The original capital of Chu was in Danyang, so it was in Xichuan County on the north bank of Danjiangkou. In the middle of the Western Zhou Dynasty, it began to gradually advance to the southern Yangtze River basin. On the one hand, it avoids the scuffle between small countries in the Central Plains, on the other hand, it can obtain mineral resources in Hubei and gain a broad development space. In 689 BC, King Wen of Chu moved the capital to the foot of Jishan Mountain, north of the Yangtze River, and still named it Du Ying. This is the first capital in the history of Jingzhou, which is called Jinan City in history.
From the 7th century BC, twenty kings of Chu all built their capital in Jinan, which lasted for more than 400 years. Many important events of Chu took place here. The famous Yan Zili Chu, blockbuster and Wuqi political reform are all staged here. Celebrities in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, such as Confucius, Zhuangzi, Mozi and Yan Zi, have all been to Jinan. 197 1 year, the earliest gold coin "ying (phoneme)" was unearthed near Jinan city. English is the name of the capital and English is the unit of measurement. At the same time, other countries in the Warring States used copper coins or shell coins, while Chu directly cast gold coins with a gold content of 98%. Because the unit price is too high, most precious metals are cut into small pieces for trading, which opens a precedent for weighing and pricing precious metals. To this day, we still keep the names of several yuan and several yuan.
According to historical research, there are seven capitals in the history of Chu. Except the early capital Danyang, all other capitals have only one or two generations of monarchs. Jinan City lasted for more than 400 years and witnessed the most glorious era of Chu. In its heyday, the area of Chu was the largest in the world, and its capital was second to none. At the end of summer the year before last, I cycled around the ruins of Jinan City from Jingzhou City for a day. The former city walls, high platforms and graves are now desolate, and the former palaces have become fields and fish ponds. The main roads are criss-crossed and covered with ridges.
Jinan is a large-scale site, 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 perimeter of the city wall is15.5km. In some areas, there are still some ruins of the city wall about 6m, all of which are made of rammed earth. There are seven gates around the city, and there are three doorways in the north section of Xiyuan, with architectural relics similar to gatehouses on both sides. There are two sluices at the exit of the ancient river in Nanyuan and Beiyuan.
Abutment of rammed earth buildings in Jinan city is very dense, ranging in height, and some are as high as six or seven meters. The site is full of ancient wells, kiln sites and other relics, building materials such as pipe tiles and slab tiles, and cultural relics of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty. The houses of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty excavated in the southeast of the city, with a wall base of 60 meters long and a width of 14 meters, were large-scale and were part of the palace buildings at that time.
Phoenix Mountain in the city, after the capital of Chu moved to Chen, became the graveyard of Qin and Han Dynasties, where famous vessels of the Western Han Dynasty were unearthed, and a large number of Han bamboo slips and exquisite painted lacquerware were unearthed. Now most of the cultural relics unearthed in Jinan are in Jingzhou Museum. It is suggested that passers-by must go and have a look. 196 1 year, Jinan was listed as the first batch of national key cultural relics protection units. It has been given special care for decades, and there are no new buildings except cultivated land in the site, which basically remains the same.
In the 29th year of Qin Dynasty (278 BC), the famous State of Qin attacked the State of Chu and directly captured the capital of Chu. The Chu army was routed and retreated to Chen (now Huaiyang, Henan). The king of Chu took Chen as the capital and still called Ying. In May of this year, Qu Yuan heard the news and went to the Miluo River. After a series of blows, Chu was devastated until it was finally destroyed by Qin. After Bai Qi pulled Ying, he set fire to Jinan City, rebuilt the city three kilometers southeast of the old site, and set up Jiangling County, which means hills along the Yangtze River. This is the site of Yingcheng in the northeast of Jingzhou today.
After Qin Shihuang unified China, the world was divided into 36 counties, and Jiangling County became the chief of Nanjun County. The ruins of Yingcheng are much smaller than those of Jinan. The rammed earth wall is square, with a circumference of 5.5km and a length of1.4km on each side. The residual wall is 3-6m high, 0/5-20m wide and 7-0/0m wide at the top. There are two moats outside the city, 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. So far, three beacon towers have been completely preserved, and ancient city walls can be seen everywhere. Chu Zhuangwang's mausoleum and moat are also clearly visible.
Ying City is the second city near Jingzhou. From the name of Jiangling County, "The land is near the river, there are no mountains, and everything is everything", we can know that this city was located on the river at the earliest, and Jinan City was not far from the Yangtze River at the earliest. For thousands of years, under the influence of cyclone inertia and geological structure, the main channel of the Yangtze River in Jingjiang section has been moving southward, which is called "the main flood moving southward" in geology. In order to get the convenience of water transportation, people moved the city to the river. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, the south of the city was granted new permanent land, so people went to the river to build a new Jiangling City.
