泬 (jué) water".
That is, "Wei River", one of the eight rivers of Chang'an
It originated at the northern foot of the Qinling Mountains.
It was originally a first-class tributary of the independent Weiwei.
Later, there was a major change in the course of the river.
The Feng River flows to the west. It became a secondary tributary of the Wei River.
According to the records of "Xi'an Water Conservancy Chronicle", the Tang Dynasty used the downstream of the river to dig the artificial Cao River. The Ming Dynasty also took the Wei River as the source to open the Ji Canal, later called the "Guan River", all of which were Cao River, and later the Cao River was transliterated into soap (氵soap, the same below). The current upper reaches of the water and the soap river are roughly the flow path of the water from the Han Dynasty to the Northern Wei Dynasty.
I figured out the relationship between "Junshui", "Weihe" and "Soap River".In this issue of "The Township Party Takes You to the "Bridge", Wang Zili, the person in charge of the excavation of the ancient bridge site of Chang'an City of the Han Dynasty, took us to visit the "Lushui Ancient Bridge" (now known as the "Soohe Ancient Bridge Site").
Back in 2004, when the construction of the West Third Ring Road in Xi'an was underway, it was originally planned that the East Auxiliary Road would go straight down through the Longhai Railway Line and then build to the south, but more than ten ancient wooden piles were excavated on the planned line during the construction. According to Wang Zili's recollection, the discovery site was located in a narrow ditch with a depth of 9 meters about 40 meters south of the culvert of the Longhai Line, in the old road of the present-day Soohe River. The archaeological staff preliminarily investigated and judged that this should be an ancient wooden bridge site.
Wooden piles of the ancient bridge (provided by the interviewee).
The excavation of the ancient bridge was immediately put on the agenda, in the excavation process between 2005 and 2006, more than 160 wooden piles were found in five rows, the longest wooden pile is more than 9 meters long, the diameter of the larger is 55 centimeters, the small one is 30 centimeters, the archaeologists through the dissection, found that the lowest end of the wooden pile is cut into a triangular pyramid shape and directly driven into the riverbed more than 3 meters deep. At the same time, a large number of cultural relics have been excavated, such as tube tiles, slab tiles, and tiles, which is a relatively unique phenomenon. There are also iron fragments, five-baht coins, copper fans, etc. From these findings, it can be inferred that the scale of the entire wooden bridge is relatively large, and the specifications are relatively high.
A panoramic view of the excavated site (provided by the interviewee).
After the excavation, archaeologists conducted more in-depth research, based on a large number of Han Dynasty slab tiles, cylinder tile fragments, ridge tiles, tiles and Western Han Dynasty "five baht", Wang Mang's "Daquan fifty" bronze fan, etc., judged that the ancient bridge should be built in the period of Emperor Wu of the Western Han Dynasty, and was abandoned after Xinmang. Judging by the geographical location, the river outside the west wall of Chang'an City in the Han Dynasty was only a water bridge, so this bridge should undoubtedly be a bridge on the water.
Wang Mang's "Daquan Fifty" bronze fan unearthed from the ancient bridge site (provided by the interviewee).
In the Han Dynasty, it was a river on the west side of Chang'an City in the Han Dynasty, which not only supplied water to Chang'an City in the Han Dynasty, but also existed as a moat. The water is very close to the southwest area of Chang'an City in the Han Dynasty, this area has the ceremonial building area of the Han Dynasty, and the forbidden garden - Shanglin Garden, which is a place where ordinary people can not set foot at will, and the royal family and other princes and nobles need to cross the water if they want to travel between Chang'an City and Shanglin Garden. And the ancient bridge discovered by this archaeology should be produced for this demand.
The red triangle is a schematic of the location of the ancient bridge ruins (the map is taken from Shi Nianhai's "Xi'an Historical Atlas").
This inference is not unfounded, because the site excavated large tiles (Shanglin tile, Yannian half tile, moire round tile), ridge tile and other items are particularly numerous, ordinary bridges will not have such configuration, should be the bridge has a very high standard of buildings, speculation that this bridge may have a shelter from the wind and rain on the roof similar to today's covered bridge, wind and rain bridge, and the two ends of the bridge may also be built with royal ceremonial buildings, symbolizing rights and dignitySo it can be determined that this bridge is a royal bridge.
Large ridge tile excavated from the site (front) (courtesy of the interviewee).
In addition, the size of the bridge also shows that it is not an ordinary bridge, and based on the wooden piles found at the site, it is speculated that the width of the ancient bridge from east to west should be more than 48 meters, which is a very large bridge even today. Archaeologists even wondered if the length and width of the bridge were reversed, and the arrangement of the wooden piles explained this question: during the excavation, it was found that the wooden piles in the north-south direction were particularly dense and the water could not flow through, while the interval between each row of the east-west rows of wooden piles was 3 to 5 meters, and the river could only flow through the east-west direction, so the direction of the bridge was not mistaken, that is, the north-south direction.
Then a new problem arises again, it stands to reason that the water is in a north-south direction, and the bridge on the river should be east-west, so why is this bridge also north-south?
Site map of the ancient bridge site.
Because the river happened to make a bend here, the wise ancients took advantage of this bend to build this bridge. There is a village near the ancient bridge called Wanzi Village, and this name is likely to be related to the direction of the ancient river channel. Judging from the historical records, the Soap River has not changed much until now, and it still flows through Wanzi Village from south to north, and the direction changes from west to east and then turns north, and it is this bridge built on this section of the river from west to east. Generally speaking, the flow slows down where the river turns, so the ancients also took advantage of the trend when they built bridges here.
Site map of the ancient bridge site.
Knowing this ancient bridge clearly, let's go back to the East Auxiliary Road of the West Third Ring Road, the planned straight East Auxiliary Road, because of the existence of the ancient bridge ruins, there is one more bend, and the ancient bridge has been completely buried back to a depth of 5 meters underground, and it will always be there until more advanced conservation methods appear.
The ancients used the bend to build the bridge, and the present people use the bend to protect the bridge, and the small "Soohe Ancient Bridge Ruins" stele on that side records our unreachable thousand-year history, and also records the story of the present people at our fingertips.
Text: Yan Han, Zuo Hairu |Appearance: Reporter Zuo Hairu丨Shooting Editor: Cheng Yumeng丨Editor: Qianshu丨Proofreader: Zhang Li丨Review: Li Mingzhen丨**Please indicate the source Editor-in-charge: Yang Xue.