The Paper asked
When you think of ancient capitals, which city does you think of? Is it Beijing, which sits in the Forbidden City, immersed in nanjing, which is immersed in the smoke and rain of the Six Dynasties, Xi'an, which witnessed the prosperity of the Tang Dynasty, or Luoyang, the birthplace of Chinese civilization? What are the stories behind these four ancient capitals? What factors determine the pattern of dynasties and dynasties?
With the rise and fall of dynasties, more than two hundred ancient capitals have appeared in ancient Chinese history, and the history of capitals and civilizations in each period is inseparable. In this issue, Xi Huidong, vice president of the Silk Road Research Institute of Northwest University, was invited to talk about the glorious decline and fall of the ancient capital of history.
Site selection and construction
@Xiong: How many ancient capitals are there in China? How many are there any influences?
Xi Huidong: The number of national capitals, now commonly known as the eight ancient capitals of China. If you count the historical capitals of divided regimes and national regimes, there are more than two hundred in total.
@Rulai Snap: Want to hear your insights on the creation of feng shui in the rise and fall of the ancient capital?
Xi Huidong: Feng Shui, also known as Kanyu, Geophysics, "Qingwu Technique" and "Blue Bird Technique", is a kind of art of xiangdi, that is, a method of surveying the geographical environment, mainly the metaphysics of choosing a suitable place for Yang House and Yin House, including the location of Cities, Palaces, Residences, Villages and other Yang Houses and Cemeteries Yin Houses, the methods and principles of seat orientation. It should be emphasized that feng shui is only one of the ancient magic numbers, which was formed around the Wei and Jin dynasties, and it cannot be generalized, and the ancient ideas related to geography are attributed to feng shui.
The rise and fall of the ancient capital was influenced by both geographical, political, economic, military and other practical factors, as well as by ideological concepts. Judging from the location and planning of the ancient capital city, when Liu Bang convened the group of ministers to discuss the issue of fixing the capital in the early Han Dynasty, he considered practical factors such as economy, military, and politics, and there were no feng shui factors. From the Three Kingdoms period, it can be seen that Zhuge Liang and others have a discussion about the shape and victory of Nanjing City. When Yuwen Kai of the Sui Dynasty designed Daxing City, that is, Tang Chang'an City, he had a certain feng shui idea. Zhu Yuanzhang often had feng shui considerations in the process of building the capital Nanjing and Nanjing.
Overall, the concept of feng shui has a certain impact on the site selection and planning of individual ancient capitals, but in general, it has little impact on the rise and fall and transfer of ancient capitals.
@ It is quite difficult to change a name: Is the capital city of each dynasty axially symmetrical since ancient times?
Xi Huidong: The capital city itself is strictly symmetrically symmetrical relatively late, until the Middle Ages of Cao Wei Luoyang City and Northern Wei Luoyang City were basically formed, the Western Han Chang'an, Eastern Han Luoyang City did not have a symmetrical north-south axis, but the palace or miyagi axis symmetrical pattern was formed very early, before the national civilization many settlements paid attention to the choice of the middle, the core building has a north-south axis. The xiadu erlitou ruins palace is symmetrical in the central axis.
@ Rainbow Design Bureau cleaner: I stumbled upon mountains in the north of the Ming Dynasty capital, such as Banzai Mountain in Beijing, Longguang Mountain in Nanjing, and Phoenix Mountain in Mingzhongdu. Is this man-made or naturally formed by Teacher Xi? What if the human plan is for what purpose?
Xi Huidong: The construction of ancient Chinese palaces pays attention to the mountains and rivers, and is generally called a backer hill, which can be explained from the perspective of military security and landscape victory, and can also be explained from the concept of feng shui.
Zhu Yuanzhang, as a southern Han Chinese, attaches great importance to the concept of feng shui, and most of his descendants inherit it. Beijing's Banzai Mountain, namely Jingshan Mountain and Coal Mountain, is built for artificial soil piles, and Longguang Mountain in Nanjing, that is, Fugui Mountain, and Fenghuang Mountain in Zhongdu Fengyang are natural hills.
Miyagi North Pillow Town Mountain can not only serve as a military barrier, overlook or ascend the landscape, block the wind and avoid the cold, but also hide the wind and avoid the air in the concept of feng shui, defeat the northern Hu, and increase the sense of security.
@Little Rabbit: Was the population cap of the ancient capital city considered when establishing the capital city? Has the upper limit of population carrying capacity been reached?
Xi Huidong: After the establishment of the capital of the ancient dynasty, it would generally migrate from all over the country to enrich the Beijing division from the rich families of the Hao clan, and there was no action to reduce the population of the Beijing division by taking the initiative to relieve it. Most of the ancient capitals were organic growth cities that inherited the old sites, and a few conscious planning cities such as Sui, Tang, And Chang'an did not consider the upper population limit when planning.
Ancient capitals generally did not reach the upper limit of the population, because resources such as water and grain under the centralized system could be administratively allocated, and the residential density in the southern part of The Tang Chang'an City, which was nearly one million people, was still very low.
Restoration of the tang Chang'an City plan
Living in the capital
@ Bicycle: How to solve the problem of drinking water safety and sewage discharge in the Han, Tang and Qing dynasties?