During the Three Kingdoms period, Guan Yu, a general of Shu, was stationed in Jingzhou for ten years. He built two Jiangling cities along the Yangtze River, side by side, independent and convenient for coordinated defense. Of course, it was finally occupied by Wu. In the first year of Yonghe in the Eastern Jin Dynasty (345), Jingzhou built a wall at a constant temperature, connecting and expanding the east and west cities, forming the pattern that Jingzhou City is short in the north and south, long in the east and west, and built along the river today. 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 remain basically unchanged. The existing city wall was built when Ming presented himself to the king.
Jiangling City is one of the well-preserved ancient cities in China. With the ups and downs of the terrain, the city wall winds along lakes and swamps, showing an irregular oval shape. The circumference of the ancient city is 1 1 km, covering an area of 4.47 square kilometers. The moat outside the city is wide and the city is impregnable. However, because Jingzhou City is too close to the Yangtze River, the waterway is convenient, and it is also vulnerable to disasters. Since the Eastern Jin Dynasty, all previous dynasties have built dikes on the north bank of the Yangtze River outside Jingzhou to prevent floods. This is the famous Jingjiang levee.
The levee was built after Huan Wen built Jiangling City in the first year of Yonghe in the Eastern Jin Dynasty (345). Starting from the highland near Wancheng in the northwest, the levee above Jingzhou was built in the middle of Tang Dynasty. After the mid-Northern Song Dynasty, with the gradual increase of residents outside Jingzhou, the levee gradually developed from Shashi to the downstream and took shape at the beginning of Yuan Dynasty. In the mid-Ming Dynasty, the last diversion outlet on the north bank of the Yangtze River was blocked, and the levee was connected into a line, with a total length of 124 km, which was called Wancheng levee.
195 1, the dike 8 kilometers above Huang Jintai is included in Jingjiang dike, 1954, and the original trunk dike 50 kilometers downstream is included in Jingjiang dike. At this point, the total length of Jingjiang levee is 182 km. At present, there stands a Wanshou Pagoda built in Jiajing period on the trunk of Jingjiang levee. The pagoda has been buried more than seven meters underground, which is the height at which the riverbed has been raised in the past 500 years.
Shashi is located in the southeast of Jiangling City. It turned out to be a riverside sandbar formed after the Yangtze River moved south. At the end of the Tang Dynasty, a market called Shatou City was formed by the wharf. Shashi Town was established after the Song Dynasty. By the middle of the Ming Dynasty, with the closure of Jingjiang levee, Shashi replaced Jingzhou City as a regional commercial center, with well-developed commerce and handicrafts, and became one of the important commercial metropolises in China. By the end of Qing Dynasty, Shashi was turned into a trading port. With the rise of modern industry and the prosperity of commerce, the city has further expanded, reaching 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 winds along the river, and several alleys extend to both sides. The urban layout of Shashi is similar to Jingzhou, which is short in north and south, long in east and west, and distributed in a strip along the river, reflecting that the rise of both cities originated from docks. A strip-shaped city along the river can set up several docks at the water's edge at the same time, and large and small ships can load and unload at the same time without affecting each other, and the distance of carrying ashore is also the shortest. The juxtaposition of the two cities in the same pattern also reflects the waterway changes of the Yangtze River in the past thousand years.
Historically, Jingzhou and Shashi showed complementary structural characteristics, and Jiangling mainly assumed political and military functions and occupied a dominant position; Shashi mainly undertakes economic and commercial functions and is in a subordinate position. After liberation, Shashi Town was established and Jingzhou was reduced to Jingzhou Town, jiangling county. At this point, Shashi has surpassed Jingzhou. After 1950s, Shashi and Jingzhou were divided and merged, sometimes merged into Jingzhou area, and sometimes became provincial cities, until 1993 Jingzhou area and Shashi were abolished, and 1996 was changed to Jingzhou city. When I was a child, my only memory of Shashi was the advertisement of "Vibrant Bar, Shashi Daily Chemical". In fact, the full name of this manufacturer is Jingzhou Vitality Balshashi Daily Chemical Co., Ltd.
In Jingzhou's 2000-year history of building a city, the closer it is to the water, the more vibrant it is.
The second part: Jingzhou, an important town in the Yangtze River (II) The place where Master Guan fought. The whole story of the Jingzhou incident was borrowed by Liu Bei.