Here is a ruin, but it is called the most beautiful ruin in the world; it is not Pompeii, but it is called Pompeii in the east of the earth; The beautiful ancient city, but now it can only be called the old city with embarrassment and sadness...

This is the ancient city of Jiaohe, 13 kilometers west of Turpan, Xinjiang. It is an island in the middle of the river at the confluence of two rivers in Yaernaizgou.

"Han Shu Biography of the Western Regions" records: "The former state of Cheshi (jū shī), Wang Zhijiaohe City. The river flows around the city, so it is named Jiaohe. It is 8,150 miles to Chang'an. The household is seven hundred, and the mouth is six. Fifty thousand, eight hundred and sixty-five victorious soldiers."

From the 2nd century BC to the 5th century BC, the Cheshi people have always been the masters of this Hexin Island. They built a city here and built their capital here. Two small rivers come here from north to south, meet, separate, and then flow together, leaving a natural moat for the city.

This is a beautiful and serene underwater platform, about 1,700 meters long from north to south, about 300 meters wide from east to west, and more than 30 meters above the water surface.

Looking down from the air, Jiaohe City looks like a stretched willow leaf. The two rivers meet here, gently enveloping her, giving her an elegant and romantic look. Viewed from the shore, Jiaohe City looks like a cruise ship in the middle of the river, carrying all living beings singing, dancing and living in peace and contentment.

During the period of Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty, in the war to kill the Xiongnu forces, Huo Hou Zhao broke through the Nuke division, broke Loulan, and led the troops to Jiaohe City. Due to its important geographical location, Jiaohe City has Dunhuang to the southeast, Loulan and Shanshan to the south, Yanqi to the west, Wusun to the northwest, and the Xiongnu to the northeast. It became the transportation hub for Zhang Qian to open up the Silk Road.

In 640 A.D., the central government of the Tang Dynasty set up the highest military and political institution in charge of the affairs of the Western Regions - Anxi Dufu. At that time, the poet Li Qi wrote in the poem "March in the Army in Ancient Times": "Climbing the mountain to watch the beacon fire during the day, drinking horses and crossing the river at dusk."

The value of Jiaohe to the Central Plains regime is self-evident, and its importance reached its peak in the Tang Dynasty. Even if it is not a household name, it is well-known all over the world. In the poems of Tang Dynasty, the name of Jiaohe is always mentioned loudly by poets. Although Jiaohe is always a remote frontier in the poet's writing, full of desolate and lonely emotions, it is after all a symbol of the glorious imprint of the Tang Dynasty.

Cen Shen was one of the great poets in the heyday of the Tang Dynasty, but it is undeniable that it was the frontier fortress that made him famous. Cen Shen successively served as the judge of Anxi Duhufu and Beiting Duhufu, and the Jiaohe River ran through his pen many times, "Flying birds on the edge of Jiaohe City, horseshoe slippery on Luntai Road" "Send you to Hebei in September, inscribed in the snow" Poetry and tears all over the clothes", "Twilight throws into the river city, the volcano is red and Cui Wei. In September, sweat is still sweating, and the scorching wind blows the sand" are all famous lines he sang through the ages.

According to Luo Binwang, who joined the army in Anxi, the military style of Jiaohe is like this: "The high fortresses are buried in bitter mist in the dark mountains, and the lonely moon shines on the company's camp on the Jiaohe River" "The Jiaohe River is floating and blocked, and the weak water is soaked in quicksand".

Even Li Bai, a poet who has never been to Jiaohe, evoked thousands of thoughts about Jiaohe in his "Daoyi Pian": "The jade hand opens the seal and sighs, and the madman is still stationed in Hebei. The river flows northward for thousands of miles. Willing to Pan Central Continent for Shuangyan."

The advanced civilization of the Central Plains brought a new governance model and new vitality to the Western Regions, and brought unprecedented prosperity to the beautiful Jiaohe City. The sound of camel bells on the Silk Road attracted Huns, Xianbei, Sogdians, Turks, Tubo, Uyghurs... Various ethnic groups lived and lived here, traded in business, exchanged needs, and blended harmoniously. In the ruins of the old city, documents and inscriptions in Chinese, Sanskrit, Tocharian, Turkic, Uighur, Xixia, and Tibetan have been discovered successively, all of which confirm the civilization history of the integration and development of various ethnic groups here.

