Shibaocheng

Hanjiang pass

synonym

Shibao city generally refers to hanjiangguan (place name of Gansu Province)

Hanjiangguan, also known as Shibao City, is located in the urban and rural areas of Shibao, Subei Mongolian Autonomous County. It is a Yonggui town in the Tang and Song dynasties. It is an ancient castle with a long history on the grassland. There are beautiful grasslands like girls and straight glaciers like men here - so it is a paradise on the grassland. Hanjiangguan is surrounded by the peaks of Qilian Mountain. The site of hanjiangguan and its surrounding cultural relics have high historical value and aesthetic value.

Jurisdiction attribution

According to historical records, hanjiangguan (shibaocheng) is also known as Yaogui town. In the southeast of Anxi County, the straight-line distance is about 150 kilometers. Shibao City, as the name suggests, is an ancient city built with stones. It is built on the cliffs and is the castle of fan Lihua, the heroine of the Tang Dynasty. The Han Dynasty was under the jurisdiction of Guangzhi County, Dunhuang county. In Wei Dynasty, it was under the jurisdiction of Yi'an County in Jin Dynasty and Changle County in Guazhou in Tang Dynasty.

geographical position

Hanjiangguan is located 3 kilometers northwest of Shibao urban and rural government of Subei Mongolian Autonomous County, 28 kilometers away from Yulin Grottoes in the north, 53 kilometers away from Suoyang city ruins in the northeast, 120 kilometers away from Dunhuang City in the northwest, 80 kilometers away from Guazhou County in the north, and 146 kilometers away from Subei Mongolian Autonomous County in the southwest.

Shibao City, known as hanjiangguan in ancient times, was built on the cliff. It is said to be the castle of fan Lihua in Tang Dynasty. When Xue Dingshan, a general of the Tang Dynasty, passed through hanjiangguan, he was besieged three times by fan Lihua and his army, forcing him to get married. Xue Dingshan made a promise on the surface, and then retired three times. Later, Xue Dingshan was intercepted by Hami General Yang Fan at baihuguan (baidunzi, Anxi County) and was unable to move forward. Only three steps to kneel down, five steps to kowtow, three please fan Lihua help out, so the two became husband and wife. Finally, fan Lihua led his army out of Hanjiang pass and joined with Xue Dingshan's Tang army to march into the western regions.

Shibaocheng is located in the Shangyuan Intermountain basin of Yulin River. The basin is about 16 km long from east to west and 10 km wide from north to south. It is one of the main farming and animal husbandry areas in Subei Mongolian Autonomous County. The city site skillfully uses the terrain. It is located on a mountain with a relative height of about 50 meters in the west of the basin, with an altitude of 2247 meters. It looks like "the isolated city is in line with the white clouds". Its terrain is steep, with both attack and defense. Looking down from the city, the sky is wide and the earth is far away. It seems that the earth has become much bigger. Not far to the east of the city, Yulin River winds through the grassland, like a green carpet decorated with silver thread. At the foot of the city, there is a country road about Zhang wide. Beside the road, the shallow stream flows slowly, and there are three or five people. In the south of the city, the main peak of the big snow mountain, 5483 meters above sea level, is far away. It is covered with silver and plain clothes, and goes straight into the sky. Under the blue sky, it is particularly enchanting.

Not far to the north of the city is the pass shuixiakou channel between Yingzui mountain and EBO mountain, which is the North Branch of the Western Qilian Mountains. About 25 kilometers to the south is gongchakou between Daxue mountain and YEMA mountain, which is the main vein of Qilian Mountains. From this channel to gongchadaban in the south, Qinghai Plateau can be reached. Shibao city is an important military fortress and transportation center in the south of Guazhou in ancient times.

The site of the city is built according to the topography of small hills. The plane is irregular rectangle, 145 meters long from east to west and 77 meters wide from north to south. The wall is built with local gneiss and limestone. The wall base is 3 meters to 5 meters wide, and it is still very strong up to now. The residual height can reach 6 meters to 9 meters. Square corner piers are built at the four corners, and a horse face is built on each of the four walls. The corner piers and horse face have traces of later repair. When repairing, it is built with three layers of adobe and a layer of grass, which is obviously different from the original stone wall. The moat is about 20 meters wide and 20 meters away from the city wall. The depth of the moat is 1.5 meters to 2 meters. The moat is made of stone and Baila.

