From the solid construction of the city wall and the numerous piers around the city, we can imagine that the defense equipment at that time was very good.

Wind and rain erosion

There is a mound about 10 meters high in the southwest of the central part of the city. It has been eroded by wind and rain for a long time, and its shape is irregular, but the slab building is still very clear. Each layer is 0.16 meters thick, from bottom to top, with rafter holes in square shape, with different sizes. The parallel distance of each hole is about 2 meters. There are two layers of rafter holes on each slab.

There are two vertical grooves in the lower part of the southeast of the city, which seems to be used for building columns. Around this mound, there are many piles of rubble, and some ancient objects such as square bricks, big tiles and copper coins are found, which seems to be the Architectural Center of the palace at that time. Tongwan city has been abandoned for more than 1000 years since it was destroyed in the early Northern Song Dynasty. The destruction of the remains is mainly reflected in the destruction of nature, the erosion of wind, rain and quicksand caused by the bad natural environment, the fracture caused by the earthquake, the villagers digging caves and soil on the city wall, reclaiming farmland and raising livestock in the city, and the tourists and local residents climbing and trampling on the city wall noodles.

In the east of Tongwancheng site, a group of large-scale rammed earth building base sites, 96 meters wide from east to west and 48 meters wide from north to south, were found by drilling. From the location, they should be one of the main buildings in the East. Now only the rammed earth building base sites are left. There is also a group of buildings 78 meters in the south, 55 meters in width and 25 meters in length. These two groups should be related to the front and rear courtyards.

It is understood that some of the building sites have been excavated. The rammed earth platform in the center covers an area of 755 square meters, and the rammed earth thickness in the southeast is up to two meters. There are two ramps in the south, one in the north and one in the East and one in the West. There is a "U" shaped ramming belt outside the North-South Center ramming platform, which is 2.2m-2.6m away from the center ramming platform. A groove is formed in the middle, and nearly 40 column holes "tiger falls" are found in the groove. For Xing Fu, the building, even the east of Tongwan City, should have been built between the late Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties

Chinese PinYin : Tong Wan Cheng