On 1 July 2004, at the 28th session of the World Heritage Committee held in Suzhou, China, China's nomination of "Goguryeo Royal Castles, Royal Tombs and Tombs of Nobles" was inscribed on the World Heritage List. The successful declaration of this inheritance has its special significance, it makes Goguryeo ——— an ancient country that has disappeared for a long time and has been misunderstood for a long time, and entered people's vision with a new look.
Ancient frontier regimes straddling northeastern China and northern Part of the Korean Peninsula
Today's scholars in our country generally believe that Goguryeo was an important frontier ethnic regime that emerged in the northeast region of China from the Western Han Dynasty to the Sui and Tang Dynasties. The Northeast region has long been the jurisdiction of the ancient central government. When the Zhou Dynasty destroyed the Shang Dynasty, The Shang Dynasty descendant Jizi led his troops to migrate eastward, establishing a "Joseon" state in the area of present-day Pyongyang, becoming a local government of the Zhou Dynasty, which was generally called "Jizi Joseon" in academic circles; at the beginning of the Western Han Dynasty, a Yan man named Wei Man came here to escape the chaos of war and gathered other Central Plains people to seize the right to rule, which was called "Wei Joseon" in academic circles. Due to the policy of expansion, in 108 BC, Wei's Korea was unified by Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, and the Western Han Dynasty set up four counties under its jurisdiction, Nameng, Fan, Lintun and Xuanyu, to administer it.
In 37 BC, a prince of the northeastern frontier tribe Fuyu, persecuted by his people, fled south to Goguryeo County (southeast of present-day Xinbin County, Liaoning Province) because of his persecution, where the leader known as "Jumong" because of his good archery established the original Goguryeo regime, which is also referred to as "Goryeo" in the history books. According to the Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms, the household registration of Goguryeo at that time was under the administration of Goguryeo County, Xuanju County, Western Han Dynasty. In 3 AD, the second-generation goguryeo chieftain, Li Li, moved the capital to the "domestic city" in the territory of present-day Ji'an, Jilin Province. For more than 400 years, the Goguryeo regime was located here.
Goguryeo was successively administered by Han Xuanju Commandery and Liaodong Commandery, and constantly claimed to be vassals and tributes. Historically, this regime has had a process of rise and fall. During the reign of Wang Mang, wang of Goguryeo was booby-trapped and killed by Wang Mang because of the defection incident due to his conscription to participate in the conquest of the Xiongnu; after the establishment of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the rulers of Goguryeo were re-crowned kings, and constantly annexed the surrounding frontier regimes, gradually becoming stronger; after the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the central plains were in turmoil for a long time, enabling Goguryeo to develop even more. During this period, Goguryeo submitted to the central plains dynasties and suffered two devastating blows from the regimes of Cao Wei and Murong Xianbei. After that, Goguryeo began to change its strategy, no longer seeking to expand westward, but instead operating the southern region, suppressing the other two regimes on the Korean Peninsula at that time, Baekje and Silla. In 427, Goguryeo moved its capital again and established its capital in Pyongyang. According to historical records, at its peak, Goguryeo's territory was "two thousand miles from east to west and one thousand miles from north to south", stretching south to the central region of the Korean Peninsula, north to the north of today's central Jilin, east to the east of Yanji, and west to the LiaoHe.
By the Sui and Tang dynasties, the Central Plains were becoming more and more unified, and the submission of Goguryeo to the state of division became the common will of the emperors of the two dynasties. It was precisely because of the demand for unification that Emperor Taizong of Tang continued to make up his mind to unify Goguryeo by force after emperor Wen of Sui and Emperor Jue had failed in many attempts. According to the history books, Tang Taizong once said before the expedition: "Now the Nine Ying Dynasty, only this corner", indicating that he regarded the conquest of Goguryeo as the last battle of national unification. Beginning in 644 AD, after 24 years of war, Goguryeo was finally destroyed under the joint attack of the Tang Dynasty and the Silla regime in the southeast of the Korean Peninsula, and tang established the Andong Protectorate in Pyongyang, and appointed Xue Rengui as the inspector of Andong Duhu and the commander of the army. Since then, the ancient kingdom of Goguryeo, which existed for 705 years, has withdrawn from the stage of history.
