Inner Mongolia Suiyuan Tour: Hohhot (1) From Dadu to Kuku and Tun

In 1368 AD, the two dynasties of China will alternate in this year. On one side is the last monarch of the Yuan Dynasty in the Central Plains. Knowing half of the world, he himself is ambitiously trying to save the crumbling empire in the chaos. This is the Zhizheng twenty-eight years under his rule; on the other side is the most humble founding emperor of China, Zhu Yuanzhang, who belongs to In the first year of his Hongwu reign, he had already defeated Chen Youliang, Zhang Shicheng, Fang Guozhen and other local armed forces in the south, attacking from the south to the north rarely in Chinese history, and was about to start the 300-year rule of the Ming Dynasty.

On the night of July 28, Yuan Huizong left Dadu from Jiandemen and evacuated to the northern grasslands. On the second day of the eighth lunar month, the Ming army occupied Dadu under the leadership of Xu Da. The Mongolian rule in the Central Plains came to an end, and it began to be called Beibei. In the Yuan era, the Monan grasslands became a zone of repeated conflict between Mongolia and the Ming Dynasty. More than 200 years later, Altan Khan built a city of naturalization at the foot of Daqing Mountain. Today, this city has become the capital of China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, and it is the first stop I will visit on this trip.

Five years ago, on the day of the Eid al-Adha, I arrived in Urumqi and started a trip to northern Xinjiang. At that time, I had just completed a trip to the Middle East Railway, and at the end of the year, I was going to do a trip to Xikang. I was full of enthusiasm. Five years later, I traveled on Eid al-Adha, but the social atmosphere has been very different. Fortunately, my own state has not changed much. This may also be the advantage of immaturity, which can prolong the active time. A few days ago, I happened to see a man who told fate and said that I was a snake of good fortune in the big forest. There was a sentence that impressed me deeply: "They are full of strong and strong vitality throughout their lives, and all obstacles and obstacles will eventually prove to be the shelter of fate", I have really felt this way over the years. Although many things have been frustrated and obstructed, it seems to be a package that does not hurt my bones.

The train I took from Beijing to Hohhot departed from the North Station next to Xizhimen. In 1969, when the Beijing Metro Line 2 was constructed, the Xizhimen gate tower was demolished. Door.

After the Ming army captured Yuan Dadu, in order to prevent the Yuan army from counterattacking, and at the same time to make the city of Dadu smaller than Nanjing out of etiquette, Xu Da ordered the northern city wall of Dadu to be demolished and retreated five miles to build a new city wall, and almost all the urban areas to the north were leveled. Used for defensive buffering. Later, the orthodox emperor of the Ming Dynasty ordered the construction of the nine gate towers in Beijing. Before, the city wall of the Yuan Dynasty was a rammed earth wall, and there were no stone-coated bricks outside. In the place where the reed mats were made, when the Ming Dynasty built the Xizhimen Gate, they used the original structure of the Heyi Gate and pressed the original Wengcheng under the new Wengcheng.

More than 650 years ago, the monarchs of the Yuan Dynasty left from Jiandemen, the north gate of Dadu, and this time I want to leave from Ximen and Yimen. It took more than 2 hours to arrive at Hohhot East Station. Before my trip, Beijing was experiencing humid and sultry weather. Hohhot was dry and refreshing at this time. The regime originated from the grasslands often set up several capital cities due to their migration habits. The city where the monarch is located is the capital. The Jin Kingdom basically followed the setup of the Liao Kingdom, while the Yuan Dynasty monarchs traveled between Dadu and Shangdu every year, going to Shangdu in April to escape the summer heat and returning in September in the cool of autumn.

The high-speed rail stations in many cities are far away from the main urban area, but the Hohhot East Station is not far away, and the subway station is when you get off the train. I noticed that the end point of this subway line is the airport, also called dam weir. The transliteration of "rich" in the middle, as a person's name is Boyan, which often appears in Mongolian history, and the prime minister of Kublai Khan was called this name. This airport in Hohhot is called Baita Airport. Baita refers to the Wanbu Huayan Jing Pagoda in the Liao Dynasty near the airport. There is also the former site of Baita Railway Station built in 1921 to the east of the airport, which used to be Pingsui. A station on the railway, the station was no longer in use after the route changed in the 1970s.

I lived next to the Great Mosque in Hohhot. The neighborhood is the neighborhood with the most concentrated food in Hohhot, and the living atmosphere is relatively traditional, which is very suitable for tourists to live in. Today's Hohhot is a twin city in the form of a fusion of two cities in history. It is difficult to intuitively identify it now. We can only explore the independent forms of the two cities through some street directions and historical sites.

In 1575, Altan Khan and his wife built Kuku and Tuncheng at the foot of Daqing Mountain. The Ming Dynasty government named it Guihua City. Although some historical records believe that Guihua City was built in the style of the capital of the Yuan Dynasty, and it was the Mongolian obsession with the lost capital, the original Guihua City was actually very small, with only two gates in the north and south, until the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty. Extensive expansion was carried out. The new city, Suiyuan City, corresponding to the old city of Guihua City, was built during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty. 5 miles northeast of Guihua City, there was an Eight Banners garrisoning the city, so that Guihua City and Suiyuan City were civilian-military twin cities. form is formed.

