This place is rich in beautiful women, known as the land of queens, with 25 queens and 9 imperial concubines!
1/9 side three absolute
The Ming Dynasty was founded to overthrow the Yuan Dynasty, and after the Yuan army was driven out of the area north of the Great Wall, its remnants have been trying to make a comeback. In the Ariake generation, the border troubles in the north have never stopped. In order to defend against the northern plague, the Ming Dynasty successively set up nine border defense towns on the northern border defense line from the Yalu River in the east to Jiayuguan in the west, and stretched for thousands of miles, including Liaodong Town, Jizhou Town (also known as Jizhen Town), Xuanfu Town, Datong Town, Biaotouguan (also known as Shanxi Town or Sanguan Town), Yansui Town (also known as Yulin Town), Ningxia Town, Guyuan Town (also known as Shaanxi Town), and Gansu Town. In the twenty-first year of Jiajing, the Imperial Ming Nine-Sided Examination called it the "Nine-Sided Important Town" (also known as the "Nine-Sided Town").
At that time, among the officers and men defending along the line, there was also a rumor that there was such a slip of the tongue: "Jizhou City Wall, Xuanfu School Yard, Datong Mother-in-Law", which was for "nine sides and three absolutes". The three towns of Jizhou, Xuanfu and Datong, because of their special importance due to their proximity to Beijing, people called these three towns together.
2/ Jizhou City Wall, Xuanfu School Yard, Datong Mother-in-Law
The city wall of Jizhou Town (now known as Jixian County, belonging to Tianjin City) was re-repaired and reinforced by the famous general Qi Jiguang, so it was built tall and strong, and had a three-dimensional defense system, and its defense ability was the highest of the Nine Towns Great Wall of the Ming Dynasty, and it successfully repelled enemy attacks many times, so the "city wall of Jizhen" was widely circulated.
The school yard was an ancient venue for training and reviewing the army. As an important military fortress along the Great Wall in the north, Xuanfu Town held a military parade at Xuanfu every year. Xuanfu's school yard can accommodate more than 100,000 troops to carry out exercises, and it is said that the school yard area is six times that of Beijing at that time! Therefore, the military parade school field in Xuanfu is extremely spectacular, and can accommodate hundreds of thousands of troops to be inspected at the same time, so there is a saying of "Xuanfu School Field".
Compared with the walls and school grounds of Jizhou and Xuanfu, the fame of Datong Town is somewhat different - because of the mother-in-law. During the Ming Longqing period, the two sides finally turned each other into jade and reached a mutual market agreement, and the mutual market trade place was located in Datong. Datong commerce, located in the north-south trade distribution center, began to develop rapidly, so a large number of qinglou also mushroomed, and Datong women are very beautiful and skilled, so there is a saying of "Datong mother-in-law".
3/ Queen's Land
In fact, the "mother-in-law" here is not a pejorative meaning, but praises the local beauties, just like the popular "mother-in-law suide of rice fat" in northern Shaanxi. Some people say that "mi fat's mother-in-law" is because it is stained with the legendary beauty mink cicada as the light of the rice fat people, and the history of Datong is indeed a place rich in beautiful women. According to incomplete statistics of relevant historical materials, there have been 26 empresses and 9 imperial concubines in the history of Datong. The most famous of these were Empress Dowager Lou Zhaojun of Northern Qi Wenxuan and Empress Cao of Emperor Renzong of Song.
The women of Datong are beautiful, and with the attention to dressing, they are even more gorgeous and dazzling, so they have won the favor of successive feudal emperors. In addition to Lou Zhaojun and Empress Cao introduced above, the empresses and imperial concubines recorded in the historical records include:
Lou Zhaojun's two daughters were Empress Dowager Wei; the seventh daughter of Dugu Xin, duke of Weiguo of Northern Zhou, was Empress Wenwen of Sui; the eldest daughter was Empress Zhou Mingjing; the fourth daughter was Empress Zhou Yuanzhen; the wife of Li Keyong of the Jin Dynasty, liu shi and concubine Cao shi, were first princesses, and Li Cunli was crowned empress dowager and imperial concubine after succeeding to the throne; Empress Li shi of the Later Jin Emperor Shi Jingyao; Empress An Shi, the biological mother of the Later Jin Wei Emperor Shi Chonggui, was crowned imperial concubine; The Later Tang Emperor Li Congke empress Liu Shi; the Later Han Emperor Liu Zhiyuan Empress Li Shi (Li Sanniang): Emperor Zhengde of the Ming Dynasty Concubine Li Fengjie... The list goes on. In short, there are so many empresses and imperial concubines in Datong, which is really worthy of the "land of empresses".
It is precisely because of this that the Ming Dynasty scholar Xie Zhaozhe made this evaluation of the women of Datong in his "Five Miscellaneous Tricks, Volume IV": "The nine sides are like Datong, and their prosperity and wealth are not lower than Jiangnan, and the beauty of women and the fineness of everything are nothing in the border plugs." The city has been paid for a long time, and it has not been burned by war. Proverb: Jizhen City Wall, Xuanfu School Yard, Datong Mother-in-Law are the three absolute. ”
4/ Why is Datong a beauty?
Why do Datong have so many beauties? It is the result of national integration.
In the history of Datong, whether it was the Warring States period when Hu Fu, the king of Zhao Wuling, rode to open up the territory and expand the territory, the Han Dynasty in which the Xiongnu were at a standstill, or the Northern Wei Dynasty, or the Song and Liaojin dynasties, the Datong region of Shanxi was the most important battlefield, forming the fact that multi-ethnic groups lived together. In addition, as early as the Northern Wei Dynasty, the imperial court encouraged the Xianbei to intermarry with the Han people, promoting the great integration of nationalities, from the perspective of population evolution, there will be excellent races, which is commonly known as mixed blood, which is the most important reason for the beauty of Datong.
The ancient city of Datong is the capital of the Northern Wei Dynasty, the capital of Liaojin, the capital of the Ming and Qing dynasties, and is a place where all kinds of talents gather. Especially in the Northern Wei Dynasty, from the spring of the first year of Tianxing to the first year of Zhengping, the Northern Wei Dynasty has forcibly migrated the population of all ethnic groups to Pingcheng five times, opened up workshops such as iron, wood, textile, winemaking, and commerce, and all kinds of outstanding talents exchanged marriages and reproductions, and their descendants will be beautiful.
98 years after Datong became the capital of Northern Wei, Emperor Xiaowen of Northern Wei moved the capital to Luoyang. When the capital was moved, many ministers disagreed, and Emperor Xiaowen cleverly used a "military exercise" to successfully move the capital, but because he was in a hurry, many palace ladies and concubines stayed. After arriving in Luoyang, many old ministers asked Emperor Xiaowen of Wei to "return to winter in summer", that is, to return to Datong when it was hot and to Luoyang when it was cold, and many palace women at that time also "went back to winter in summer". Emperor Xiaowen of Wei knew that these people were good and bad, so he was allowed to return to the field, and the palace ladies were more rationed to the border guards in Hunyuan County and Ying County. At that time, this combination also promoted the combination of excellent genes, so that their offspring would be more beautiful than the other.
(Image from the Internet)