In 1941, 35-year-old Soviet archaeology professor Dishelev excitedly boarded a train to Krasnoyarsk Krai.
He had earlier heard that a mysterious Chinese palace had been discovered on a construction site in Abakan, the capital of The Khakas Autonomous Prefecture.
(C.B. Djishelev)
For this archaeological operation, Jishelev has been preparing for almost a year, and in his heart there is a premonition that behind this mysterious Chinese palace - there may be a historical blank that has not been known for nearly two thousand years...
After several days and nights of turbulence, As soon as Jishelev and his archaeological team got out of the car, they rushed to the Chinese palace that was accidentally discovered...
Why were there Chinese palaces in the Soviet Union at that time? What is the unknown historical gap of the past two thousand years?
All this starts with Hakas in south-central Siberia...
Hakas in history
The Republic of Khakas, which was part of krasnoyar Krai during the Soviet era, became a republic of the Russian Federation after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
But in ancient China, there used to be another name here: Jiankun District.
According to the Book of Han, this area was conquered by the Xiongnu and has deep roots with the Han Dynasty in China.
During the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, due to the war between the Han Dynasty and the Xiongnu, the Xiongnu were defeated by the Han Dynasty, and some of the Xiongnu fled to Europe.
The Jiankun area was almost abandoned by the Xiongnu and became a no-man's land, so there are many ancient Xiongnu ruins here.
After the Huns fled, some of the remaining Huns in the Hakas region lived there with residents from elsewhere.
Until the 17th and 18th centuries, when Tsarist Russia annexed the area, people from all over Asia became the unique Hakas people, which is the historical source of today's Hakas.
Because the Hakas region was geographically close to ancient China, there were often cultural, economic and political exchanges between the two sides. To this day, there are Hakas people in Heilongjiang, China, and have become one of the many nameless and nameless ethnic minorities in China.
Mysterious Chinese palace
In 1940, at a construction site eight kilometres outside Abakan, the capital of Hakas Autonomous Oblast, farmers from local farms were building a road in full swing.
If the road is completed, the time for these villagers to enter the city will be greatly shortened, and the builders of socialism will be full of energy when they think of it.
But just as a few of the villagers dug into the edge of a hill, a strange phenomenon appeared:
Suddenly, many tiles appeared in the land that was originally loess, as if there had once been a house there.
In the impression of the locals, there has never been a place inhabited, let alone a house. And with the architectural habits of the locals, they generally do not use tiles to build houses, so where do these tiles come from?
What is even more bizarre is that some of the tiles that have been preserved more completely are also carved with many strange "patterns", like some kind of font.
Thinking of this, the more the farmers thought about it, the more wrong they became, so they stopped their work and reported the matter to the chairman of the farm.
When the farm chairman heard about this, he followed the farmers to the place where they said it and examined it carefully.
Looking at the strange tiles in his hand, the chairman of the farm realized the importance of this matter for the first time, which may be part of the artifact related to history.
So he immediately ordered the clerks to stop their work there, and reported the incident and two relatively well-preserved tiles to the Abakan City Historical Research Institute.
However, due to the limited level of the local historical research institute, the experts in the institute could not see the mystery from this tile, and could only speculate that it may be related to ancient China or Mongolia based on the mysterious "pattern" on the tile.
After all, thousands of years ago, they were in the land of the Mongols, Khitans, and Chinese.
Subsequently, the Abakan Institute of History sent a team to conduct a preliminary investigation there.
And just when the expedition team made a preliminary excavation there, a situation that everyone did not expect appeared:
A grand underground palace appeared in front of everyone's eyes, although it was impossible to see the whole picture, but according to its momentum, this palace should be magnificent at that time.
Shocked by this, the Abakan Institute of History did not hesitate to inform the then State Institute of Material And Cultural History of the USSR of the results of the expedition.
Because they clearly understand that this is no longer a existence that they can handle, and that the whole picture of this mysterious palace must be left to the state.
At the same time, Djishelev, who was working as a senior institute at the State Institute, heard the news and became very interested in it.
When Gishelev saw the palace and wadang from the Abakan Historical Institute, he realized that this seemingly inconspicuous palace may be buried with huge secrets.
Therefore, Jiselev took the initiative to ask his superiors for help, saying that he wanted to get the support of the court to let him make a physical inspection of the palace, and the court quickly agreed to his request.
In the end, after a year of preparations, Guiselev and his team officially began an expedition to the mysterious palace.