To the west of the central part of the city, there is a pagoda base, 2.4 meters long, 1.5 meters wide, and about 1.8 meters high. Scattered bricks and tiles can be seen on it. There are more than 20 remains of houses in the city. The walls of the houses are also built with stones. The height of the houses varies from 0.5 m to 1 m. the floor of the houses is mostly left with charcoal ash layer, which is about 0.4 m to 0.8 m thick, indicating that people lived for a long time. The gate opens to the south, and a short wall is built to the East about 20 meters in front of the gate. The short wall can be connected with the pier in the southeast corner, and there is a semicircle urn in front of the short wall. It is rare to see such a complex and heavily fortified gate structure. Standing under the high and strict gate, there is a feeling of "thinking of the golden age and iron horse, and swallowing thousands of Li like a tiger".

Not far from the east side of the gate, there is a rammed earth platform, about 1 meter high. On the top of the hill in the back of the city (to the North), a square field with a length of 65 meters on each side was pushed out. The edge of the field was also built with gneiss. It is likely that it was used as a school field in that year. On the ground of the city, there are scattered pieces of grey pottery, red pottery with sand, copper arrows and other objects. The local cultural relics department also collected iron swords.

Related research

Shibao city was built at an unknown time. It can be inferred that it was a military fortress against Qiang people in the Eastern Han Dynasty. It is of great value to the study of the history and culture of the ethnic exchanges between Gansu and Qinghai at that time. In the Tang and Song Dynasties, there was a consensus in the academic circles on it. It was generally recognized that it was the Yonggui town set up in the period of the Tang and Guiyi army, and one of the military towns set up at that time.

The Guiyi military regime took the city as the South Gate of Dunhuang, dispatched heavy troops to defend it, and appointed the generals of Gui Qi to stay in the town. According to the Dunhuang family records, Yin Chen, who was born in a famous family, was the general of Yonggui town in Guazhou. At that time, some wars between the GUI Yi army and the Uighurs in Ganzhou took place in the city. It is recorded in a document reporting the enemy's situation to Guazhou that on May 27 of a certain year, "thieves" came out from the East. A total of 18 people came to Yonggui Town, killed one person, shot three or two horses, and then went east. There were Uighurs everywhere under Yonggui town. This shows the tense situation in the city at that time.

By the Yuan Dynasty, some of the original farmland around the city had been abandoned, but the city was not abandoned. On the lintel of the sixth cave of Yulin grottoes, there is an inscription in the second year of the Zhizheng reign of the Yuan Dynasty (1342), which reads: "the city of Yonggui, the stone walls of the city, the four fortresses of Kaishan, no one cultivated for food."

In Ming and Qing Dynasties, Shibao city still had important military and traffic significance. "New records of Suzhou" records: "shibaocheng Road, Qinghai, is more precipitous and dangerous than Jinyong in the iron Gorge; when you climb to the top of the mountain, you can see the edge of the mountain." In the fifth year of Yongzheng reign of the Qing Dynasty (1727), MartaI, the Minister of the Ministry of industry, was ordered to inspect the frontier and supervise the construction of the fortresses in Anxi and Dunhuang. When the project was completed in the autumn of the next year, he "toured the newly built 13 piers and abutments for more than 2000 Li, and saw that lake Bulu, Changma River, Shibao city and Boyan pier were everywhere, especially Anxi and Shazhou pass Shibao city is located in a dangerous pass. In the former dynasty, the stone was built as a city, standing high on a precipice. It was not caused by human power. So he wrote a poem on the spot, "to the emperor and the vast, Rong was prosperous in the western border.". Poetry says:

When did the rock city rise? Wuding transport capacity to open God domain, four counties even beacon police night knife. The withered grass was left to battle in those years, and the autumn wind is still today. Zhou Xing had already ascended his ambition. He was not afraid to travel thousands of miles.

Environmental Science

Shibao city site is located by the Yulin River, in the vast Gobi desert, a little oasis, with a population of about 10000 people.

Address: 302 provincial road, Subei Mongolian Autonomous County, Jiuquan City

Longitude: 95.988011

Latitude: 39.808822

Chinese PinYin : Shi Bao Cheng