Xi Huidong: The Han and Tang Dynasties did not have substantial changes in the supply and discharge of drinking water in the capital, mainly along the water, water into the city, the use of excavated well water, the construction of artificial reservoirs, underground pipelines, etc., underground water supply and surface water supply combined to solve the drinking water supply, and the use of water bladders, alum and other ways to purify the water source.
The sewage discharge of the ancient capital city was mainly discharged into natural rivers or lakes and depressions through ceramic pipe culverts, open channels or deep water wells, such as the "Three Auxiliary Yellow Maps" recorded that Han Chang'an "has a pond circumference under the city, wide three zhang, deep two zhang", together with the ground open channel and the moat outside the city to form a sewage system.
It should be pointed out that the drinking water supply and sewage discharge system of the ancient Chinese capital city have interfered in both the ground and the ground, so the long-term use of the city site cites the overall pollution of the water source, and has to be moved to a new site to build a new capital, and the Book of Sui records that the Han Chang'an City is "eight hundred years old now, the water is salty and brine, and it is not very pleasant", which became an important reason for the Sui Wen Emperor to order Yuwen Kai to build Daxing City. Xi'an was founded three thousand years ago, and there have been four city sites, rather than one city, and water pollution is an important factor.
In contrast, Rome and other Western ancient capitals mainly used elevated canals to divert mountain spring water into the city to solve the supply of drinking water with fountains as outlets, avoiding drinking water source pollution, so the city was basically not changed for more than 2700 years.
@ Jin Fusheng: Chang'an's population growth during the Western Han Dynasty to the Tang Dynasty, grain shortages, how did the types of grain in Guanzhong change, and to what extent was the farmland opened up?
Xi Huidong: The Han and Tang dynasties had a large population in Chang'an, and they could not rely on the Guanzhong region for self-sufficiency in grain, and they all needed to transport grain from Kwantung or Jiangnan to solve the problem of food supply in the capital. Judging from the literature and archaeological data, the grain in the Guanzhong region of the Han Dynasty is mainly millet, millet, wheat, buckwheat, sorghum, barley and other grains, millet is still dominant, and the proportion of wheat is increasing. The grain crops in Guanzhong in the Tang Dynasty were wheat, millet, barley, rice, millet (soybean adzuki bean), hemp, etc., of which wheat was the mainstay, millet and beans were secondary, waterways also began to be planted in Guanzhong, grain types and dietary structure underwent important changes, wheat replaced millet, Chang'an restaurant in many pasta, such as hu cake (burnt cake), soup cake (noodles), stone cake and so on. The grain structure of Hantang Guanzhong and the geopolitical structure of Chang'an grain supply have changed, and the dependence on grain in Guanzhong has gradually decreased, while the dependence on the canal to transfer grain from the southeast has continued to increase.
From the perspective of the development of arable land, during the Warring States period, the Qin State built the Zhengguo Canal, the Western Han Dynasty built the White Canal, the Tang Dynasty built the National Canal, and the Cultivatable Land in Guanzhong was basically developed in the Han Dynasty, so after that, it was mainly to improve the yield of mu by improving irrigation technology and intensive cultivation, so that the total grain output of Guanzhong in the Tang Dynasty was improved compared with the Han Dynasty.
@Little Rabbit: How is the commercial and trade function of the ancient capital city reflected?
Xi Huidong: Since the Qin and Han Dynasties, China has established a unified dynastic state, and the capital city is the political center of the country, so it will absorb the people and property of the whole country to supply the royal family and the huge central bureaucracy, so it has a political and institutional basis for the development of commerce and trade, plus the ancient capital city is generally located in the place of economic prosperity and convenient transportation, and has the economic and transportation foundation for the development of commerce and trade.
However, the commercial and trade function of the capital is subordinate to its political ruling function, and it is not the commercial factor that determines the rise and fall of the capital city in the first place. The commercial activities of the capitals of the Han Dynasty, Sui and Tang Dynasties, and other capitals were limited to a limited number of specific places, and after the Song Dynasty Kaifeng replaced the medieval closed market system with an open street system, the commercial and trade functions of the capital were greatly enhanced. After the economic center of gravity of the Tang and Song Dynasties shifted southward, a geopolitical pattern of separating the political center and economic center of gravity and relying on the Beijing-Hangzhou Canal was formed, and the commercial and trade of cities such as the southern canal port and the coastal port were highly prosperous, and the commercial and trade function of the capital city decreased relatively in the weight of the whole country.
Generally speaking, the commercial and trade functions of the capital city during the dynastic Taiping period will be strengthened and contribute to the strength of the dynasty, while the commercial and trade function of the capital city will tend to weaken during the chaotic period, mainly because the control of the dynasty and the adsorption of the resources of the capital city will decline, such as the decline of Chang'an and Luoyang commerce and trade after the Anshi Rebellion compared with the pre-Tang Dynasty, and there will be a pattern of "Yang Yi Yi Yi Er" such as the local city commerce surpassing the capital city.
Editor-in-Charge: Huang Yazhu
Proofreader: Luan Meng