Earth-shattering discovery
After Jishelev and his archaeological team arrived at the site of the palace, they quickly surveyed and excavated the mysterious palace, and the results of the excavation surprised them.
The palace as a whole is hidden under a hill and consists of 19 rooms and a large hall; the middle hall is a regular square palace, composed of 12 meters by 12 meters of rooms.
(Restoration of the palace)
The other rooms are in an irregular shape, arranged on both the east and west sides according to the layout of the east-west contrast, centered on the square room in the center. The houses are identical to each other and subordinate to each other, and the roof of the entire palace is composed of four slopes of wadang.
The palace as a whole is about three stories, with a small tower at the top.
The entire palace covers an area of thousands of square meters, and the walls are up to 2 meters thick.
The walls of the building have doorways, narrow inside and wide on the outside. The roof is made of square tiles, which are slightly concave along the slope and arranged in rows of tiles. The tile cover is a semi-cylindrical convex tile, and underneath it is a tile engraved with Chinese characters.
In addition, in the various rooms of the palace,
There are also traces of heating pipes and braziers to keep warm and withstand the cold weather of Siberaya.
With the architectural features found, Jishelev obtained general information about the palace.
According to Ghishelev's speculation, the architectural style of the palace is highly similar to that of the Han Dynasty in China, and the identity of the owner of the palace is most likely Chinese, based on the tiles found in the palace with Chinese characters engraved on it.
The tiles engraved here with Chinese characters are the tiles that the farmers found when they were building roads.
While Jishelev was inspecting here, these wadangs were also sent to Alekseyev, a famous Scholar of Han Culture in the Soviet Union at that time.
in Alekseyev
According to Alekseyev's research, the Chinese tile has a total of ten Chinese characters, and these ten Chinese characters are:
"Long live the Son of Heaven". This is the famous auspicious language of the Han Dynasty.
This discovery by Alekseyev can be said to be consistent with Guishelev's speculation that the palace was most likely a palace of the Han Dynasty.
At this point, the Soviet Expedition was nearing the end. Later, in 1945 and 1946, Guishelev organized another expedition to the Chinese palace for the second and third time.
In the subsequent investigation, Jishelev also gave the Soviet side's speculation on the identity of the palace owner according to the history of the objects in the palace - Li Ling, a general of the Western Han Dynasty.
Is the owner of the palace Li Ling?
For friends familiar with the history of the Han Dynasty, Li Ling is definitely not an unfamiliar name. The grandson of Li Guang, a famous general of the Western Han Dynasty, a friend of Sima Qian, and a party to the largest historical "unjust" case in the Western Han Dynasty.
In the second year of the Western Han Dynasty, Li Ling, as the other general of the famous general Li Guangli, went out together to attack the Xiongnu and transport heavy loads for the frontline battlefield.
In this war, Li Ling led only 5,000 infantry, rushed to send troops to Junji Mountain, and encountered the main force of 80,000 Xiongnu led by the Xiongnu Shan Yu, and then a battle broke out.
Li Ling faced nearly ten times his own strength and a large number of Xiongnu elites
After killing more than 10,000 enemies, the Xiongnu army was terrified and held out for eight days and eight nights.
However, in the end, due to the delay in the arrival of reinforcements, Li Ling, who ran out of ammunition and food, chose to surrender to the Xiongnu Shan Yu to save himself and have the opportunity to serve the Han again.
When the news reached the Han Dynasty, Emperor Wu of Han was furious when he heard that Li Ling had surrendered, and the civil and military officials also engaged in fierce quarrels to regard Li Ling as treason.
Faced with this situation, Li Ling's good friend Sima Qian came forward to intercede for him, but he did not expect that Sima Qian's words directly contacted Emperor Wu of Han, and Sima Qian was sentenced to palace punishment and thrown into prison, and finally wrote the Thousand Autumn Masterpiece "History".
In addition, after Li Ling was captured, there were constant rumors that Li Ling was training troops for the Xiongnu after surrendering to the Xiongnu, which was for treason.
In the face of such rumors, Emperor Wudi of han did not distinguish between true and false.
Directly executing Li Ling's wife and children, Li Ling was discouraged after hearing the news, so he completely surrendered to Shan Yu.
The Li Ling case has thus become an unjust case in Chinese history, and the question of whether Li Ling has trained troops for the Xiongnu has not been able to find an answer for thousands of years.
