Not far northeast of the Blue Flag, that is, the Golden Lotus River Grassland, every summer, the vast grassland is full of golden dazzling golden lotuses. Today you walk to a place where there are very few people, and you can think of a generation metropolis that has lasted for more than a hundred years, a city that is world-famous more than 700 years ago.
In the summer of the sixth year of Jin Dading, Jin Shizong completed Yan Yong and went hunting in The Silver Mountain. Therefore, this place was chosen as a summer retreat for the palace. Two years later, he named it the Golden Lotus River, which was the golden lotus flower that bloomed on the grassland here, "The Lotus One Lianye, taking its golden branches and jade leaves connected to the righteousness". That year was the fourth year of the Southern Song Dynasty (1168).
However, in the eleventh year of Song Chunyou (1251), Kublai Khan's brother Möngke succeeded the Great Khan and ordered Kublai Khan to lead the military state of The Southern Han Dynasty. After Kublai Khan accepted the order, he went from the north to the south of the desert, stationed in the Golden Lotus River between Huanzhou and Fuzhou, "requisitioned the world's famous scholars and used it", and established the famous "Golden Lotus River Shogunate" in the history of Mongolia and Yuan. Probably for Kublai Khan to have a formal office place, Möngke and his brother Kublai Khan discussed building a new city in the Jinlian River, so Kublai Khan recommended his close minister Liu Bingzhong to build a city here, and built the "Imperial Brother's Mansion" by using the way of building the city wall with mud, called Kaiping Province. This was the fourth year of the Southern Song Dynasty (1256). This Liu Bingzhong was the person who later built the Yuan Capital.
Interestingly, Kublai Khan ordered people soon after the construction of Kaiping Province, and in accordance with the old rites of the Tang and Song Dynasties, sent personnel to the "Five Mountains and Four Duffles to Throw The Golden Dragon and Jade Book" to worship the "gods of heaven and earth". He also wrote down this matter on the stele "The Creation of Kaiping Province to Tell Ji Du" in the Jidu Temple. It seems that at that time, they had already acted according to the rules of the Central Plains, and they had already shown their orthodoxy.
In 2011, by chance, I went to Play in Zhenglanqi, Inner Mongolia for two days with a friend, and that time I braved the rain to go to the ruins of YuanShangdu. The next year I went to Keshketeng, and when I came back, I went again from Duolun, and this year the ruins of Shangdu were officially listed as a World Cultural Heritage.
The entire city of Yuanshang consisted of Miyagi Castle, Imperial Castle, and Outer Castle. The layout of the castle is very interesting, a large square with a circumference of about 9 kilometers, 2050 meters from east to west, and 2115 meters from north to south, a small square inner city set on the southeast corner, and the small square is the imperial city, which is covered with Miyagi Castle, which is clearly visible on the satellite map.
In the period before the application for the heritage, someone once built a large door here, and then with the process of applying for the heritage, it may be felt that this door is too uncoordinated and demolished.
It takes more than 10 minutes to walk from the scenic gate to the site, but if you are too lazy to walk, there are battery cars to walk. A small river that bends on the grassland, which is the Shangdu River, is a tributary of the Lightning River.
From the Mingde Gate of that year, there are ruins and broken walls, the total length of the doorway is 24 meters, and there is still a half-section of the city wall. Inside is the imperial city, which is about 1400 meters long on all four sides. It is the first gate to enter the Yuan Shang capital from the imperial road, which belongs to the south gate of the imperial city, located on the north-south axis of the imperial city and miyagi.
Up to the remaining walls, the city is just a yellow autumn grass, the locals are harvesting grass in the autumn, and there is short stubble on the ground where the grass has just been cut. Who would have thought that there were once about sixty palaces, more than one hundred and sixty temples, more than 40,000 households, a population of 120,000, and a generation of metropolises that had been brilliant for a hundred years.
Not far ahead is Miyagi - Yutianmen - Miyagi South Gate, which is also a ruined wall, and you can enter the imperial palace through a 24-meter-long yongdao. The Yuan people have verses such as "Mingde City South Wan rode over, and there were more than a hundred officials under the Royal Heavenly Gate" and "The Imperial Heavenly Gate heard the edict, and the stagecoach flew to Dadu". This is the place where hundreds of officials gather and listen to the proclamations. Archaeology has found that there are two rows of building sites on the east and west sides of the urn, which are speculated to be the resting places of the hundred officials when they are on the court or waiting for the will.
To the north of the Imperial Gate is the imperial palace of that year. In 1258, the then Great Khan Möngke Wanli traveled to Sichuan, and received no decent resistance along the way. At the beginning of 1259, it was blocked in Hezhou Diaoyu City, and it could not be attacked for half a year. As a result, in 1259, the fifty-year-old Möngke died there.