Different from natural disasters like the destruction of Pompeii by a volcanic eruption, the destruction of Jiaohe City was entirely due to brutal and violent man-made disasters.

With the decline of the Tang Dynasty from prosperity, the flames of war in the Western Regions resumed, and Jiaohe City fell into years of war and chaos. At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, a descendant of Genghis Khan named Hei Er Huo Zhe of the Chagatai Khanate led a group of Mongolian cavalry to rush in like a storm. They did not come to occupy the territory, let alone build their homes, but only to slaughter the city. In the midst of the cries and cries of the wolves, Jiaohe City instantly became a heart-piercing hell on earth. The smoke dissipated, leaving only the ruins of the wall.

Cultural relics protection experts have cleared more than 30 wells here, and each well has a human skeleton in the shape of a tragic death with the head facing down.

Since then, Jiaohe City, which has been prosperous for more than a thousand years, has become an uninhabited wilderness ruin, and it has become an eternal swan song in the history of the Silk Road and even the history of human civilization.

In the Ming Dynasty, Chen Cheng, a member of the Ministry of Officials, came here on a special trip to visit Turpan, leaving behind a poem "Ya'er City" (called Ya'er City in Uighur), which reads: "In the exchange of the two rivers of the Shahe River, , the heavens set a dangerous city above the water. The broken walls and cliffs are dangerous, and the ruins of the ruins are several years old."

The city of Pompeii was destroyed by natural disasters in an instant, buried deep in the ground by volcanic ash, sealed and solidified for more than a thousand years, and has not been damaged by man. with the original appearance. Jiaohe City was destroyed by man-made disasters and abandoned. For hundreds of years, it has withered in the wind and sun, and its original plump and vivid appearance has disappeared.

The skin and flesh are gone, but the strength of character still exists. Jiaohe City is unique, unlike any ruined city in the world. This is not a city built by addition on flat land, but a city carved out by subtraction on flat land by the method of "subtracting land and leaving walls". It is the largest, oldest and best-preserved city in the world. The adobe-built city in China is an urban relic that has existed for more than two thousand years.

The so-called raw soil architecture refers to the construction of the main structure with the raw soil that has not been roasted but simply processed as the material. It began with artificially digging holes (such as cave dwellings). It is one of the most representative features of the transition from primitive society to civilization.

The so-called "reducing the land and retaining the walls" method is to dig deep down from the surface of the platform, dig out a large amount of unnecessary soil, and "carve" out walls, streets, courtyards, and houses.

Most of the walls, streets, courtyards, and houses in Jiaohe City are built by digging down the loess, supplemented by methods such as pressing the ground to protrude, tamping, building blanks, and stacking mud to form a unique high platform. Urban architectural landscape. In a sense, this architectural style is similar to the pit courtyards on the Loess Plateau, but it is much larger in scale and grandeur than simple pit courtyards. It can also be regarded as a series of pit courtyards. A huge castle connected together is like an incomparable work of art created by a sculptor on the earth.

The ancestors "sculpted" this city with a total building area of ​​470,000 square meters on the platform where the two rivers meet. Today, the architectural relics still have 360,000 square meters. Although due to the passage of time, its handsome face has long been indistinguishable, but its awe-inspiring stand for hundreds of years can still make people believe that most of the remaining buildings in the city were built in the Tang Dynasty and retain the style of the Central Plains cities before the Song Dynasty. An ancient city worthy of respect, memory and memory for future generations.

Because of this, as early as 1961, Jiaohe Ancient City was listed as a national key cultural relics protection unit.

Because of this, Jiaohe Ancient City also ushered in the favor of the World Heritage List.

In 1993, more than 100 Chinese and foreign archaeologists and historians gathered in Jiaohe Ancient City to jointly carry out an 8-year protection and restoration research project. However, due to years of disrepair, serious damage, harsh natural environment, and shortage of personnel and funds, the request of Jiaohe Ancient City was rejected when it declared the world cultural heritage to UNESCO at the end of the last century.

