The unopened capital city is constantly changing
——Anhui Fengyang Ming Zhongdu Ruins supplement the key links in the study of the capital city system
Guangming Daily reporter Ma Rongrui Changhe Guangming Daily correspondent Guo Ruliang
On March 31, the results of the 2021 National Top Ten Archaeological New Discoveries selection were announced in Beijing, and the Site of Mingzhongdu in Fengyang, Anhui province was selected, which is also the archaeological project selected by Anhui Province in the past 12 years after the 2009 Guzhen Xia Dawenkou Site.
Since 2015, the Anhui Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, together with the Palace Museum, Shandong University and other units, has carried out meticulous and continuous archaeological excavation work on the Mingzhongdu site, gradually clarifying the architectural layout of the central axis of the Mingzhongdu site, the scale and shape of each individual building, and exploring its construction process, order, materials and other important information. According to the collective judgment of domestic authoritative experts, Mingzhong is an ideal model for studying the inheritance and development of the mainland capital city system, and its excavation results have supplemented the key links of the transformation of the ancient capital city system of the mainland from the Song and Yuan dynasties to the Ming and Qing dynasties.
Aerial view of the ruins of Miyagi Castle, the capital of the Ming Dynasty, is provided by the Anhui Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology
Although it was demolished, the outline of the city has been formed
Fengyang, Anhui, is the hometown of Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang, where stands an unused capital city, the capital of Mingzhong.
The ruins of Ming Zhongdu are located in Fengyang County, Anhui Province, close to the south bank of the Huai River. In the second year of Hongwu's reign, Emperor Ming's grandfather Zhu Yuanzhang issued an edict to build zhongdu in his hometown of Linhao. In the eighth year of Hongwu, when the "merit will be completed", he also used the excuse of "labor fee" to strike the construction of Zhongdu, and then carried out a large-scale transformation of Nanjing, and in the eleventh year of Hongwu, nanjing was determined as the "beijing division".
Although Mingzhongdu did not become a real capital city, the outline of the city was formed when it was built, and most of the ruins such as city walls, palaces, altar temples, bell and drum towers, military guardhouses, and princely residences have survived to this day, and together with the water system road network and the remains of the kiln sites and stone factories opened at the time of the founding of the city, they constitute a huge mingzhongdu ruins group.
According to Wang Zhi, deputy research librarian of the Anhui Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and head of the Mingzhongdu Archaeological Project, among the huge mingzhongdu ruins, the best preserved are Miyagi and Forbidden Walls. Miyagi Castle also preserves the Noon Gate, the Xihuamen Castle Terrace and a city wall of more than 1,100 meters. In 1982, Miyagi, the capital of the Ming Dynasty, was announced as a national key cultural relics protection unit, and in 2017, it was announced as the third batch of national archaeological site parks. Since 2013, taking the construction of the Mingzhong Imperial Ancient City National Archaeological Site Park as an opportunity, the Anhui Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology has formulated the "Archaeological Work Plan for the Mingzhongdu Ruins", and cooperated with the Palace Museum, Shandong University and other units to carry out continuous archaeological work.
The remains are rich, highlighting the great archaeological value of the capital city
After careful investigation, exploration and excavation, archaeologists have basically grasped the distribution of underground remains in most areas of the Ming zhongdu ruins and most of the forbidden walls, especially for the regulation and layout of the central axis of the Mingzhongdu, the city gate, the city wall, the water system, the road network and other capital building facilities have achieved a series of new understandings. It is understood that there are three castle walls in the Ming Dynasty, the inner is Miyagi Castle, with an area of about 840,000 square meters; the second is the Forbidden Wall, with an area of about 3.8 square kilometers; and the outer is Guocheng, with an area of about 50 square kilometers. Archaeologists have advanced their understanding of the central axis of the Ming Dynasty through the excavation of the Chengtian Gate, the Waijinshui Bridge, the palace base site, and the cleaning of the Noon gate hole.
In 2021, archaeologists carried out archaeological excavations at the Tushan gate site in the Ming Zhongdu ruins and the base site of the palace in the former Chao District, and obtained a series of important harvests. According to Wang Zhi, as the only city gate on the western wall of Guocheng In the Ming Dynasty, Tushan Gate is also the best-preserved and the most recognizable gate site in the Outer GuoCheng of the Ming Dynasty.
