China News Agency: Long Min
In December 2022, the Seoul Archaeological Site Park in Wuyishanchengcun, Fujian Province was selected as the fourth batch of national archaeological site parks, becoming the second national archaeological site park in Fujian.
As the largest field site in Fujian so far, why is the Hancheng site of Wuyishan Village called "China's Pompeii"? Lou Jianlong, vice president of the Fujian Museum and director of the Fujian Minyue Wangcheng Museum, recently gave an exclusive interview to the China News Agency's "East-West Question" to explain this.
The following is a summary of the interview:
China News Agency: As one of the best-preserved ancient city ruins of the Han Dynasty in China and the most well-preserved ancient city site in Fujian, how was the ruins of Chengcun Hancheng discovered?
Lou Jianlong: The ruins of Chengcun Hancheng are located in Chengcun, Xingtian Town, Wuyishan City, Nanping, Fujian, 41 kilometers away from the urban area; It is located on the rolling hilly ground, surrounded by Chongxi River on the east, west and north, surrounded by mountains and waters. This ancient village, also known as "Ancient Yue", which was built in the Sui and Tang Dynasties, is related to "Guyue"? Why does the name of the village have the word "city"? It's puzzling.
During the first national cultural relics census in 1958, an ancient city site with a relatively intact wall was found in the southwest of the city. In 1959, test excavations revealed an area of 864 square meters, and 391 relics such as pottery, iron and copper and a large number of Han Dynasty terracotta tiles were unearthed.
The artifacts unearthed have similar characteristics to the cultural relics unearthed from Han tombs in Guangdong, Zhejiang and other places. Archaeologists eventually concluded that this was the site of an ancient city in the Minyue Kingdom of the Han Dynasty, and that the name "Ancient Yue" was not out of nowhere, and named it "Chengcun Hancheng Site".
Aerial photograph of the ruins of Seoul in Seongcho Village. Photo courtesy of Minyue Royal City Museum
China News Agency: After more than 60 years of archaeological exploration and excavation, what achievements have been made at the Chengcun Seoul site? Why is it included in the fourth batch of National Archaeological Site Parks?
Lou Jianlong: Since the first archaeological discovery in 1958, more than 60 years of archaeological work has made the face of the Seoul site of Seongcun increasingly clear. The total area of the city has reached 14.6 square kilometers confirmed by archaeological exploration, of which the core area of the royal city is 480,000 square meters. The royal city buried under the ash layer of the Han Dynasty has an irregular rectangular plan, about 860 meters long from north to south, about 550 meters wide from east to west, a circumference of 2,896 meters, and a residual height of 4 to 8 meters, and even is clearly visible on satellite images.
"Build a city to defend the king, build Guo to the residents", the Minyue royal city follows the popular capital construction regulations since the Warring States, and the inner city and the outer Guo are orderly. The royal city opened four eastern, western, southern, and northern gates and three water gates on all sides, and in addition to the "Zuozu Right Society" in the north and south posts outside the east city gate, another altar was set up on the high ground in the city; In the royal city, the branches are surrounded by tall and wide rammed earth platforms, palaces of different sizes are staggered, and large and small gardens and marshes are connected in an orderly manner, and its grandeur shows the prosperity of the Minyue Kingdom that competed with the Great Han Tianzi.
The physical evidence of the royal city, as well as exquisite excavated cultural relics and texts. Hollow bricks more than 2 meters long are only seen in the whole country; The twists and turns of underground pottery water pipes and heavy patterned floor tiles are the characteristics of the southern city, and they are also the witnesses of the long-term and planned construction of the royal city. There are also elaborate pottery, ironware, bronze gilt ware, jade ware, and writing stamped on pottery pieces or cast in metalware.