Goguryeo culture is inseparable from the Culture of the Central Plains
The Fu Jiaxin Research Librarian of the Jilin Institute of Archaeology has long been engaged in Goguryeo archaeological research. He told reporters that from an archaeological point of view, Goguryeo culture suddenly rose at a low level. For example, there are many exquisite pottery and iron tools found in the tombs of nobles in a certain period, while the tombs of the people in the same period are still stone tools, which is very obvious that it was influenced by foreign civilizations. About 2/3 of the goguryeo monuments excavated at present are in today's northeast China, which embodies the cultural characteristics of early Goguryeo, and after the late migration of Goguryeo to the south, its cultural characteristics tended to be more centralized, and the original characteristics were even less. "Many phenomena show that the culture of Goguryeo has always developed and grown under the light of the Culture of the Central Plains," Fu Jiaxin said.
Li Dalong, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Research Center for the History and Geography of China's Frontiers, told reporters: "Goguryeo culture is a very splendid branch of Northeast Asian culture, whether it is murals, mountain cities, tombs, it is very remarkable. He believes that Goguryeo maintained close economic and cultural exchanges with the dynasties of the Central Plains, which to a considerable extent gave birth to the splendid Goguryeo culture.
For example, Li Dalong said that among the many Goguryeo tombs, the fresco tombs are extremely precious. Judging from the content of the murals, there are themes of social life, four gods (green dragon, white tiger, suzaku, xuanwu) and decorative patterns, many of which are often found in Central Plains architecture and tombs. In addition, Goguryeo murals occurred slightly later than in the Central Plains, indicating that there was a process of circulation from the Central Plains to the frontier. After the fall of Goguryeo, there were not many mural tombs in the area.
Similarly, exchanges between the Goguryeo and Central Plains peoples were also very frequent. Li Dalong called it "all-round" communication. For example, the emissaries of Goguryeo and the Central Dynasty have always had very close exchanges, and they are one of the main bearers of cultural exchanges between the two sides, and there have been extensive exchanges in terms of ceremonial system, religion, and calendar. The Goguryeo people had their own language, but today they are gone, but they use Chinese characters for writing, enabling scholars to study it in depth today. There were a large number of Han Chinese in the Goguryeo regime; similarly, in the Tang Dynasty, there were many Goguryeo people who held important positions, such as the famous general Gao Xianzhi, who served as an envoy to Anxi Jiedushi. It can be seen that Goguryeo and its descendants had a sense of identification with the Central Dynasty.
A long-misunderstood history
After the fall of Goguryeo, most of its descendants were moved into the Central Plains, gradually merging with the Central Plains peoples, and a small part was integrated into the surrounding ethnic groups, and the royal family was extinct. Its territory was initially under the full jurisdiction of the Tang Dynasty, and later part of it was assigned to another local government in the northeast, Bohai, and part to Silla in the south of the Korean Peninsula. Subsequently, this history gradually broke away from the framework of traditional historiography in the Central Plains. After the Song Dynasty, the Central Plains' understanding of Goguryeo history was confused and even wrong. By the Qing Dynasty, because the northeast was the "land of dragon rejuvenation" of the imperial family, the Qing Dynasty implemented a "ban policy" on this place, and few historians could examine and study this. It was not until 1877, when a huge stone stele recording the deeds of Goguryeo King Gao'an (also known as Tande, known as The Good King) was accidentally discovered, and Goguryeo, an ancient country that had disappeared for more than a thousand years, was gradually reacquainted.