After the discovery of the Han Dynasty palace in the Soviet Union, according to Ghishelev's speculation, this palace may have been built by the Xiongnu shan yu to keep Li Ling, after all, there were not many Han Dynasty generals who surrendered to the Xiongnu, and Li Ling was the most likely to be loved by the Xiongnu Shan Yu.
But is that really the case? Mr. Guo Moruo, a famous Chinese historian, raised doubts.
The palace originated from and pro?
In the 1940s, Mr. Guo Moruo, a famous Chinese historian, went to the Soviet Union for an expedition and eventually wrote a book called "Chronicle of the Soviet Union" to record what he saw and heard in the Soviet Union.
During his travels in the Soviet Union, Guo Moruo also inspected the cultural relics excavated in the so-called "Li Ling Palace" site museum, and he believed that the owner of the palace could not be Li Ling.
Because many items found in the palace, such as The Han Dynasty Wadang and the Bronze Beast Ring, it was impossible to manufacture themselves in terms of the level of manufacture of the Xiongnu at that time.
The only possibility is that the Han Dynasty took the initiative to send it over.
So, under what circumstances would the Han Dynasty take the initiative to send something to the Xiongnu?
There is only one answer, and pro.
After the Han princess married the Xiongnu, the slave built it to ease her longing. In the process of construction, the Han Dynasty authorities may have been involved.
In the speculation of many historians, Wang Zhaojun's daughter Xu Buju Ciyun became the most likely candidate.
In 33 BC, after decades of development, the relationship between Han and Hungary gradually eased.
In order to further consolidate the relationship between the Han Dynasty and the Xiongnu, and to completely unify the pro-Han Dynasty's Hu Han evil under the Han Dynasty's subordinates, the Han Yuan Emperor had the idea of making peace with the Hu Han Evil.
It just so happened that at this time, Hu Han evil visited the Han Dynasty, and taking this opportunity, the Han Yuan Emperor mated the palace princess Zhaojun Xu to Hu Han Evil Shan Yu, and the story of Zhaojun's departure began.
After Wang Zhaojun married Hu Han Evil Shan Yu, he gave birth to many children for Hu Han Evil Shan Yu, and Xu Bu Ju Ciyun was one of them.
Xu Buju Ciyun was deeply loved by her parents, and in terms of thought, she was deeply influenced by her mother and had a strong yearning for the Han Dynasty, which was strong in national strength and cultural prosperity.
Later, Xu Bu Ju Ciyun also had a husband who held real power, Xu Budang who was the right bone capital of the Xiongnu.
Influenced by his wife, during the reign of Xu Budang, the system of peace between the Xiongnu and the Han Dynasty became more and more prosperous, and the relations between the Han Dynasty and the Xiongnu were greatly improved.
If we speculate from this, It is likely that Xu Buju Ciyun was the master of the palace of the Han Dynasty.
(Subju Ciyun)
However, this statement is only speculation and lacks practical proof. The exact identity of the owner of the palace has not been able to be authoritatively stated.
The reason behind this may be that there are too few domestic information related to it, or that the Soviet Union's discovery of the Han Dynasty palace itself has many doubts...
Doubts
The biggest doubt in this matter is that the Discovery of the Han Dynasty Palace by the Soviet Union was led by the Soviet Side, and the Chinese archaeology and historian circles, who are the "mother's family" of the Han Dynasty Palace, have not paid much attention to this matter.
Moreover, it is even more regrettable that Chinese scholars have not yet had the opportunity to go to the site of the Han Palace in Abakan to conduct field investigations.
It is worth mentioning that in 1946, the Soviet authorities did not publicize the matter after the third time they ended the archaeological activities on the palaces of the Han Dynasty.
Years later, in one of Guishelev's books, he revealed the details of these archeological events for the first time.
The Chinese Han Dynasty artifacts excavated at this site are still preserved in a museum in the Republic of Hakas.
Whenever a Chinese scholar went to the palace site for an inspection, the local person in charge would say:
Due to the road construction project in the Soviet Union, the ruins of the palace have been buried by the road and are difficult to survey.
(Professor Sun Jiazhou)
epilogue
So far, historians such as Mr. Guo Moruo, Professor Zhou Liankuan, Professor Sun Jiazhou and other historians on the Chinese side have paid some attention to this matter. Therefore, the matter of the Han Dynasty palace in the Hakas region has become even more confusing...