Talk about Jingzhou, an important town on the Yangtze River (1)·From Jiangling, the capital of Ying, to Rihua, Shashi, the main urban area moved south three times

Jingzhou is one of the nine ancient states. "Shang Shu Yu Gong" says: "Jingzhou and Hengyang are Jingzhou", which means that Jingzhou is between Jingshan and Hengshan. Jingshan is located in today's Nanzhang County, Hubei Province. In ancient times, Jingzhou covered a vast area, roughly equivalent to today's Hunan and Hubei provinces. More than 3,000 years ago, Xiong Yi, the first king of Chu, led his tribe to cut through thorny roads and thorns at the foot of Jingshan Mountain. After several generations of hard work, it gradually developed into a powerful Chu state, so it is said that "Jingshan Mountain is the source of Chu".

The original capital of Chu State was located in Danyang, formerly located in Xichuan County on the north bank of Danjiangkou. In the middle of the Western Zhou Dynasty, it began to gradually advance to the Yangtze River Basin in the south. Firstly, it avoids the melee between small countries in the Central Plains. Secondly, it can obtain the mineral resources in Hubei and gain broad development space. In 689 BC, King Wen of Chu moved the capital to the north of the Yangtze River under Mount Ji, still named Yingdu. This was the first capital city in the history of Jingzhou, and was known as Ji Nancheng in history.

Since the seventh century BC, 20 Chu kings have established their capitals in Jinan City, which lasted for more than 400 years. Many major events in the Chu Kingdom took place here. The famous Yanzi's Envoy to Chu, Yi Bingsheng, and Wu Qi's Reform were all staged here. Famous scholars from the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods such as Confucius, Zhuangzi, Mozi, and Yanzi all visited Jinancheng. In 1971, my country's earliest gold coin "Ying Yuan" was unearthed near Ji Nancheng. Ying is the name of the capital, and Yuan is the unit of measurement. During the same period, other countries in the Warring States Period still used copper coins or shell coins, while Chu State directly A gold coin with a gold content of 98 was minted. Because the unit price of Ying Yuan was too high, most of them were cut into small pieces for trading, which pioneered the weighing and pricing of precious metals. To this day, we still retain the terms "a few yuan" and "a few dollars."

According to the research of historians, Chu State had seven capitals in its history. Except for the early capital of Danyang, the other capitals were only built by one or two generations of monarchs. Jinan City stretched For more than four hundred years, it has witnessed the most glorious era of Chu State. At its peak, the Chu State ranked first in the world in area and its capital was second to none. At the end of the summer of the year before last, I rode a bicycle from Jingzhou city to wander around the Jinan City ruins for a day. The old city walls, high platforms, and tombs are now desolate grass, the old palaces have been turned into fields and fish ponds, and the main roads are intertwined with ridges of fields. Canghai Cangtian.

The Jinan City Site is large in scale, 4.5 kilometers long from east to west and 3.5 kilometers wide from north to south, with a total area of ??about 16 square kilometers. The city wall has a circumference of 15.5 kilometers. In some areas, there are still about six meters of wall remains, which are all made of rammed earth. There are seven gates around the city. There are three doorways in the northern section of the west wall. There are also architectural remains similar to gatehouses on both sides. There are two water gates at the exits of the ancient rivers in the south wall and the north wall.

The foundations of rammed earth buildings in Ji'nan City are very dense and vary in height, with some being as high as six or seven meters. The site is full of relics such as ancient wells and kiln sites, building materials such as tube tiles and slabs, and cultural relics of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty. A house from the Eastern Zhou Dynasty excavated in the southeast of the city has a wall base of 60 meters long and 14 meters wide. It is large in scale and was an integral part of the palace architecture at that time.

Fenghuang Mountain in the city became the cemetery of the Qin and Han Dynasties after the Chu capital moved to Chen. The famous ancient corpses of the Western Han Dynasty, a large number of Han bamboo slips and exquisite painted lacquerware were all unearthed here. Nowadays, most of the cultural relics unearthed in Ji Nancheng are in the Jingzhou Municipal Museum. It is recommended that people passing by must go and take a look. In 1961, Ji Nancheng was listed as one of the first batch of national key cultural relics protection units. It has been guarded by dedicated personnel for decades. There are no new buildings in the site except cultivated land, and it is basically preserved as it is.

In the 29th year of King Zhaoxiang of Qin (278 BC), the famous Qin general Bai Qi attacked Chu and directly captured the Chu capital of Ying. The Chu army was defeated and retreated to Chen (now Huaiyang, Henan). King Qingxiang made Chen his capital and still called it Ying. In May of that year, Qu Yuan heard the news and threw himself into the Miluo River. After a series of blows, the Chu State failed to recover until it was finally destroyed by Qin. After Bai Qi uprooted Ying, he set fire to Jinan City, rebuilt a city three kilometers southeast of the old site, and established Jiangling County, which means hills by the Yangtze River. This is the site of Ying City in the northeast of Jingzhou today.

After Qin Shihuang unified China, he divided the world into thirty-six counties, and Jiangling County became the county seat of Nanjun. The Yingcheng ruins are much smaller than Ji'nan City. The rammed earth city wall is square, with a circumference of 5.5 kilometers and a side length of 1.4 kilometers. The remaining city walls are 3 to 6 meters high, 15 to 20 meters wide, and the top of the wall is 7 to 10 meters wide. The city has two moats inside and outside, forming a double-ring pattern. The river is 30 meters wide and still exists today. There are gates around the city wall and beacon towers at the four corners. Three beacon towers are still intact. The ancient city walls are everywhere, and the tomb of King Chuzhuang and the moat are also completely visible.

