Tongwan, the capital of the Daxia Kingdom, has lain buried
beneath the desert sands for more than 1,000 years. Located in
today's Jingbian County, Shaanxi Province, this ancient city was
built in 419 by Helianbobo, chief of the Huns. It bears testimony
to the prosperity once enjoyed by these nomadic people on China's
northern frontiers.
Extending to nearly 20,000 square kilometers, Tongwan is on the
southern edge of the Ordos Plateau just north of the vast Mu Us
Desert, both of which are in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
It was laid out on an east-west axis with what have been termed the
outer city, inner city and palace city.
The outer city was for the homes of ordinary folks. Government
offices and the residences of the nobility were located in the
inner city. Inside the palace city was the inner sanctum of the
imperial city where Helianbobo himself lived.
Historical records suggest that by the year 431 Tongwan City and
its hinterland supported a population of over 40,000 Hun nomads and
Han farmers. However by 984 the city had been abandoned, eventually
to become buried under the shifting sands.
The city site was placed under state key-level protection in 1996.
"As part of the renovation project, Yong'an Tower has been
reconstructed. It was here that Helianbobo stood to review military
parades. The next restoration objective is the 31-meter-high
watchtower in the southwest," said Gao Zhan, head of the Bureau for
the Preservation of Tongwan City.
The towers represent the initial projects in the renovation work to
take place at the city site. The trial reconstruction, which is
based on archaeological excavations, aims to go on to repair and
consolidate parts of the city wall together with a number of
individual buildings.
After repeated trials, light colored bricks each 36 centimeters
long, 20 centimeters wide and 12 centimeters deep were fired from
cohesive white clay, gauged with sand and lime. They were used to
stabilize the base of the rammed-earth Yong'an Tower.
"Tongwan City was built following the natural contours of the
ground and so is higher in the northwest and lower in the
southeast. This served to provide a measure of protection against
the cold winter winds. Meanwhile, the river in the north of the
city could easily be channeled to supply water to the residents or
used for the city moat," said Dai Yingxin, a famous archaeologist
who has been engaged in field investigation and trial digs at the
site for years.
"The city wall was constructed in layers by ramming a mix of
cohesive white clay and sand bound together with glutinous rice
gruel and slaked lime. The western section is 16 to 30 meters
thick. This type of rammed earth construction has proven to be
almost as strong and resistant to erosion as stone masonry," Dai
said.
"The construction of Tongwan City is a symbol of the Hun people's
struggle for survival in a harsh desert environment," said Prof.
Hou Yongjian from Shaanxi Normal University. "Historical documents
show the city was established at a place where there was adequate
freshwater at the edge of a desert. The rise and fall of Tongwan
City, lying where agriculture and animal husbandry overlapped,
vividly record how human activities adversely affected the fragile
ecological environment."
Seeking to restore the city to how it must have looked in
antiquity, Shaanxi Normal University and the Japanese Association
for Loess Plateau Afforestation jointly initiated a program to make
the ancient capital of Tongwan green again. In the spring of 2002
after two years of field survey work, they started work towards
setting up an afforestation base at the city site. Objectives for
the work were established at the first International Forum on the
Preservation of Tongwan City held last September.
"Tree-planting in recent years has turned what had once been
drifting sands around the ancient city into fixed or semi-fixed
dunes. With the improvements in the surrounding environment, more
and more visitors will be attracted here and the unique value of
Tongwan City in terms of its ecology, geography, archaeology and
ethnology will come to be recognized," said Zhu Shiguang, president
of the Chinese Society of Ancient Capitals and an active
participant in the Tongwan City afforestation project.
Aerial photography and trial excavations have shown that in its
overall layout and exterior decorative style, Tongwan City differs
from the typical capital cities of the Central Plains (feudal
China's main territories in the middle and lower reaches of the
Yellow River).
"The exotic design features found in the well-preserved Tongwan
City have attracted the attention of researchers both at home and
abroad," said Xing Fulai, an expert on the history of the Northern
and Southern Dynasties (386-589) from the Shaanxi Institute of
Archaeology.
"The local government is preparing an application for world
cultural heritage listing for the city site. To date a program for
the preservation of Tongwan City has been mapped out and research
work is in full swing to discover how best to conserve and develop
the historical resources at the site," Xing said.
Shaanxi
Province has already seen the Mausoleum of the First Emperor of
the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC) along with its buried army of guardian
terracotta warriors and horses enter the list of world cultural
heritage sites.