Since 2015, archaeologists have continued to carry out archaeological excavations of the palace base site in the former Dynasty District, and as of 2021, the cumulative excavation area of the palace base site is about 9,600 square meters. In recent excavations, archaeologists have found a loess platform in the middle and back of the antechamber, which is at the geometric center point of Miyagi Castle, and it has been confirmed from the section and exploration that it was built earlier than the surrounding rammed earth. According to the analysis, this location should be the location where the dragon chair throne is placed in the temple site, which has a strong symbolic significance and is closely related to the planning and site selection concept of the capital city.
Both ming and zhong were the first capital cities in the Ming and Qing dynasties that truly embodied the system of the Beijing division. Its planning was influenced by the "New Palace of King Wu" (the predecessor of the Ming Palace in Nanjing) built in the early Ming Dynasty, but in turn more deeply influenced the transformation of Nanjing Palace and the construction of the capital city of Beijing. The city gate shape system, the palace setting, the symmetrical layout of the Zuozu Right Society, and the jinshui river system inside and outside the Ming Dynasty were deeply influenced by the Ming Zhongdu, and deeply affected the planning of the Ming Dynasty royal palaces and mausoleums in various cities.
The archaeological excavations and discoveries of Mingzhongdu in recent years have also filled a number of academic gaps in the study of the ancient capital city system in the mainland. Wang Zhi specifically explained that the layout of the doorway of the "Ming Three Dark Five" of the Mingzhong Capital Chengtianmen Ruins filled the transition link in the evolution of the second gate of the ancient capital city of the mainland from the "Three Doors Road" to the "Five Doors Road", and was the prototype of the "Tiananmen" Five Doors Road in Beijing; the discovery of the loess center point in the Mingzhong Capital Palace Was also extremely rare in the excavation of the capital city. The giant raspberry-type stone foundation found during the excavation is nearly 2.8 meters long on the stone side, 2.5 meters to 2.6 meters in length on the base surface, and 1.8 meters in diameter, which is the largest stone foundation of ancient Chinese palace architecture seen so far.
The dripping water excavated from the palace base site is provided by the Anhui Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology
The ideal model, the development of the capital city inherits the past and the future
At the "Anhui Fengyang Mingzhongdu Ruins 2021 Archaeological New Discoveries Expert Seminar" held in mid-March this year, the participating experts generally believed that because the Mingzhongdu were not put into use after they were basically completed, its one-time layout highly reflected the original design and planning concept of the builders at that time, and was a rare "ideal city" model in the study of the capital city sites.
Wang Wei, a member and researcher of the Faculty of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that Mingzhong is a collection of the development of ancient Chinese capitals, especially the loess terrace found in the middle and back of the front hall reflects the continuation and inheritance of the concept of "choosing the capital in the middle of the ming", and he suggested that the follow-up archaeological work should focus on the development of the concept of "choosing the capital in the middle of the Ming Capital".
Liu Qingzhu, a member and researcher of the Faculty of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that the archaeology of the capital city is an important way to explore the inheritance and stereotyping of national cultural genes, among which the discussion of key academic issues such as the "central axis" and "the main gate of Miyagi" is a major topic to explain the reasons for the continuous rupture of China's 5,000-year civilization. The central axis regulation of the Ming Dynasty capital was inherited from the capital of the Song Dynasty, and profoundly influenced the ming and qing dynasties of Beijing, and the Ming and Zhongdu have very important academic value for the study of China's history after entering the Middle Ages.
Dong Xinlin, director of the Han and Tang Research Office of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that in the case that the Ming and Zhongdu dynasties inherited the Ming and Qing dynasties and the Ming and Qing dynasties, the Beijing City of the Ming Dynasty, and the Ming and Qing Dynasties could not carry out large-scale archaeological excavations, and its archaeological discoveries became a key point in studying the planning concept and shape layout of the Ming Dynasty capital, which is of special value for studying the development and evolution of the Miyagi system in recent antiquity.
Guangming Daily ( 2022-04-08 09 edition)
Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily