Shengwei City Ruins - China Travel

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The ruins of Shengwei City are located in Miaotai Township, Huinong District, Shizuishan City. The existing city site is slightly square, and the city wall is rammed loess. The residual wall is 2-4 meters high and 13 meters wide. The north wall is 588 meters long, the south wall is 587 meters long, the east wall is 593 meters long, and the west wall is 590 meters long. There is a city gate on the south wall with only one doorway, 13 meters long and 4 meters thick. There is a layer of long stones on both sides of the door opening, on which there are four round stone pillar foundations. There is a stone threshold in the doorway, which is 0.3 meters above the ground. There is a stone pillow on both sides of the stone threshold, and there is a groove for the door frame on it. The higher part of the ruins is a beacon tower more than 4 meters high.

According to literature records, there was a major earthquake here, and the whole city fell into the ground. Only one old and one young were fetching water outside to survive. Now the only thing left in Shengwei City is the broken wall. After a thousand years of wind, frost, rain and dew, the city walls have become short and intermittent. The east wall has been completely changed, it has been bulldozed, and houses and courtyards have been built. The north and south walls are relatively intact. People took local materials and transformed several sections of the city wall into brick kilns! Although the brick kiln has been abandoned, the scars that cannot be erased everywhere in Xingwei City have been exchanged for one piece of red brick... The city wall is now riddled with holes and dilapidated. There are still traces of ditches in the city, which shows that the site was once developed as farmland.

Archaeologists excavated the ruins of Shengwei City and unearthed a large number of cultural relics, including: ancient coins, porcelain, iron and so on. Importantly, a porcelain bald head was also unearthed here. Since Li Yuanhao ordered baldness as early as 1033 AD, this piece of cultural relics is even more precious. Archaeologists also found that, except for a small amount of building materials such as bricks and tiles found in the Nanchengmen site, no bricks and tiles were found in the site, indicating that most of the dwellings in the city were earthen houses.

As the sun sets in the west, in the high sky, clouds and smoke flow, misty and confusing. In the city, there is an empty space, and there are many towers, like stars. Looking to the west, the Helan Mountains are born out of the sky, stacked and stretched, standing majestically. Against the backdrop of the afterglow of the setting sun, the ancient city is still desolate and heavy, and the silence adds a bit of mystery to the ancient city.