The Wuding River ( Chinese : 无定河 ) begins in the Ordos Desert in Shaanxi Province , Inner Mongolia and flows south into loess canyons and farmland. After around 160 kilometres (100 mi) it flows into the great Yellow River . The Wuding has its own tributaries, such as the Dali River , Hailiutu River , Hanjiang River , and the Danjiang River . The course of the river roughly parallels the northern route of the ancient Silk Road , now the National Highway 210.
20-532: The river's name means "winding" or "unstable" or "capricious" or "without a fixed course". This relates to its shifting course during classical times. The river area was much contested in classical times, and many battles were fought along and around it. On its early northern reaches stood the 'White City' of Tongwancheng , the main Hun capital on the non-Chinese side of the Great Wall of China . The river served as
40-521: A brief incursion into the city succeeded only in burning the main temple, the surrounding hinterland was devastated. The city's site was on the fertile upper reaches of the Wuding River , but the river and lake died up, possibly due to deforestation that might be traced back to Taiwu's devastation. The city was then gradually buried by the sands of the desert. This 'wandering' (Wuding) gave the river its current name. The Xiongnu continued to live in
60-522: A holy color for the Xiongnu. Yet the thickness of the walls was certainly required since the city was originally built at a time of perpetual warfare. Both internal and external threats existed - for instance, Helian Bobo was attacked with an army by his deputy Helian Gui in 424 following a dynastic dispute. In 426, the Emperor Taiwu of Northern Wei made a surprise attack on Tongwancheng. Although
80-455: A military boundary into the warlord period of Chinese history, when opium replaced cotton as the crop on the river's fertile loess farmland, and into the modern communist period. The river currently carries very high levels of silt due to the arid climate in its loess canyons and gulleys, and over the last 30 years extensive effort has been put into preventing erosion on the upper reaches of the river, so as to prevent coarse sediment from entering
100-519: Is also referred to in the literature variously as Tong Wan Cheng, Tongwan-cheng, Tongwan, Xia Zhou, Baichengzi (Chinese: 白城子 ; Wade–Giles: Pai-cheng-tzu ), or Bai Cheng ( 白城 ; 'White City'). Book of Jin The Book of Jin is an official Chinese historical text covering the history of the Jin dynasty from 266 to 420 . It was compiled in 648 by a number of officials commissioned by
120-483: The pre-existing Jin histories , but also a large body of actual Jin primary sources, it appears that the book was primarily based on Zang Rongxu's (臧荣绪) identically-titled Jinshu from the Southern Qi , and further incorporates material from fictionalized novels. The Tang historian Liu Zhiji (661–721) accused the editors of generally selecting the sources that had the most vivid and compelling language, rather than
140-542: The Book of Jin is recognized as the most important primary source for the Jin dynasty and Sixteen Kingdoms, because the pre-existing histories and other sources it was compiled from have all been lost – save for a few stray quotations in other works. No complete translations are known at this time. The astronomical chapters (11, 12 & 13) were translated by Ho Peng Yoke. Choo translates the biography of Huan Wen in volume 98 and
160-474: The Yellow River. Terraces, re-forestation, planting and control dams have all been tried, with considerable success. An ancient 9th century battle poem is set on the banks of the river - Chen Tao 's Journey to Longxi describes a warrior dying on the riverbank, whereafter his lover only sees him in her dreams... The river and its culture gave rise to the bardic folk song tradition of daoqing . By
180-553: The border with Inner Mongolia . The city has been surveyed and has had some elements restored, but not yet fully excavated. The city was built by around 100,000 Xiongnu of the Hu Xia dynasty under the command of Helian Bobo (Emperor Wulie) in 419. Helian Bobo, also known by his sinified surname as Liu Bobo, was a descendant of the Xiongnu chanyu who founded their steppe empire in the 3rd century BC. Helian Bobo died in 425 AD, and his son Helian Chang succeeded him as emperor of
200-440: The city. Helian Bobo had intended that the city be absolutely impenetrable, so he commissioned his cruel general Chigan Ali (叱干阿利) as the architect and set extremely strict rules for construction. Chigan ordered that the soil used in constructing the wall be steamed, so that it would be hardened and difficult to attack, and he often tested the walls during its construction; if an iron wedge were able to insert even one inch deep into
220-780: The gaps between the Records of the Three Kingdoms , the Book of Song , the Book of Qi , the Book of Wei and the Emperor's own time. As part of this ambition, its treatises cover not only the Jin but also the preceding Three Kingdoms, making up for the lack of such a section in the Records of the Three Kingdoms. The book was hastily compiled between 646 CE and 648, by a committee of 21 people led by editor-in-chief Fang Xuanling. As some chapters were written by Emperor Taizong of Tang ,
SECTION 10
#1732773120214240-579: The imperial court of the Tang dynasty , with chancellor Fang Xuanling as the lead editor, drawing mostly from official documents left from earlier archives. A few essays in volumes 1, 3, 54 and 80 were composed by the Tang dynasty's Emperor Taizong himself. However, the contents of the Book of Jin included not only the history of the Jin dynasty, but also that of the Sixteen Kingdoms period, which
260-638: The late 19th and 20th centuries, this had taken the form of large troupes of blind storytellers and musicians. For more on this tradition see: "Blind Bards of The Wuding", in China Pictorial Nov 2006. 37°02′42″N 110°26′10″E / 37.0450°N 110.4361°E / 37.0450; 110.4361 Tongwancheng 37°59′51″N 108°51′46″E / 37.997515°N 108.862839°E / 37.997515; 108.862839 Tongwancheng ( Chinese : 統萬城 ; pinyin : Tǒngwànchéng ; Wade–Giles : Tʻung-wan-chʻêng )
280-464: The ones that were the most historically reliable. The collaborative nature of the project coupled with the rushed production time unsurprisingly leaves the book with a number of internal contradictions and editorial errors; such as misspelled personal and place names, draft-like and unpolished language, and "cross-references" to non-existent chapters that were presumably planned but never finished in time for publication. In spite of these shortcomings,
300-459: The region until the 7th or 8th century. In 786 the city was besieged by Tibetan forces, and it was invaded by Jurchen soldiers in 1206. There is no record of the site in Chinese records after the early 15th century. The city was only properly surveyed by the Chinese in the 2000s. The city's Yong'an Platform, a military forces inspection platform for dignitaries, has been restored. The city
320-408: The wall, the workmen who were in charge of that section of wall would be executed. The Great Wall of China was built to contain the Xiongnu threat, and Tongwancheng was the main Xiongnu capital that stood on other side of that wall. The city was largely of wood construction and had very thick outer walls which were colored white with white clay earth and powdered rice. From a distance the white city
340-456: The work is sometimes given the honorific "imperially authored". The Book of Jin had the longest gestation period of any official history, not seeing the light of day until 229 years after the end of the dynasty it describes. The book has been criticized for being more reflective of the court politics in the Tang dynasty that compiled it, rather than the realities of the Jin dynasty itself. Despite Fang's team having at their disposal not only
360-484: Was contemporaneous with the Eastern Jin dynasty. Over 20 histories of the Jin had been written during the Jin era itself and the subsequent Northern and Southern dynasties , of which 18 were still extant at the beginning of the Tang dynasty . Yet Emperor Taizong deemed them all to be deficient and ordered the compilation of a new standard history for the period, as part of a wider six-history project to fill in
380-477: Was said to have had the appearance of a giant ship. At its center the city had a lake. The Book of Jin gives us a contemporary eyewitness description of the city: At its height the population was around 10,000, likely to have been greatly supplemented by an encircling encampment of nomadic kin groups at certain times of the year. White cities were generally ceremonial and status centers built following conquest, rather than outright military positions, white being
400-891: Was the capital of the Xiongnu -led Hu Xia dynasty in northern China during the Sixteen Kingdoms period in the early 5th century. The city is at the southern edge of the Maowusu Sands of the Ordos Desert , on what was formerly a strategic site in the center of the Ordos Plateau. Tongwancheng, which means the "city ruling ten thousand", is the largest urban center of the Southern Xiongnu that has ever been found. The city's ruins are well preserved and located in Jingbian County , Shaanxi Province, near
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