Camel city site

Camel city site

Luotuocheng site is a national key cultural relic protection unit. It is located in the west of Yongsheng Village, luotuocheng Town, 20 kilometers southwest of Gaotai County, Zhangye City, Gansu Province.

Camel city site is located in the north and south, with a rectangular plane, 425 meters wide from east to west and 704 meters long from north to south, covering an area of 299200 square meters. The wall is rammed with loess, with a thickness of 0.10-0.15 meters, a width of 6 meters and a residual height of 7 meters. Among the desert Artemisia ordosica, there is a sharp contrast with the new immigrant village with red bricks and green trees nearby. Every gap and every concave and convex place records the baptism of wind and rain and the carving of war. This is the ancient capital of Beiliang, one of the fourth batch of key cultural relics protection units in China, and the site of camel City, an important town of Tang Dynasty. Camel city site is divided into South and north cities. It is the largest and most complete cultural site of Han and Tang Dynasties in China. Hundreds of painted mural bricks have been unearthed from the luotuocheng site, which is an image of the development history of Hexi in the Han and Tang Dynasties.

Site distribution

Camel city site

It is composed of two parts: North and south. The southern city is 494 meters long from the north to the South and 425 meters wide from the east to the west, while the northern city is 425 meters long from the east to the West and 210 meters wide from the north to the south. There is a gate in the middle of the East, the West and the south, and there is a square urn outside.

In the southwest corner of the city, there is a small city 132 meters long from north to South and 79 meters wide from east to west, commonly known as "palace city". There is an ancient well in the city. Beicheng, commonly known as the "imperial city", covers an area of 65400 square meters. A square urn is built in the middle of the south, opening the East and West gates to connect with the south city. There are 6 × 6m square corner piers at the four corners of the city wall. The total length of the existing walls of the two cities is 1933 meters. There are bricks, tiles and pottery pieces from the Han and Tang Dynasties on the surface of the city, and there are nine architectural relics in the north city. On the surface of the city, there are charred animal bones, gray pottery pieces, coins of five baht from the Han Dynasty, pottery spinning wheels, bronze and iron wares of the Tang Dynasty, etc.

Overall facilities

On the whole, it is divided into three levels: the outer corridor, the palace city and the imperial city. The outer city has all kinds of auxiliary facilities, such as the urn City, the horse face, the enemy platform, the corner pier and the city wall. Two kilometers to the southwest of the city, there is also a small square city, commonly known as "sheep's hoof drum city". It is 55 meters long and 40 meters wide. It opens a small gate to the East. It is a defensive fortress outside the main city. The two echo each other and are horns of each other. Throughout the city, the structure is tight and exquisite, the momentum is magnificent and majestic, and it still stands tall after thousands of years, which fully shows the superb level of the ancients in the design and construction of military engineering.

There are also tombs in the south of the city, tombs in the east of the city and five kilns around the site. The tombs are located in the south, West and north of the city. The tombs in the south of the city are 2km away from the south of the city site, covering an area of 27km2, with nearly 2000 earth sealed tombs. There are two kinds of mounds: Tukuang tomb and brick chamber tomb.

There are a large number of painted brick portraits unearthed, including Fuxi, Nuwa, farming, animal husbandry, home furnishings, etc., as well as wooden slips and figurines from the Qianliang period and colored silk inscriptions and woodblock prints from the Western Jin Dynasty. The tombs in the southwest of the city are high square rammed earth mounds, which are 6.18 meters long and 5.16 meters high. They are the tombs of Wuliang period. After excavation, they are brick chamber tombs and Tukuang tombs. There are painted bricks, Hu Yunzi's clothes, red silk inscriptions, Qinghai Shenshu, etc. there are nine ancient kilns 1.5 kilometers north of the city, with a perimeter of 50 meters at the bottom and a height of 8-10 meters A large number of bricks and tiles, pottery fragments and a small number of tombs can be seen.

You can take a train or a long-distance bus for sightseeing and archaeology. There are local accommodation. Flour gluten is a local specialty. After the autumn harvest, every household needs to air their intestines, flour and gluten. First, after the autumn harvest, there is a slack farming season; second, the quality of gluten made from new wheat flour is good; third, the Malian is mature.

It can be used for drying flour gluten. The production process of flour gluten is complex. The flour is mixed with water, kneaded and washed, the washed starch is heated and boiled, cooled and solidified, sliced and dried. The remaining gluten can be steamed or cooked, sliced and dried.

Make a good flour gluten, are tied into small bundles with Malian silk, stored up. When you eat it, you can soak it in cold water temporarily to make soup and stir fry it. You can also add onion powder, garlic puree, chili oil, salt and vinegar to eat it. The cold and hot meat and vegetables are made according to people's taste, which is convenient, affordable and unique in flavor.

historical origin

According to historical records and academic research, Luotuo city is a newly built hospital 20 kilometers southwest of qianliangyu County after the earthquake. After the collapse of the Western Jin Dynasty, the former Liang Zhang regime, who was independent of Hexi, built a county at the site of camel city in order to settle the refugees from Guannei. It was named "Jiankang" as the capital of the Eastern Jin Dynasty. In this way, it flaunted allegiance to the Royal family of Jin Dynasty to win the support of the Han people in the north, which became a special mark of the war on the history of camel city.

