Yuan Shangdu Ruins Museum
ShangduCheng was the xia capital of the Yuan Empire, located on the Jinlianchuan grassland of the present-day Inner Mongolian steppe Xilin Gol League. Shangdu City is the earliest capital city built in the history of the Yuan Empire and the most diverse ethnic characteristics, and is the steppe international metropolis of the Yuan Empire, enjoying a high reputation in Eurasia, and is called "a Yuan Shangdu and half of the history of the Yuan Dynasty" by Wang Dafang. However, the glory of Shangdu City was very short-lived, and after a hundred years of its construction, it suddenly fell like a meteor and turned into a piece of dust. The completion of the capital city is closely related to the fate of destruction and the rise and fall of the Yuan Empire, and it can be said that the Xia capital of the Great Yuan Empire has not escaped the cold winter on the Mongolian steppe.
Ruins of Yuan Shangdu
I. Capital City on the Golden Lotus River Grassland: The establishment and overall planning of the Upper Capital City
As the political and economic center of the empire, the construction of the capital city not only catered to the will of the ruling class, but also closely related to the level of political, economic and cultural development at that time. The Yuan Empire is a large empire with a vast territory, and the location layout and planning and design of the capital city are very different from the previous generation, showing the grandeur of looking at all directions and embracing all things.
The Yuan Dynasty (including the early Mongol State) had four capitals, namely Hala and Lin, Shangdu, Dadu and Zhongdu. Yuan Shangdu is one of the earliest capital cities built in the history of the Yuan Dynasty, and this capital city in the transition stage from Hala and Lin to Dadu reflects more the characteristics of the compatibility of nomadic and farming peoples, reflecting the strategic purpose of the Mongol nation at this time from the grassland to the Central Plains.
The completion of the upper capital was not unrelated to the southward expansion strategy of the Great Mongol State at that time, so the upper capital city had a strong political and military color from the beginning of its establishment, and continued until the destruction of the upper capital. Located on the fringes of the Mongolian plateau, the Jinlianchuan Steppe has been a battlefield for repeated tug-of-war between farming peoples and nomadic peoples since ancient times, when people called it: "North Control Desert, South Ping Yan Thistle, Mountains and Rivers, Circle thousands of miles." As early as the Qin and Han dynasties, the Xiongnu and Donghu waged war around the land of Outuo, where the Jinlian River was located. During the Northern Wei Dynasty, there were military towns in this area to defend against Rouran in the north. Later, Kim Sejong held summer hunting and autumn hunting in the Golden Lotus River many times, and implemented a policy of bondage, so as to envelop the Tataers on the Mongolian plateau. The importance that successive emperors attached to the Golden Lotus River is enough to prove the importance of the strategic location of this place.
Kublai Khan chose to build a city on the Jinlian River steppe, not only for the purpose of connecting hala and lin, the political center of Great Mongolia, but also considering the rich and vast pastures here, which were enough for the Mongol cavalry to go south for military supplies. The Jinlianchuan Grassland is located in the main communication route between the east and the west, south and north of Great Mongolia, and is an important strategic hub for controlling the Han regions in Northern China. The Jinlianchuan steppe has a pivotal political and military position, and at the same time, it also has a strong Mongolian nomadic color.
In the sixth year of Emperor Yuanxianzong's reign (1256), entrusted by Möngke Khan's general Mongol headquarters to the military state in the south, Kublai Khan ordered his aide Liu Bingzhong to build a city in the Jinlianchuan area, which took three years to complete, which was Kaiping City, which was the predecessor of the later Yuan Shangdu.
Kublai Khan
At the beginning, we said that the construction of dynastic capitals must be influenced by the ideology of the ruling class, and Yuan Shangdu is no exception. Kublai Khan was surrounded by two groups of people, one was the Han courtiers who had insisted on "ruling the Han Dynasty with Han Rule" since Wokoutai Khan, who had carried out policy experiments in Xingzhou and achieved success, which won the enthusiastic support of the Han people in North China; the other was the three royal forces of Genghis Khan's brothers and the "Five Surrenders" military group centered on Muhuali and composed of the Khitan people who had submitted in the Mengjin War. Han Chinese warriors and leaders of the Mongol and Khitan military cliques formed the core force of Kublai Khan's "Golden Lotus River Shogunate", which had a major impact on the construction of the upper capital. One was the Han Confucian monk Liu Bingzhong, and the other was Kublai Khan, the supreme ruler of the empire, and the seeds of the combination of Han Chinese culture and Mongolian steppe customs were sown.