According to the rules, each historical site has only one chance to apply for World Heritage. People are reluctant to lose the unique cultural value of Jiaohe Ancient City, and do not want to make it irretrievably submerged in the dust of history again. All parties spare no effort to appeal, and UNESCO breaks the rules and gives Jiaohe Ancient City a "comment" status qualifications.

On June 22, 2014, at the 38th World Heritage Conference held in Doha, Qatar, the "Silk Road: Road Network of Chang'an-Tianshan Corridor" jointly submitted by China, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan was successfully selected into the " The World Heritage List, Jiaohe Ancient City is listed as one of the sites.

Finally, the carefully protected Jiaohe City opened its doors to ordinary people. People walked into the city in an orderly manner with mixed feelings and looked around. What they wished to see was a shocking ancient city, but they had to accept a devastated old city.

When we crossed the river below the city, when we walked through every corner of the city, we could still feel the greatness of civilization amidst the sighs and regrets.

Inside the south gate is a central avenue running north-south, about 350 meters long and 10 meters wide. The high walls without windows on both sides roughly divide the whole city into two parts. The east-west roads intersect with the central avenue, dividing the city into several functional areas.

On the east side of the avenue, there are storage areas and large residential areas in the south, small residential areas in the north, and government offices in the middle; on the west side of the avenue, outside the residential area, there are many handicraft workshops. The style and features of Jiaohe City simulated the architectural form of Chang'an, the capital of Tang Dynasty.

The residential area is composed of courtyards of different sizes, the largest of which is 90 meters long and 80 meters wide. Each courtyard is surrounded by courtyard walls to form a relatively closed activity space. There are houses, Buddhist halls, wells, etc. in the courtyard. Fully equipped living facilities.

The site of the official office is a rectangular courtyard with an enclosed area of ​​about 1150 square meters. The gate opens to the east, and there are small gates on the south and west walls to communicate with the surrounding courtyards. . According to archaeological speculation, the ruins here are the office offices of Cheshiqian Kingdom and Anxi Duhufu of the Tang Dynasty.

At the end of the central avenue, there is a huge platform left over, which is the center of the temple area in the north of the city. On the platform, a large central tower once stood majestically. Today, the remaining large pagoda is square and hollow, 8.5 meters high, 13.6 meters long, the base is about 4 meters high, the tower chamber is 7.5 meters wide, 4.5 meters deep, and the tower door opens to the south.

The monastery area where the central pagoda is located occupies more than two-thirds of the entire urban area. The relics are mainly Buddhist temples, including more than 80 buildings such as Buddhist halls, pagodas, Buddhist altars, and monks' houses. In the last century, archaeologists also discovered an underground temple in the monastery area, and unearthed murals of female donors, mud skins with inscriptions in Chinese and Uyghur, and Bodhisattva heads.

All kinds of relics show that Jiaohe City in the history of civilization is a city that integrates politics, economy, military affairs, religion and pyrotechnic atmosphere.

After careful observation, it is not difficult to find that in the Jiaohe Ancient City built of "carved" loess, there is no ordinary brick, tile or wood or other components, only the remains of earthy buildings standing tenaciously under the blue sky.

In the market, the caravans and camel caravans have long since disappeared, and the cries of hawkers have long since disappeared; in the courtyard, the doors and windows have long since disappeared, and the sound of children playing has long since disappeared; The sound of monks chanting scriptures; in the official office, there are no records of cases, and the greetings and farewell sounds of officials welcoming and sending them away have long since disappeared.

Through the continuous ruins, we can't even imagine how barbaric and cruel that robber named Hei Er Huo Zhe was. He not only slaughtered Jiaohe City, but also swept across the entire Western Regions, forcing all the clans living here to convert Islam. The ancient city of Jiaohe has witnessed the victors of the war and the destroyers of civilization.

Today, Jiaohe City can still face us face to face in the form of ruins, telling us about its past, its brilliance, its grief, and its legacy, thanks to the dry weather in Turpan and the resilience of Hexin Island The rich loess has benefited from the progress of human civilization and the protection of civilization by civilization.

He warned us to stay away from barbarism, cherish civilization, stay away from war and continue civilization.

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