China has experienced the devastation of war and foreign looting, so we naturally miss those cultural relics that have been lost. However, not only those cultural relics that are scattered outside must find a way to find a way, but also those cultural relics that are still in China today must be carefully protected.
To this end, China has created many museums with countless cultural relics on display, so that they can be better protected. However, not all artifacts can be moved, and not all artifacts can be accommodated in a small museum. For example, the Forbidden City, a building like this, is it possible for you to put it in a small museum? Not to mention migrating it.
However, it is reasonable that such a magnificent building as the Forbidden City is listed as a protected cultural relic, but an earthen wall was found in Xi'an, which is also a cultural relic? Seemingly bland, why has no one dared to demolish it for 600 years? The reason for this is simple.
It turned out that this earthen wall was actually the remnants of the Ming Qin King's Palace!
According to records, since the Ming Dynasty unified China, Zhu Yuanzhang made Hongwu's second son Zhu Zhu the King of Qin for three years, and made him guard Xi'an, and ordered Geng Binwen, the Marquis of Xi'an, and Shi Puying, to jointly build the Xi'an City Wall and the Palace of Qin. In the 6th year of the calendar, in the ninth year of Hongwu, the construction was completed, and in the eleventh year of Hongwu, Zhu Zhu, the king of Qin, officially came to Xi'an to take the domain. Since then, the Qin King's Mansion has also become the residence and office of successive Qin kings.
This city wall was formed in the sixth century AD, the Sui and Tang Emperor's city wall as a base extension, and has a history of more than 600 years. It is the most complete preservation of ancient Chinese city wall architecture, and it is also the largest and most complete ancient city wall in the world.
Unexpectedly, such an earthen wall actually has such a head, it is no wonder that it will be listed as a cultural relic, and who dares to tear it down. The ruins are rectangular from north to south, 671 meters from north to south, 408 meters from east to west, and 2158 meters in circumference, and the remains of the four walls still exist. There were originally four gates around the city, namely, the East Body Ren Gate, the West Zunyi Gate, the South End Li Gate, and the North Guangzhi Gate.
According to records, the Ming Qin Palace was the Qin King's Mansion of the Ming Dynasty's "First Domain under heaven". It is located in the northeast area of Xi'an Ming City Wall, it has a city wall, a moat, the internal layout presents a solemn and rigorous style, the building is solemn and gorgeous, its garden scenery is picturesque, it and Xi'an Ming City Wall City together to form a "city within the city" of the heavy city pattern, but also opened another golden age of development of Xi'an City after the Tang Dynasty.
So, why did such a building become a dilapidated earthen wall 600 years later? Let's move on.
In 1645, after the Qing dynasty entered Shaanxi, they demolished all the buildings in the Qin Dynasty Palace and the east, west and south gates, and converted the Qin Palace into the Eight Banners Sect Martial Field.
The Qin Dynasty Palace City can be divided into two walls, namely the outer wall and the inner wall, and its outer wall is called the Xiao Wall, which is all made of loess rammed; the inner city wall is also called the brick wall because of the external green bricks.
In the early years of the Qing Shunzhi Dynasty, that is, when the Qing people entered Shaanxi, the outer Xiao Wall was destroyed, while the inner wall was preserved. In 1921, when Feng Yuxiang built the Overseer's Palace in Xi'an, he demolished the bricks of the inner wall for the construction of the Overseer's Mansion and other places, so that the brick wall of the Qin King's Mansion became an earthen wall, and it has been preserved to this day, and later it has become the only existing section of the earthen city wall in Xi'an, which is the earthen wall we mentioned at the beginning of this article. In 2003, the ruins of the ming and Qin dynasty walls, that is, the earthen wall, were officially listed as key cultural relics protection units in Shaanxi Province.
However, after hundreds of years of wind and rain, coupled with the lack of brick shelter, this earthen wall is particularly fragile. Later, due to the collapse of its walls and the erosion and depression of the roots, as well as the problems of block shedding, the walls and the top cracks were serious, so that the top width of some walls was only half a meter, which was painful, and if it was not properly protected, then the remaining remains of the Ming Qin Palace might also disappear.
Therefore, the government has organized relevant staff to repair it, and the restoration and protection work is mainly to take technical measures such as anti-collapse reinforcement, crack grouting reinforcement, and wall wind erosion and rain erosion reinforcement. Its construction area has a total of more than 140 meters in the north and south sections, and the practice is to build city wall bricks at its bottom, which is about 2.5 meters to 2.8 meters high, and the upper part of it still retains the earthen wall.
Nowadays, the Ming Qin Royal Palace has gone through vicissitudes and is no longer gorgeous, but the only remaining earthen wall can also allow future generations to peek out of the style of the Qin King. Moreover, no matter what kind of relics it has become today, its essence as a cultural relic will not change, and it is hoped that other cultural relics can be properly handled so that future generations can witness the style of the previous dynasty again.