Left Liu Bingzhong, right Kublai Khan
Overlooking Shangdu Castle, we can find the difference between Shangdu and Dadu. The metropolitan city absorbed the model of the construction of the golden capital, and was divided into a three-fold structure of miyagi, the imperial city and the outer castle, and the checkerboard shape was the main feature of the metropolitan city. Although the upper capital is also a similar triple structure, its center is the Khanate of the Mongol Khan, surrounded by the "Ao Bao Circle", "Guanxiang Circle" and "Temple Circle", forming a "concentric circle" structure, which is completely different from the capital city. Why?
The Yuan Shangdu restoration map, the highest in the middle is the Daan Pavilion
The Mongols have an almost fanatical worship of the "circle" because it is a symbol of good fortune and beauty. This idea is reflected not only in the yurts they built, but also in the organizational form of the early Mongolian "Guleyan" tribe.
What is "Gureyan"? "Guleyan" means "circle" or "camp" in Mongolian, referring to the circular camp form unique to the early Mongol tribes. During the long migration, the felt tents of the tribal leaders were centered on the yurts and carts of the tribesmen, and the yurts and carts of the tribesmen were arranged in a circular layer around the felt tents. Just as the so-called "imperial felt tent, thousands of columns", the organizational form of "Gulieyan" reflects the environmental concept of harmonious coexistence between the Mongolian nation and the steppe, and this is also the performance of the "mobile" characteristics of the nomadic people.
In addition to this concentric circle structure, Shangdu City is more eclectic in urban form. Compared with the strict and uniform of the capital city, the upper capital city shows more characteristics of integration with nature. The Luan River Basin, where the Jinlian River Grassland is located, has a well-developed water system, so there are many rivers in the upper capital, there are dense drainage ditches outside the three castle walls, and the roads in the upper capital are mostly irregularly distributed. What is more interesting is that shangdu city also has an iron pole canal for flood control, which shows the uniqueness of the construction plan of shangdu city.
Meta are restored floor plans
2. Shangdu Patrol Luck: Emperor Yuan's political performance of Patrol Luck
After Kublai Khan unified the country, Shangducheng became the first de facto imperial capital in the history of the Yuan Dynasty. Yuan Shangdu was the summer capital of the Yuan Emperor, with multiple functions such as administration, imperial entertainment, and summer safari, and was a veritable grassland capital.
The Emperor of the Yuan Dynasty had to go to the capital city of Shangdu to "stay in Xia" every year from April to August, during which the Yuan Emperor would hold a variety of high-standard activities and banquets, and the emperor would enjoy the same music. One of the most important is the "horse feast".
"Horse Feast" is also known as "Quality Sun Feast", "False Horse" is Persian, meaning "clothes", and "Quality Horse" is Mongolian, meaning "color". Horse feasts are usually held in June of the lunar calendar for three consecutive days. At that time, the Mongol emperors, Su Wei, ministers and other important members will wear the gold weave clothing rewarded by the Yuan Emperor to attend the banquet, which is the "quality Sun costume". According to the different status of the status, the fabric and style of the quality grand dress are also different.
The horse feast was held in the brown hair hall, the most luxurious palace in the upper capital, which was different from the palace in Dadu, and to be precise, it should be a tent. The brown hair hall is made of brown hair throughout, surrounded by colored gemstones, which are brilliant and dazzling.
The catering dishes at the banquet are very rich, and there is the so-called "Northern Eight Treasures", mainly wild camel hooves, deer lips, camel chycosma, swan scorching, purple jade pulp and other delicacies. In addition, there are wines from the western region, horse milk wine, Habadu fish from Heilongjiang, and famous tea "phoenix marrow" from southern China. It can be said that the sky flies, the water swims, and everything is available.
Of course, the life of the emperors of the Yuan Dynasty in Shangdu city was not as simple as eating and drinking, although most of them were the capital of the Yuan Empire, but the Shangdu City also had extraordinary significance in the political life of the Yuan Dynasty.
The most distinctive political system of the Yuan Dynasty is the so-called "Kulitai" assembly system, which is Mongolian and means "Great Dynasty". During the Mongol tribal period, the "Kuritai" assembly was a Mongolian council to elect tribal leaders and decide on important events such as conquest. After Genghis Khan unified all of Mongolia, the "Kuritai" congress became an important place to elect the Great Khan of Mongolia and later the emperor of the Yuan Dynasty. Since Emperor Chengzong of the Yuan Dynasty, the emperors of the Yuan Dynasty have changed seriously and the political situation has been turbulent, and in order to compete for the throne, the Emperors of the Yuan Dynasty have launched a bloody political struggle around the "Kulitai" congress.
