Luoyang and Chang'an in the Han and Tang Dynasties are two international metropolises, and the road connecting Luoyang and Chang'an was once a gathering of merchants and wheels, but most of this ancient road has not existed until now, and only a few hundred meters are well preserved, which is particularly precious, so it has been selected into the World Heritage List.
This ancient road is the Kunhan Ancient Road, which has been open for more than 5,000 years, in a broad sense, the Kunhan Ancient Road refers to the road between Luoyang and Xi'an, and in a narrow sense, the Kunhan Ancient Road refers to a section of the stone trench ancient road about 800 meters east of the Che Trench Village in Jiaoshi Township, Shaanxi County, Henan Province. Of course, due to the changes of thousands of years, the Kunhan Ancient Road in the broad sense no longer exists, and only the narrow sense is still well preserved.
The Kunhan Ancient Road was not completed by one or two dynasties, at least in the middle of the Neolithic culture five or six thousand years ago, the ancient road has been initially formed, the ancient road is built with the help of natural terrain, and later successive dynasties have been continuously improved to truly complete. From the Western Zhou Dynasty to the Northern Song Dynasty, the Kunhan Ancient Road played an important traffic role, and later the Liangjing Road was diverted, and the road was slowly abandoned.
The Kunhan Ancient Road is more than 30 kilometers away from Sanmenxia, which is the throat of the ancient Central Plains to Guanzhong, and the ancient books record that it is 480 miles long. Qin Dynasty, Sui and Tang Dynasties during all the exchanges and circulation between Chang'an and Luoyang and the two capitals, the Kunhan Ancient Road has become a must-pass place and the only passage, in ancient times, whether it was the emperor or the hundred officials, or the common people, the two Kyotos were walked here, and the Kunhan Ancient Road was a veritable Gyeonggi Avenue.
The famous Battle of Qin and Jin in the Spring and Autumn Period was here, and Du Fu of the Tang Dynasty once stayed here overnight near the ancient road, saw the officers and soldiers arresting people to become soldiers, and wrote the famous poem "Stone Trench Official". Today's Kunhan Ancient Road only has 200 to 300 meters of the stone trench section, which was listed on the World Heritage List in 2014 and became the eighth batch of national cultural relics protection units in 2019.
This ancient road became a true recorder of the Silk Road. The existing ancient road remains are about a few hundred meters long, the road surface is 3 meters to 6 meters wide, and you can also see the rut marks formed by the wheels on the hillside for a long time, which are made of wheels on the stone slope for a long time, the imprints are clearly visible, and the wheel imprints are about 100 meters long, although they have been eroded by wind and rain, they are still the same. With such deep wheel marks, you can imagine how busy the traffic was back then.
"Chang'an City East Luoyang Road, the wheels are endlessly dusty", the former bustling ancient road, but now it seems so lonely. It seems that an ordinary ancient road can become a World Heritage Site and a national cultural relics protection unit, and it seems that only the Kunhan Ancient Road can do it. When visitors step on this ancient road, look at everything here, and think that they can still go back to a thousand years ago, as if they saw horses hissing and galloping carriages coming from afar.