Yingcheng is the second city near Jingzhou. It was the original seat of Jiangling County. From the name of Jiangling, "the land is close to the river, there are no mountains nearby, and everything is Lingfu". It can be seen that this Yingcheng was the earliest Located on the riverside, Ji Nancheng was originally not far from the Yangtze River. For thousands of years, under the influence of cyclonic inertia and geological structures, the main Yangtze River in the Jingjiang section has been moving southward, which is geologically known as the "southern migration of the main stream." In order to obtain the convenience of water transportation, people continued to move the city to the river. During the Eastern Han Dynasty, new permanent land was obtained in the south of Ying City, so people went to the river to build a new Jiangling City.

During the Three Kingdoms period, Guan Yu, the general of the Shu Kingdom, stationed in Jingzhou for ten years. He built two Jiangling cities along the Yangtze River, side by side in the east and west, each independent to facilitate coordinated defense. Of course, they were eventually occupied by the Wu Kingdom. In the first year of Yonghe in the Eastern Jin Dynasty (345), Jingzhou Governor Heng Wen built a wall to connect the east and west cities and expanded them. This formed the current layout of Jingzhou City, which is short from north to south, long from east to west, and built along the river. Since then, Jiangling City has been the political, military, economic, and cultural center of Jingzhou. Although it has been rebuilt many times, its location and area have basically remained unchanged. The shape of the existing city wall was built during the reign of King Xian of Xiang in the Ming Dynasty.

Jiangling City is one of the well-preserved ancient cities in my country. The city wall undulates according to the terrain, winding along the lakes and ponds, and is in an irregular oval shape. The ancient city has a circumference of 11 kilometers and an area of ??4.47 square kilometers. The moat outside the city is wide and the city is impregnable. However, because the city of Jingzhou is too close to the Yangtze River, the waterway is convenient but also extremely vulnerable to disasters. Therefore, starting from the Eastern Jin Dynasty, embankments were built on the north bank of the Yangtze River outside Jingzhou City to prevent floods. This is the famous Jingjiang Levee.

As the number of residents outside Jingzhou City gradually increased, the diwei gradually developed from Shashi to the lower reaches, and roughly took shape in the early Yuan Dynasty. In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the last diversion on the north bank of the Yangtze River was blocked, and the levees were connected in a line with a total length of 124 kilometers, known as the Wancheng Levee.

In 1951, the 8 kilometers of embankment above Duijintai were classified as Jingjiang Levee. In 1954, the original 50 kilometers of downstream embankments were classified as the scope of Jingjiang Levee. So far, the total length of Jingjiang Levee is 182 kilometers. Nowadays, on the head of Xiangbijiji of Jingjiang Embankment, there stands a Wanshou Pagoda built during the Jiajing period. The tower has sunk more than seven meters underground. This is the height at which the river bed has been raised in five hundred years.

Shashi is located in the southeast of Jiangling City. It was originally a riverside sandbank formed after the Yangtze River moved south. A market was formed next to the dock in the late Tang Dynasty, called Shatou City. After the Song Dynasty, Shashi Town was established. By the middle of the Ming Dynasty, with the closure of the Jingjiang levee, Shashi had replaced Jingzhou City as a regional business center. Its commerce and handicraft industries were quite developed, and it became one of the important commercial metropolises in the country. By the end of the Qing Dynasty, Shashi was opened as a trading port. With the rise of modern industry and commercial prosperity, the city further expanded, covering an area of ??3.5 square kilometers by the time of liberation.

Since ancient times, the city site of Shashi has always changed with the swing of the Yangtze River. The main road meanders along the Yangtze River, with a number of alleys extending on both sides. The urban layout of Shashi is similar to that of Jingzhou. It is also short from north to south and long from east to west. It is distributed in a strip along the river. This reflects that the rise of both cities originated from the docks. A belt-shaped city along the river can set up several docks at the waterfront at the same time. Large and small ships can be loaded and unloaded at the same time without affecting each other, and the distance to move ashore is also the shortest. The two cities with the same layout are juxtaposed from the north to the south, which also reflects the changes in the Yangtze River's water course over the past millennium.

Historically, Jingzhou and Shashi showed complementary structural characteristics. Jiangling mainly assumed political and military functions and occupied a dominant position; Shashi mainly assumed economic and commercial functions and occupied a subordinate position. After liberation, Shashi Town was established as a city, and Jingzhou was demoted to Jingzhou Town, Jiangling County. So far, Shashi's status has surpassed Jingzhou. After the 1950s, Shashi and Jingzhou separated and merged, sometimes merged into Jingzhou Prefecture, and sometimes as a provincial municipality. Until 1993, Jingzhou Prefecture and Shashi were abolished and changed to Jingzhou City in 1996. The only memory I have of Shashi when I was a child is the advertisement of "Vigor Erba, Shashi Daily Chemical". In fact, the full name of this manufacturer is: Jingzhou Vigor Erba Shashi Daily Chemical Co., Ltd.

In the two thousand years of Jingzhou’s history as a city, the areas closer to the water have always been more dynamic.

Next article: Jingzhou, an important town on the Yangtze River (2)·The place where Guan Erye fought, Liu Bei borrowed the whole story of the Jingzhou incident