Digging up our knowledge of the past

Archaeologists continue to add to the fascinating history of Beijing as a capital city, Wang Ru reports.

Fresh stories of Beijing's long history are gradually emerging, thanks to hard work by archaeologists. Details of new discoveries spanning 2,000 years from the Western Zhou Dynasty (c. 11th century-771 BC) to the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) have recently been released by the Beijing Municipal Cultural Heritage Bureau.

The city's stint as the national capital began 871 years ago when the Jin Dynasty (1115-1234) moved its capital to Beijing in 1153, calling it Zhongdu ("the central capital"). It was located mainly in what is today's Xicheng and Fengtai districts.

The recent discovery of a gate from the Jin Zhongdu era is among the highlights revealed by archaeologists.

"This is our first discovery of a Jin Zhongdu gate, and also our first time excavating one of them," says Ding Lina, a researcher at the Beijing Institute of Archaeology. "It's a rare example of a large-scale building foundation on this site discovered with its structure intact."

Historical records

The gate is composed of two piers on the eastern and western sides of a 6-meter doorway, which reveals traces of wheels and possibly hoofs, suggesting the coming and going of carriages and people on horseback, Ding says.

Outside the gate is a horseshoe-shaped wengcheng, a type of defensive enclosure often built out of city gates in ancient China.

Inside the city, the remains of two streets have been discovered.

According to Guo Jingning, director of the Beijing Institute of Archaeology, although the rulers of the Jin Dynasty were the Jurchen people, nomads from what is now northeastern China, they made use of many Confucian ideas from the Central Plains in the building of Zhongdu.

"For example, they built gates for the city, whose names included the characters for ren (benevolence), yi (righteousness), li (propriety) and zhi (wisdom), some basic moral principles advocated by Confucianism. Among them was a southern gate called the Duanli Gate," Guo says.

Ding says that the location of the discovery accords with historical records, and its shape and size all suggest that it was the Duanli Gate.

"In the past, our understanding of Jin Zhongdu was limited to literature and a few archaeological discoveries, but we had failed to find such a landmark structure. The study of an ancient city is not complete or satisfactory before finding its gates and streets, and efforts this time helped fill in the blank," Guo says.

Zhang Lixin, director of Beijing Municipal Cultural Heritage Bureau, says the discovery was testimony to Beijing's history as a capital for more than 870 years.