There are many rotten tail projects, but there are very few world-famous ones, and the Sagrada Familia cathedral in Spain is one of them, but have you ever seen a rotten tail project that has been abandoned for more than 2,000 years and can still be considered a world wonder, and this building is in China? The four major projects of Qin Shi Huang that we often hear about are the Qin Straight Road, the Great Wall, the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, and there is a relative mystery, that is, Afang Palace.
Afang Palace was built in 212 BC, before Qin Shi Huang still lived in the palace of the first dynasty, and later because the Jingshui River and Weishui River always flooded, and the population of Xianyang increased dramatically, the construction of Afang Palace as a new political center was considered. However, qin shi huang died in the second year after the construction began, because qin II, who wanted to build the imperial tomb, transferred all the workers to Lishan. After the completion of the imperial mausoleum, the work of the Afang Palace has been suspended for more than 7 months, and Qin II continued to send some workers to build the Afang Palace in order to fulfill the wishes of the former emperor.
Unexpectedly, less than a year after the outbreak of the peasant revolt, there was a serious disagreement within the Ruling Group of the Qin Dynasty over whether to continue to build the Afang Palace, and the construction progress was slow until the fall of the Qin Dynasty. Since then, the Afang Palace has been called "Acheng" by latecomers. Because Acheng was close to Chang'an, it was a good place for the dynasty's soldiers, according to historical records, Emperor Wu of Han and Emperor Taizong of Tang used this area, and later due to the war of the Song Dynasty, Acheng was destroyed.
Nowadays, the ruins of Afang Palace are located in the suburban city of Xi'an City, according to the ruins, it only has a city wall in the east, west and north, and according to the current geographical scope, it is bounded by Sanqiao Town, Gucheng Village and Jujiazhuang, with an area of about 600,000 square meters. In 1961, the ruins of Afang Palace were included in the first batch of cultural relics protection units in the mainland, and in 1991, the relevant United Nations scientific and educational organizations came to China for field investigation and established Afang Palace as the largest palace site in the world. In 2005, Xi'an City in line with the concept of "protecting cultural relics, reproducing cultural relics" to reproduce the Afang Palace, although the new Afang Palace is only more than 680 square meters, but it cost more than 200 million yuan. The final review found that the building was in conflict with some of the principles for the protection of the Afang Palace, which was torn down in 2013.
However, the official did not give up, and after examining and approving the planning layer by layer, it was decided to build another Afanggong Park of a consistent scale on the basis of the ruins of Afanggong. The park is affected by ancient cultural relics and can only restore its original grand scenery as much as possible, and most of them are still mainly ruins. Although we can't appreciate the most prosperous scene of the Qin Dynasty now, we can get a glimpse of it in the famous "Afang Gongfu". But is it true that the fact that "covering more than three hundred miles", as the poem says, was burned in the end? I am afraid that there are hidden feelings here.
In 2002, the mainland formed an archaeological team to investigate the ironclad evidence of "Chu people are torched, poor scorched earth", but every inch of the land at the site of Afang Palace has not found any traces of being burned. One might ask: Is the fire not big enough? Or is it too old to cause soil changes? Neither of these views is very reliable, because the Changle Palace of the Han Dynasty was burned down at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, and traces of the site being burned can still be detected today, and the "Afang Palace Endowment" indicates that the Afang Palace was burned for a full 3 months, which is impossible to be untouchable. Therefore, it is very likely that the Afang Palace was not built, and after the fall of the Qin Dynasty, the Afang Palace only built part of the foundation and a small number of ancillary buildings, and the "Acheng" mentioned by later generations may be only one of the few annexes that can be used in the Afang Palace.
The main doubts supporting this conclusion are as follows: 1. The "Records of History" mentions that Xiang Yu burned the Xianyang Palace, which is confirmed by modern archaeology, and no history book mentions which generation of emperors lived in the Afang Palace. 2, even if it is burned, there are still a large number of architectural remnants, but the ruins are very clean. 3. It took only 5 years from the beginning of construction to the end of the Afang Palace, and the later stage was still in turmoil, and even if 700,000 workers were mobilized, it was almost impossible to complete this task.
According to the existing literature, most archaeologists are inclined to believe that the palace is only a "rotten tail building" that has been abandoned for more than 2,000 years, and the Afang Palace is only a very small part of the area. However, the folk's beautiful fantasy of Afang Palace is still there, mainly because the poet Saint Du Mu depicts Afang Palace too beautifully, which is really difficult to accept.