In 376 ad, Jiankang county was destroyed by the former Qin Dynasty and changed its owner for the first time. After the defeat of Qin Fujian before the Feishui war, his general LV Guang took the opportunity to occupy Hexi and support himself. The following year, he suppressed the rebellion in Jiankang County by the remnants of Qianliang led by Zhang Dayu and Wang Mu, and established Houliang in 389 ad, and appointed duanye to join the army. In the second year, because of Lu Guang's indiscriminate killing of innocent people, Juqu Mengxun, a HUSHUI people in Lushui, set up duanye as the main business. Taking Jiankang County as the base, he gathered all the tribes to fight against Lu. Four years later, he occupied Zhangye and established Beiliang, making camel City the birthplace of Beiliang regime. Juqu Mengxun, who called himself the queen of Liang from duanye, built a Jiankang county city in 405 A.D. in order to compete with Liliang in Xiliang. After 250 years in the Northern Wei and Northern Zhou dynasties, it was abolished in the Sui Dynasty.

management system

In the first year of Zhengsheng (695 A.D.), General Wang Xiaojie established the Kang army here and became a military town between Gansu and Suzhou. Although there is a word difference between the county and the army, it reflects the two management systems of local administration and military control. The army can be divided into big army, middle army and small army. The establishment of the large army is about 10000, the Chinese Army 5000 and the small army 3000. The Jiankang army was a medium-sized army, with 5000-300 troops at the most. In the first year of the Tang Dynasty (766 AD), the Jiankang army was captured by Tubo, slaughtered and then abandoned. From then on, it became a night camp for herdsmen, and was used as a natural camel circle. The old capital, which was popular for a time, was named camel City, which is still in use today. The mysterious camel city has given rise to many reveries. It is said that when Li Yuanhao, the king of the Western Xia Dynasty, attacked the camel City guarded by the Uighur camel prince, because the city was strong and could not be attacked for a long time, he ordered people to use random trees and skeletons to stop the "smelly gate spring" flowing from the mountain to the camel city.

After the water was cut off, the camel prince could not support it. He used mound water tanks to make rice mountains and vinegar wells to confuse the heavy soldiers outside the city. He swore to fight with the enemy to the death. Behind him, he dispatched troops to dig a tunnel from the city to today's Luocheng hongsipo. On a dark and windy night, camel King covered the enemy's eyes and ears with the techniques of hungry horse ringing the bell and hanging sheep beating the drum. He himself led the soldiers and civilians in the city to sneak into the tunnel and escape quietly.

archaeological excavation

After liberation, archaeologists collected a large number of Han Jin jade baht and Tang Kaiyuan coins, bronze seals and arrowheads of Han, Wei and Jin Dynasties, brick portraits of Wei and Jin Dynasties, monkey shaped wood seals, bamboo slips of Han and Jin Dynasties, painted wooden horses, wood paintings, wooden rulers, colored silk inscriptions of Western Jin Dynasties, and silk books of Wei and Jin Dynasties unearthed from five kilns It has been highly valued by the State Department of cultural relics and exhibited abroad for many times, causing a strong sensation in the international archaeological community. In August 2002, the Gansu Provincial Institute of archaeology conducted an exploratory archaeological excavation in the southwest corner of Beicheng, covering an area of more than 1000 square meters. The unearthed cultural relics include Tang Dynasty Kaiyuan Tongbao coins and square lotus pattern floor tiles. According to this, it is judged that the top surface of Beicheng is the cultural layer of Tang Dynasty. According to the remains of the house column foundation burned by fire, it is inferred that the abandonment of camel city is related to a fire. At the same time, a brick well with a depth of 5.7 meters was excavated, which shows that in the Tang Dynasty, the surface water level of camel city was about 5 meters. Now, when wells are drilled around camel City, the water level is about 34 meters, and the groundwater level has dropped about 30 meters in the course of more than 1000 years of history. The groundwater level is decreasing year by year, which is also closely related to the abandonment of camel city.

Main attractions

Camel city is located 20 kilometers west of Gaotai County. Founded in 397 ad in the first year of Hui'an in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, it is the capital of Beiliang state established by Duan ye, the governor of Jiankang County in Houliang. According to the new records of Suzhou, camel city was not only the capital of Beiliang, but also the site of lesu County in Han Dynasty and Jiankang army in Tang Dynasty.

Camel City, covering an area of nearly 300000 square meters, is divided into three cities: front, middle and back. The base of the city wall is 6 meters thick and the remnant is 7 meters high. In addition to the northeast corner, other triangles are built with rectangular corner piers. In the front of the city wall, one gate is opened on the East, one gate is opened on the West and one gate is built on the south. In the middle of the south wall of the inner city, a gate is opened and the urn is built to connect with the outer city. The layout of the whole city is reasonable, and it is a complete ancient city of Han and Tang Dynasties.

Shen Qingya, a poet of the Ming Dynasty, passed the high platform and wrote a poem about "the ancient Jiankang in front of the elm mountain, and the scenery of Nanguo was painted in tunzhuang.". Two rows of high willow, dark sand and a fragrance of Pinghu rice. Ziyanni passes through quxiang, baiouchong passes Hengtang. At that time, in the middle of the painting Ge, we talked and laughed, and sent our troops to the goblet. This poem tells of the prosperous population, clear water, lush trees and crisscross fields around the old city

Chinese PinYin : Luo Tuo Cheng Yi Zhi