"For a long time, we have regarded the history of Goguryeo as foreign history, which is actually a misunderstanding," said Fu Jiaxin, a research librarian at the Jilin Institute of Archaeology. In 918, 250 years after the fall of Goguryeo, a regime also called "Goryeo" appeared on the Korean Peninsula, because the ruler's surname was Wang, which was called "Wang's Goryeo" in academic circles to distinguish it from Goguryeo for short. Although the same name was adopted, Wang's Goryeo and Goryeo had no inheritance relationship. The Goryeo clan replaced Silla in 935 and later destroyed Baekje, unifying much of the Korean Peninsula. In 1392, the chancellor Lee Sung-gyu deposed the king and established himself, and in 1393, under the title of "Joseon Andyeong Equal Sign", the Ming Dynasty gave Lee Sung-gyu the title of King of Joseon, and the Goryeo clan of the Wang clan was renamed Joseon, and the scholarly circles called Lee Chosun or Lee Dynasty.
Li Dalong, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' China Frontier History and Geography Research Center, made an analogy that there have been many regimes called "Song" in the history of the Central Plains, but there was actually no inheritance relationship between these regimes, and the same was true for Wang's Goryeo and Goguryeo, and Wang's Goryeo was directly inherited from Silla, and Goguryeo was unified by the Tang Dynasty. However, due to the lack of historical materials and misleading reasons, the history books of the Later Song Dynasty confused Wang's Goryeo with Goryeo of the Goryeo clan, and the "History of Ming" even included The Jizi Joseon, Wei Dynasty Korea, Hansi County, and Goguryeo into the history of (Lee's) Korea in order to have a reasonable explanation for the canonization of Li Chenggui.
Li Dalong believes that the founding era of Wang's Goryeo and Goryeo's is very different, the main ethnic groups are different (Wang's Goryeo is mainly the "Three Han" people around Silla and Baekje, not Goguryeo), the founders of the regime have no inheritance relationship, and the ruling regions are different. These four points are enough to show that there is no inheritance relationship between the two.
Our country has made great efforts to safeguard the heritage of Goguryeo
In the third year of Guangxu, a Qing Dynasty official who loved gold and stone accidentally found the "Good Taiwang Monument" in the wild grass, setting off a wave of enthusiasm for examining the inscription. However, it was not until 1941 that the first systematic study of Goguryeo history, the General History of Northeast China (Part I), was published by Kim Yu-doo. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, China has increased the excavation and protection of Goguryeo ruins, and the Haotaiwang Monument was listed as a national key protected cultural relics in 1961.
In the 1980s, a comprehensive study of the history of Goguryeo gradually began. In 2002, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage organized relevant design units to prepare a full set of special protection plans, laying the necessary foundation for orderly and effective heritage declaration. Subsequently, the state allocated more than 300 million yuan to start a series of environmental remediation, cultural relics protection and excavation and cleaning work, moved a large number of modern buildings and tombs, initially cleaned up the ground remains of 11 royal tombs, unearthed more than 2,700 cultural relics, and strengthened and repaired the existing museum. Last year, the reporter went to Ji'an to interview and learned that from Jilin Province, Tonghua District to Ji'an City, they are all working together to successfully declare goguryeo ruins as world cultural heritage. Ji'an City has also deployed a plan to vigorously support the tourism industry and strive to develop the tourism industry into the second pillar industry after the ginseng industry after the successful declaration.
In the interview, almost every scholar said that the ancient civilization of Goguryeo should be viewed in a historical and scientific manner, and the problem should not be brought into modern politics. In fact, the history of the Chinese nation and the nations on the Korean Peninsula should not and cannot be rigidly separated. Professor Niu Jun of the School of International Relations of Peking University believes that the state system in ancient East Asia and the state relations established according to western concepts are completely two concepts and cannot be rigidly set. The relationship formed by the tributary system in ancient times was very complex, and we cannot understand it under the current system of international law. ▲
Items inscribed on the World Heritage List
There are 3 Goguryeo capitals: Wunu Mountain City (Huanren, Liaoning), Domestic City (Jilin Ji'an), Marudu Mountain City (Jilin Ji'an);
12 tombs;
26 noble tombs;
General's Grave No. 1 Tomb;
Good King Monument 1 pass.
Global Times (July 2, 2004, 14th Edition)
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