"Chang'an City of the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC - AD 25), Daming
Palace of the Tang Dynasty (618-907) and the Forest of Steles in
Xi'an are all also competing to enter the world heritage list, but
Tongwan City is the most likely to succeed," said Zhang Tinghao,
director of the Shaanxi Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau. "As the
only capital city left by the ancient Huns, Tongwan City is the
clue to the fate of these nomadic people who disappeared
mysteriously over a thousand years ago."
Where are the Huns now?
Standing at the Tongwan City site, visitors cannot help but ask:
Where on earth did they disappear to, these ancient people who
galloped across the vast north of China for nearly a
millennium?
Historical documents indicate that this strong, bold people had
been waging war and migrating continuously across northeast and
northwest China from the 3rd century BC through to the 5th century
AD. Their activities came to seriously threaten not only the
traffic along the Silk Road but even the very security of the
feudal dynasties with their power bases located deep within the
Central Plains.
After unifying the country, the First Emperor of the Qin Dynasty
deployed imperial troops in pursuit of the Huns and finally built
the formidable protective screen of the Great Wall. The years that
followed were to bring increasing exchanges with dynasties in the
Central Plains and some Huns began to be assimilated among the Han
people. Others migrated to Central Asia and on to Europe. By the
6th century the Huns had gradually disappeared as a separate people
as they merged into other peoples.
The nomadic Huns had first emerged as a distinct tribe in the 3rd
century BC. They expanded rapidly by a process of subsuming
neighboring tribes and eventually established a regime founded on
slavery on the northern frontiers of China.
"After making war or peace with the feudal dynasties of the Central
Plains for three or four hundred years, the Huns became plagued by
both internal and external troubles and their slavery empire fell
apart," said Professor Zhou Weizhou from Shaanxi Normal
University.
"After this many Huns migrated southward or westward. Through
submission to other peoples or by intermarriage they became
progressively assimilated. However, the western migration in
particular was to have a considerable impact on the course of world
history," Prof. Zhou said.
"Between 89 and 91, groups of Huns who had suffered defeat in
battle began to move westward to the valleys of the rivers Ili, Don
and Volga," said Prof. Lin Gan from Inner Mongolia
University.
"In fact, it was the fall of the Sogdian Kingdom lying east of the
River Don in 374 that raised the curtain on the Huns' large-scale
incursions into Europe. From then on the Huns began to play an
important role in promoting population movements in this
continent," said Prof. Lin. "As they pursued the Goths, the Hun
troops even arrived at the city walls of Rome, capital of the Roman
Empire (27 BC - AD 476). By the 5th century, Attila the Hun had
established an empire on the banks of the Danube that was to deeply
influence European history."
"Although Attila's empire proved to be short lived, many Huns
stayed on in Europe and researchers commonly consider the
Hungarians to be the descendants on the Huns," said Wang Shiping
from Shaanxi History Museum, an expert on the history of the Sui
(581 - 618) and Tang (618 - 907) dynasties.
"Generally speaking, Hungarians don't look like other Europeans,"
said Wang, whose opinion was echoed by both Prof. Qi Sihe of Peking
University and former Hungarian Ambassador to China Otto Juhasz.
"And what's more, many popular Hungary folk songs are similar to
those sung in northern Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia. There are also
echoes of the past to be found in their religion. Although
Hungarians generally profess allegiance to the Eastern Orthodox
Church, they still retain many of the customs and habits of
shamanism originating among the nomadic tribal peoples of Siberia
on China's northern border."
"The Hungarian traditions of playing the suona horn (a
woodwind instrument) and paper-cutting are reminiscent of those
seen in northern Shaanxi. Even the way final syllables are
pronounced in Hungarian is quite similar to the northern Shaanxi
accent," said Gao Jianqun, a well-known Chinese writer and author
of the novel The Last Hun. "Many Hungarian researchers hold
the view that the establishment of Hungary is closely connected
with the descendents of the Huns."
"Although the Huns may have disappeared as a people, their cultural
conventions haven't faded away," said Zhang Mingqia from Shaanxi
History Museum. "For instance, their folk songs have greatly
enriched Mongolian folk music. The reed pipe (hujia), an
instrument used by the Huns in ancient times, is still played today
in China's Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang as well as in Mongolia and
Russia."
(China.org.cn by Shao Da, April 14, 2004)