The Ming Dynasty built Wuwei City
In the Ming Dynasty, the government carried out many reinforcements and repairs to the northwestern border city of Wuwei. The first time was during the Hongwu period. Zhu Yuanzhang sent Feng Sheng, the Duke of Song, to march west to pacify Wuwei and other hexi roads. Soon, Feng Shengban's division returned to the dynasty, but the officers and men stationed in Wuwei did not retreat with the army, but took on the heavy responsibility of defense.
The "Five Liang Quanzhi" of the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty records that in the fifth year of Ming Hongwu (1372), Feng Shengding Hexi, the Duke of Song, and the Duke of Yuanliang were north, and they were victorious over the Liangjing Void, and Lanzhou and other guards guarded the imperial palace. It can be seen from this that after Feng Sheng and Fu Youde led an army to retake Liangzhou, they saw that the garrison of Liangzhou was empty, so they dispatched officers and troops from Lanzhou and other places to garrison Wuwei and effectively control Wuwei. At that time, wuwei was very depressed after years of war and chaos, coupled with the plundering of the Mongol rulers. After Feng Sheng's western expedition, the remnants of the Yuan Dynasty continued to harass Hexi and other places. In order to defend and combat the remnants of the Northern Yuan, the Ming rulers took a series of measures to deal with it, the most important of which was to set up Liangzhou Wei in 1376, with a military strength of 5,600 people to strengthen the military defense force; the other was to strengthen and build Wuwei City.
By the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, Liangzhou City was only left with a fifteen-mile-old city built by Li Rail at the end of the Sui Dynasty. In 1377, Du commanded Pu Ying to begin a large-scale reinforcement and addition of Liangzhou City. Who is this Pu Ying? He once served as the local military commander of Shaanxi, leading an army out of the Lianping Yuan Army in Gansu And capturing more than a thousand Northern Yuan generals. He pacified Hameri and opened up the road of merchant travel in Gansu and Shaanxi, and was a hero who contributed to the development of Shaanxi and Gansu in the early Ming Dynasty.
When Puying strengthened and added liangzhou city, it was mainly on the basis of the wall built by Li Rail in the Sui Dynasty to "increase the height by three feet, reduce the week by three miles, to eleven miles and one hundred and eighty steps, and six feet thick." After the reconstruction, Liangzhou City retained the northern city of the original Guzang, cut off the south city, and extended to the west for about a mile. Because it is long from east to west, narrow from north to south, and has a phoenix shape, the common people also call it Phoenix.
More than twenty years later, Song Sheng, the commander-in-chief of Liangzhou, carried out a large-scale renovation of Wuwei City. Song Sheng was a native of Dingyuan, who had been guarding Liangzhou for more than twenty years, fighting countless battles with ethnic groups outside the Country, and achieving many military achievements, and his officials were as important as the generals of Pingqiang and the Marquis of Xining. According to the History of Ming, Song Sheng was demoted to liangzhou wei commander for breaking the law. Soon, Song Sheng rebelled against the leader of the Xifan rebellion, and when he arrived at Yiji Nailu, he captured Timur and Wu Zhidu of the Yuan Dynasty Haidao, and captured and beheaded 18,000 people. Song Sheng sent their chiefs to the Beijing Division, selected thousands of elite people to replenish the army, and all the others were released. Song Sheng was recalled, reappointed as the commander of the capital, promoted to the position of governor of the right army, and still guarded Liangzhou.
Song Sheng's liangzhou city was built on the basis of the original three gates of the old city, the southeast, south and north gates, and the three gate towers of the east, south and north were built. Nancheng Tower is a building with a heavy eaves on the top of the mountain, seven rooms wide and two stories high, and the cornices on it are like Kunpeng spreading its wings, which adds infinite magnificence to the Nancheng Tower. Whenever people enter the South City Gate Tower at night, they can still hear the sound of asphalt and zhengzheng, which is called "night rain hitting tiles". But when I walked out of the city tower and stood on the city wall and looked up at the night sky, I saw the bright moon and all the silence. So where does the rain come from? It may be a mystery left by the craftsmen when they first built the castle tower, intentionally or unintentionally. There is an urn under the south gate, and the city gate is opened in the south. When entering the city, go to the urn gate, and then turn west and there is a short street leading to the east city gate.
Legend has it that the South City Gate is also equipped with a "watershed sword". The south city gate is facing the Jinta River at the foot of Qilian Mountain, which often floods. In order to prevent flash floods from rushing into the city, when the city was first built, a "water-splitting sword" was installed at the south gate to divide the flood.
The North Gate Tower is a three-storey building with a single eaves, seven rooms wide, and surrounded by columns. The pillars of the North City Tower are all made of complete wood, thick and magnificent, and the architecture is superb. According to legend, when people look north from a hole in the lattice gate on the north side of the North City Tower, the desert camel caravan and the rolling Red Cliff Mountain in Minqin can be seen from the bottom of the eye, and they can also see the county seat of Minqin a hundred miles away, so it is called "clairvoyance".
At that time, the West City Gate did not repair the city tower, but only piled up seven mounds, because it was piled up according to the distribution of the seven stars of the Big Dipper, so it was called "Seven Star Sword".
During the construction of the city tower, Song Sheng also ordered people to build four suspension bridges, dig trenches more than six meters deep, and build a total of thirty-six watchtowers and patrol shops around the city wall. A tall building was built on the west side of the northern city wall, which was specially used to look into the distance and alert the enemy.
During the Ming Dynasty, Inspector Liao Fengjie of Gansu and Governor Shi Maohua ordered people to wrap the earthen city wall with large green bricks and open the Jixian Gate (East Xiaonan Gate), which took two years to be officially completed. From 1377, when He commanded Pu Ying to begin reinforcement and addition, to 1576, when the governor Shi Maohua built the city wall with bricks, after nearly two hundred years of addition and reinforcement, Liangzhou City became war-guarded and became a veritable "impregnable" city in the Hexi Corridor.
The article is reproduced from the "Liangzhou Cultural Research" WeChat public account