During the Fujian and Yue period, advanced production technology and tools were introduced from the Central Plains, and great progress was made in farming, ceramics, textiles, shipbuilding, construction, etc., and productivity reached an unprecedented level. Over the years, archaeological excavations have unearthed a complete range of iron tools, including agricultural tools, handicraft tools, weapons and other daily miscellaneous tools, a total of more than 300 pieces, which is the largest number of iron tools unearthed in Fujian. The use of iron farming tools improved farming technology, expanded cultivated land, increased grain production, agriculture became the dominant social and economic industry at that time, and traditional mountain logging, fishing and hunting were still an important means of production. It can be seen from the ploughs, hoes, shovels, sickles, five-toothed rakes and other iron and steel agricultural tools unearthed at the city site that the agricultural productivity of the Minyue country was greatly increased at that time, and the agricultural technology of intensive farming had been accepted and mastered by the Minyue people.
The iron and steel handicraft tools such as axes, gongs, chisels, saws and nails unearthed in the city site reflect the improvement of the level of handicraft production. In particular, well-forged steel weapons, such as spears, halberds, swords, knives, daggers, arrows, protective iron armor, highly lethal copper crossbow machines, etc., have become the basic equipment of the Fujian and Vietnamese army, greatly enhancing the combat effectiveness of the army, in building components and daily necessities, copper and iron tools have been widely used. The metallographic analysis and testing of the iron tools excavated inside and outside the city site show that decarburized steel, fried steel, forged steel and wrought iron predominate, proving that the smelting technology of Minyue has reached a very high level.
Chengcun Hancheng site is a national key cultural relic protection unit, is the only large-scale urban site surrounded by city walls found by archaeology in Fujian Province, called by archaeological experts as "the first city of Jiangnan Han Dynasty archaeology", representing the highest level of development of Minyue civilization, with high historical, scientific and artistic value. As an important part of Wuyishan's declaration of World Cultural and Natural Heritage, the site was inscribed on the World Heritage List in December 1999.
Aerial photograph of the ruins of Seoul in Seongcho Village. Photo courtesy of Minyue Royal City Museum
China News Agency: How was this Minyue royal city built? Why did it fall into ruins? Why is it called "Pompeii of China"?
Lou Jianlong: There are very few records about the Minyue state and its royal city in history, and the most reliable and comprehensive of them is the "Legend of Eastern Yue" in the "History" written by Sima Qian of the Western Han Dynasty, which outlines the social outline and development trajectory of the Minyue state in 1256 characters: Qin Shi Huang deposed the descendant of King Goujian of Yue and the king of Minyue as a ruler, and did not participate in the anti-Qin uprising; From the fifth year of Emperor Gao of Han (202 BC) when Liu Bang reinstated him as the King of Minyue because he had no merit in "Zohan Defeating Chu", to the first year of Emperor Wu of Han (110 BC) when he destroyed the Minyue state, Minyue existed as a kingdom of princes with different surnames, which lasted for 92 years.
The birth of every civilization requires a long process of development, especially in the southeastern corner of Minyue Country. Archaeological materials show that Fujian entered the Bronze Age between 4000 and 3600 years ago, forming multiple tribal alliances, and civilized society initially appeared. At that time, the tribal culture showed the characteristics of universal prosperity and diverse integration, and the Wuyishan boat coffin in the upper reaches of the Min River was a peculiar burial custom of the ancestors during this period, and it was also the birthplace of hanging coffins in the Jiangnan region of China and Southeast Asia.
"Zhou Li Xia Guan" said that "the map of the Gongfang clan in control of the world, to control the land of the world, to distinguish its state, the capital of the city, the four Yi, the eight barbarians, the seven Fujian, the nine raccoon, the five rong, and the six di..." is the earliest record of the "seven Fujians" and the earliest record of the first intervention of the central royal power in Fujian.
In 334 BC, King Chuwei defeated the Yue state, "the more dispersed by this, the sons of the clans contended, either for the king or for the king", the remnants migrated south into Fujian, along the southeast side of the Wuyi Mountain and Xianxia Ridge valley, and integrated with the local Min culture represented by printed hard pottery, colliding with the Minyue culture with advanced manufacturing.
The coexistence of the Nanxia Vietnamese people and the "Seven Fujian" indigenous people has made Fujian and the surrounding areas of southern Zhejiang, northeastern Gan, southeastern Gan and northeastern Guangdong more prosperous. It can be seen from archaeological findings that the cultural remains of Minyue are mainly ruins and tombs, which are widely distributed in the above areas, and the most dense in northern Fujian.