After Möngke's death, Kublai Khan hastily withdrew from the front line of the attack on Ezhou, and in 1260 he ascended the throne here, Kaiping Province, making it the temporary administrative capital. The history of the Yuan Dynasty officially began.
In the fourth year of the Yuan Dynasty (1263), Kaiping Province was elevated to the capital and named Shangdu. From the eighth year of the Yuan Dynasty (1271), Kublai Khan set the name of the state as "Yuan", and Shangdu and Dadu became the two capitals alternately used in the winter and summer of the Yuan Dynasty, experiencing eleven emperors and one hundred and eight years.
This sign is a bit meaningful, and Yuan Dadu and Yuan Zhong are not said. Hatch and Lin were not the capitals of the Yuan Dynasty, but the early capitals of Mongolia. The second great khan of the Mongol Empire, Kutai Khan, built his capital there in the seventh year (1235). The first four khans of the Mongol Empire, namely Genghis Khan, Wokoutai, Guiyu, and Möngke, all sat in hala and lin to administer the empire. But that place is now the northwest corner of Mongolia's former Hangai province. Hala and Lin Turkic "black cobblestone", and the surrounding landscape have become Mongolia's only world cultural heritage in 2004 - "Orkhon Gorge Cultural Landscape". Seeing this, I think that we have made yuan shang a world heritage, which may be related to the Mongolian world heritage. Later, after Kublai Khan ascended the throne in 1260 at Kaiping City (later Shangdu), his younger brother Ali Buge established himself as The Great Khan in the Hala and Lin regions. In the winter of the following year, Kublai Khan's army defeated Ali Buge and invaded Hala and Lin. With Shengkaiping Province as Shangdu and Shengyanjing as Zhongdu (later changed to Dadu). Hala and Lin only placed the Marshal's Mansion in Sidu.
Such a beautiful white jade relief, on both sides are a flexible five-clawed dragon, and the bottom is set off with various flowers. This thing is two meters high, half a meter square, and weighs 2.8 tons. The scientific name is dragon pattern horn pillar, excavated from the site of Da'an Pavilion here, which is a national first-class cultural relic. It is said to be the most complete and exquisite dragon pattern among the known Cultural Relics of the Yuan Dynasty. The so-called "First Dragon of the Yuan Dynasty". Now this treasure has been placed in the Yuanshangdu Ruins Museum, which was newly built outside the gate of the ruins in 2016, and it is said that it has become the treasure of the town museum there.
Deep into the hinterland of Miyagi Castle, on a high platform is the ruins of MuQingge, and you can also see the pillar foundations on the ground, which is said to be the largest building in Miyagi Castle, also known as the "North Que". The emperors feasted here. At the height of the Yuan Dynasty, there were crystal, Daming, Yitian, Baoyun, Chenli, Cifu, Hongxi, Ruisi and other halls in the city, and pavilions such as Muqing, Da'an, Yanchun, Lianxiang, Rosewood, and Ninghui; Luzhu, Yingzhou Two Halls and Zhentang are contiguous palaces.
There are several small rooms at the foot of the palace, and there are actually mills, which seem to be the imperial kitchen of that year.
It is the main hall of the Imperial Palace, built in the third year of the Yuan Dynasty (1266), located in the center of Miyagi Castle. Da'an Pavilion is "taken from the song Xichun Pavilion material in The Fen, a little profit and loss, so that this cabinet, known as Da'an." The whole pavilion "soars and rises, dry and green and stands up", so that the viewer has the sigh of "the ghost structure of the divine camp, the hole is shocking", and the Yuan people have the admiration of "Da'an Imperial Pavilion Pavilion, Hua Que Zhongtian Zhuang Shangjing". It is said that five emperors, including Yuan Chengzong, Wuzong, Tianshun Emperor, Wenzong and Shun Emperor, ascended the throne here, and Kublai Khan accepted the surrender of the Northern Song Emperor after the fall of the Southern Song Dynasty. It's a place of great emotion. Now the upper ground floor is only the ruins of lama temples from the Ming and Qing dynasties.
At this point, the Imperial City is finished. Looking up, white clouds poured in from the north. It's a bit like the momentum of the Mongolian Iron Horse sweeping through the Central Plains. In 1368, emperor Yuan Shun (Emperor Hui of Yuan) withdrew from most of the capital under the attack of the Ming Dynasty, declaring the demise of the Yuan Dynasty. He did not run to Yingchang Road for a year here, and then died there. Kaipingwei was established here at the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, and during the Xuande Period, it migrated south to Dushi (present-day Chicheng, Hebei), and Shangdu was abandoned. It is really prosperous and bold, and its death is also sudden.
Zhenglanqi County is Shangdu Town.