The two cities were nominally integrated into one until 1913 after the end of the Qing Dynasty. In order to strengthen the control of the Mongolian area, the government of the Republic of China named the two cities together as Guisui County, and the Suiyuan Special Zone was established the following year. In 2009, Suiyuan Province was established, and Guisui became the provincial capital. The first chairman of Suiyuan Province was Xu Yongchang, who represented China to accept Japan's surrender in 1945. During the Japanese invasion of China, Guisui City was changed to Houhe Special City by the Mongolian United Autonomous Government supported by Japan. After the end of World War II, the name of Guisui was restored. In 1954, Suiyuan Province was revoked and merged into Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. This city has been the capital since then. called Hohhot.

In order to integrate the two cities into one structurally, the construction of the middle part of the two cities began 100 years ago. In 1921, the main road connecting the two cities was built, which is now Zhongshan Road. Today, you can see this road by looking at the map. A prominent northeast-southwest road. It was also in the same year that the Ping-Sui Railway was opened to traffic. The railway ran east-west along the northern city wall of Suiyuan City. Guisui Station was built next to the abandoned Qing military academy. Today, the train station is crowded and lively, but at that time it was a distance from naturalization. The city is far away, so another road leading to the railway station was built, which is the current Xilingol North Road.

Until the 1960s and 1970s, the part between the two cities was still relatively desolate, with many shanty towns, urban villages, and wetlands. In the old bird's-eye view, two independent and compact urban areas and a relatively sparse part in the middle can be identified. Later, the big construction completely integrated the two urban areas. Today, we can see a little difference between the two urban areas from the road structure. The streets of Guihua City are relatively free and tortuous, while the streets of Suiyuan City are planned neatly and squarely. square.

As a person who has lived in Beijing for a long time, coming to Hohhot made me think. It has been more than six centuries since the alternation of the Yuan and Ming dynasties. Who is the real successor of Dadu in Beijing or Hohhot? This made me walk into the city of naturalization with historical imagination.

Opposite the Great Mosque is the location of the north gate of the old city, but now there is no gate here, and the gates on all sides of the Guihua City have disappeared. In 1921, after the construction of the Ping-Sui-Sui Railway to Gui-Sui, due to the convenience of transportation, Ma Fuxiang, the commander of the Suiyuan Special District at that time, ordered the south gate, east gate and west gate of Guihua City to be demolished, and only the north gate remained. In the 1930s, a small bell tower was added on top of the original North Gate Tower. This landmark building can be seen in many old photos of Suiyuan City. However, in 1958, the North Gate was also demolished, but the place name of the Old City North Gate has always been It is still in use to this day, and the bus still has this stop. Perhaps for tourism development, when Hohhot later built Saishang Old Street, a new city gate was rebuilt at the westernmost end imitating the North City Gate.

I walked into Guihua City through the imaginary North Gate. From the North Gate to the south, it was once the most prosperous commercial street in Guihua City. It was also the place where herdsmen on the surrounding flags came to the city for trade and purchase. In the past, there were a lot of silk and satin on both sides. Shops, foreign goods stores, medicinal materials stores, tea stores, etc., as well as many old-fashioned restaurants. Later, with the opening of the railway, many foreign businessmen also came here to open new-style stores such as watch stores, optical stores, western pharmacies, photo studios, etc. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China Urban renewal has widened roads, but many old buildings have also been demolished.

In 1908, the Finnish explorer Madhan once visited Guihua City. Coincidentally, he also came here in July. In Madhan's records, he wrote, "The city walls of Guihua City are not conspicuous. With the gate and the streets connected to the gate, even if you pass through the city, you will not be able to find the existence of the city of naturalization. This small city has now expanded in all directions, but mainly to the south. The city wall itself is obviously no longer As a fortification, many houses have been built close to the inner and outer sides of the city wall. People can move freely on the city wall. There are no barracks in the city, and official residences such as Daotai Yamen are also outside the city.”

Madhan noticed the prosperous business in Guihua City. He recorded that there were as many as 5,000 shops in the city. Among them, 40 were selling eastern Chinese or foreign products. To pass, commercial firms in eastern China (mainly foreign firms) have set up a dozen agency banks here, and Tianjin people have built a dozen large warehouses here to store and transship goods. Madhan concluded that Guihua City is a storage place for goods needed in the surrounding Mongolian areas, and is also a transportation hub between Beijing, Tianjin, Subei and Xinjiang.

On the way to Da Zhao, I looked at the map and found a problem. If the city of Guihua was "built in imitation of a lost capital", where is the palace in the city? In the Yuan Dynasty, the imperial palace was the core. Today, the ruins of the imperial palace are buried under the Forbidden City and Jingshan Mountain. However, I could not find the palace in Guihua City. It seems that the core is the Great Summoning. This question has been accompanied by my travel for the next few days. It was not until I was about to leave that I heard from the locals that there used to be a Dan Mansion in this city, which should be the palace I was looking for. There used to be a hall lane on the west side of Dabei Street, where Dan House was, but it was demolished after 1979.

What is the relationship between Dan House and Altan Khan? Why is it called Dan House? The answers to these questions involved a word that the locals repeatedly mentioned when they introduced me to Hohhot - Tumet, which is the tribe where Altan Khan belonged. This word runs through the history of Guihua City, including the entire Hohhot.