In addition to the "Kuritai" conference, Yuan Shangdu was also an important place for the emperor and senior officials of the province to visit the emperor of the Yuan Dynasty. Every year, they had to go to the Yuan Dynasty to make a pilgrimage to the emperor, report on the local situation, and regularly report on their duties, which gradually became a system.
Emperor of the Yuan Dynasty
3. The Coming of All Nations: The Economy and Culture of the Yuan Shangdu
Yuanshang is built on the vast Jinlian river grassland, with abundant water and grass, and developed animal husbandry. When Emperor Yuan inspected Shangdu, he needed a large number of horses to pull the ears of the big ear, and the members of the royal family and the hundred officials of the imperial court needed a large amount of horse milk to make dairy products for unhurried needs. As a result, Shangdu is surrounded by a large number of royal pastures, zongwang pastures, and caravanserai foregrounds that supply the mobei region.
In addition to animal husbandry, Yuan Shangdu is an international metropolis with extraordinary commercial prosperity. The Government of the Yuan Dynasty has always attached importance to commerce, adopted a tax reduction and even tax-free mercantile policy, coupled with the superior geographical location of the Yuanshang to communicate between the east, west, south and north, attracting a large number of merchants and craftsmen to trade here, and the Yuanshang quickly became a prosperous city for business and tourism.
The Mongols are mostly nomadic and are very fond of horse milk and wine fermented from horse milk, so the drinking style in Shangdu Castle is very strong, and there are many taverns in Shangdu City. In addition to mare's milk wine and western wines, a shochu called "Araji", which originated in Persia and Arabia at that time, also became popular. The Yuan Dynasty poet Yang Yunfu wrote in a poem "Luanjing Miscellaneous Songs": "The wine sellers are deep in the alley, and the red bridge is green and yangyin." The beauty stops embroidering and stands on the fence, and the male hairpin flowers lean on the horse. "This shows the prevalence of drinking in the capital city."
Mongolian horse milk wine
The Yuan Empire was vast and culturally tolerant of open policies, and in the upper capital, various religious activities formed a beautiful landscape. There, Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, and Christianity live in harmony with each other in the same city. The upper echelons of various religions also followed the Yuan Emperor for many years and became an important tool for the Yuan Emperor to win over religious forces. In and around shangdu at that time, there were a large number of temples, Taoist temples and Huihui temples (that is, mosques).
However, in the eighteenth year of the Yuan Shun Emperor's reign (1358), the Red Turban Army, Mr. Guan, and the Broken Head Pan and other troops attacked Shangdu, burning all the palace temples, and the Shangdu City was reduced to ruins. Two years later, the Red Turban Army once again defeated the Yuan army and captured Shangdu for the second time, and the shangdu city was more seriously damaged. In July of the first year of Hongwu (1368), the Ming army approached Dadu, and the Yuan Shun Emperor fled to Shangdu, and after the destruction of the Red Turban Army, the Shangdu City at that time was "swept away by public and private, the palace official offices were burned, and there were survivors among the people.". In June of the following year, the Ming army went north and captured the capital city, and The Yuan Shun Emperor once again fled to Yingchang. Since then, the history of Shangducheng as the capital of the Yuan Dynasty has officially ended. From the time Liu Bingzhong founded the city to the time the shangdu city was captured by the Ming army, the history of the shangdu city as the capital of the Yuan Dynasty was only a short 110 years.
Wen Shijun said
The construction and destruction of the capital city of the Yuan Dynasty is closely related to the rise and fall of the Yuan Empire. ShangduCheng has the important characteristics of combining Mongolian nomadic culture with Han Confucian culture, and its "concentric circles" structure derived from the early Mongolian tribal form has left a strong mark in the history of the establishment of The capital of China. Yuan Shangdu has been listed as a national key cultural relics protection unit, although it has become a ruin, but still in its own unique way to witness the vicissitudes of that period of history.
bibliography
[Ming] Song Lian et al.: History of the Yuan, Zhonghua Bookstore, 1976.
Wei Jian: Archaeological Research on Yuan Shangdu, Cultural Relics Publishing House, 2005.
Ye Xinmin: A Study of Yuan Shangdu, Inner Mongolia University Press, 1998.
Wei Jian: "Kublai Khan's Yuan Shangdu", Cultural Relics Heaven and Earth, No. 5, 2003.
(Author: Haoran Wenshi Shenqi)
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