In the midst of the dispute between the division of kings and centralized rule in the Han Dynasty, the Minyue royal city was finally burned down in 110 BC. The 92-year history of the founding of the capital was burned in an instant.
The West often compares the oblivion to Pompeii. In 1998, experts from the World Heritage Committee, British archaeologist Henry Clearer and Mr. and Mrs. Yuga Chaukreit, coordinator of the Centre for the Restoration of Cultural Relics in Rome, called the Seoul site "the Pompeii of China" after visiting and inspecting, "it is the best-preserved Han Dynasty royal city site in the Pacific Rim, and a typical representative of ancient southern Chinese cities, occupying an important place in the history of Chinese and world architecture."
Seongchon ruins of Seoul. Photo courtesy of Minyue Royal City Museum
China News Agency: What elements have been injected into Chinese civilization by the unique and magnificent regional civilization formed by the ruins of Seoul in Chengcun?
Lou Jianlong: The Minyue civilization represented by the ruins of Seoul in Chengcun is a vivid case of the diversity and integration of Chinese civilization, which shows that the ancient culture of the upper reaches of the Minjiang River and the ancient culture of the surrounding areas have continued to develop on the basis of mutual learning and integration, and created a typical model of a new stage of regional civilization.
The Minyue state, centered on the ruins of Chengcun Hancheng, received the division from the early Western Han Dynasty to its final inclusion in the central territory, marking that the southeast region has since become an inseparable part of China's unified multi-ethnic country. Although the Minyue withdrew from the historical stage after the destruction of the country, the descendants of Minyue still maintained unique living customs and cultural traditions such as hair tattoos, water travel, water boats, rice rice and fish soup, and many unique customs such as snakes have been passed down to this day.
The heritage value of Seoul is also highlighted by the fact that after the royal city was destroyed by military invasion, it was never affected by the subsequent urban and rural development. With the unification of the Han Empire with different kingdoms such as Minyue State, Wuyi Mountain was fully integrated into the unified state system and obtained the status of a sacred mountain, and the beautiful natural environment around the city and village has continued to this day.
Minyue Royal City Museum. Photo courtesy of Minyue Royal City Museum
China News Agency: As an integral part of the world cultural and natural heritage Wuyi Mountain, how does the ruins of Seoul in Chengcun exert their historical and cultural value?
Lou Jianlong: After being approved as a national archaeological site park, the Chengcun Seoul site will be built into an archaeological site park integrating archaeology, research, exhibition, study and leisure, so as to promote the transformation and dissemination of archaeological research and site protection achievements. At the same time, it is necessary to improve the attractiveness of the heritage park through digitalization and other means, give full play to the science popularization function of the site park, make the heritage displayed on the ground "live", and let more people understand its value.
At present, the Chengcun Seoul site has formed a systematic exhibition structure of "site + museum", showing the pattern, architectural scale and basic shape of the Han Dynasty city site, and restoring the history of Minyue and the cultural style of the Chengcun Seoul site through historical traceability, royal city architecture, excavated cultural relics, etc.
The Seoul site has received millions of tourists at home and abroad, primary and secondary school students, experts and scholars, with strong scientific research, education and recreation functions, showing strong exemplary significance in the protection and display of archaeological sites, and becoming the executor and practice of the concept of cultural heritage protection in the new era.
Respondent Profile:
Lou Jianlong, Vice President of Fujian Museum and Director of Fujian Minyue Wangcheng Museum, Director of the Chinese Archaeological Society, Vice Chairman of the Architectural Archaeology Professional Committee, Member of the Expert Group of Cultural Relics Protection Project of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage. He is the author of "Investigation Report on Ancient Villages in Northern Fujian", "Ancient Village of Jiangleliangdi", "Fujian Ancient Yidao" and so on.
Original title: "Lou Jianlong: Why is the ruins of Seoul in the city of Chengcun called "Pompeii of China"? | Stuff asks"
Source: China News Network