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Xi'an
The central location of Xi'an in what is
now Shaanxi Province near the confluence of the Wei and
Feng Rivers helps explain why the area was the site of several
important imperial capitals for about a millennium of Chinese
history. The first really unified Chinese empire, that of
the Qin, had its capital just north of the current city
of Xi'an. Although the Qin emperor failed to establish a
lasting dynasty (he died in 210 BCE), in some ways he is
the Chinese ruler best known outside of China because of
his massive tomb complex with its terracotta statues of
more than 8000 soldiers and their horses, spread over some
56 square kilometers. Its discovery in the 1970s was arguably
the most important archaeological find of the twentieth
century. Only a part of the site has been properly excavated
and the figures restored. Recent work on some of the other
Chinese imperial tombs in the area provides a tantalizing
hint of spectacular finds to come over the next decades.
The Han dynasty succeeded the Qin, initially
chose Luoyang to the East as its capital, but then in 202-200
BCE to the south of the Qin capital began construction of
Chang-an, "the first great city in Chinese history."
It was under Emperor Wu Di (141-87 BCE) that the first Chinese
missions were sent to Inner Asia, an event considered to
mark the beginning of the Silk Road. He substantially expanded
the capital with the erection of many new palaces, but the
glory of Chang'an came to an end in 24 CE during the disorders
connected with the collapse of the Former Han dynasty. The
city was looted and burned and subsequently fell to the
status of simply a provincial city, when subsequent rulers
chose Luoyang as their capital. Victor Cunrui Xiong quotes
(pp. 15-16) a poem written in the year 292 evoking the desolation
of the city:
Street wards are deserted and desolate;
Town dwellings are sparsely scattered.
The buildings and offices, stations and bureaus,
Shops and markets, official storehouses,
Are now concentrated on a single corner of the wall--
Of a hundred, barely one survives...
Great bells have fallen in the ruined temple;
Bellframes have collapsed and suspend no more...
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Chang'an revived in the fourth century,
once more the capital, and witnessed a cultural florescence
in part thanks to the fact that it became a center of Buddhist
learning. Several important Buddhist pilgrims and translators
resided there around the beginning of the fifth century,
among them Faxian, who traveled to India, and the scholar
Kumarajiva. The revival came to an end in civil strife,
and for over a century after a conquering army took the
city in 417, it ceased to be the capital. A brief revival
in the second half of the sixth century ended abruptly with
the accession of the Sui dynasty in 581, since the first
Sui emperor decided to build an entirely new city to the
south of Han Chang'an and on the exact location of the modern
Xi'an. According to Prof. Xiong, the choice of the site
and the layout of the city was in part determined by divination
with reference to astrological signs.
The city continued to be the principal capital
of the Empire and entered the greatest period of its development
under the Tang Dynasty (618-904). "At the height of
its glory in the mid-eighth century, Chang'an was the most
populous, cosmopolitan, and civilized city in the world"
(Richard B. Mather, foreword to Xiong, p. ix), occupying
some 84 sq. km. with around one million inhabitants. The
poet Lu Zhaolin provided a vivid description of an imperial
procession through the city:
Chang'an's broad avenues link up with narrow
lanes, where one sees Black oxen and white horses, coaches
made of seven fragrant woods. The emperor's jade-fit palanquin
sweeps past the mansions of princesses, Gold riding whips
in an unending train point toward marquises' homes. The
dragon biting the jeweled canopy catches the morning sun,
The phoenix disgorging dangling fringes is draped with evening's
red clouds. (Tr. Stephen Owen, modified by Xiong, p. 201.)
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It suffered major damage during the An Lushan
rebellion in the mid-8th century, but even toward the end
of the Tang period, when the empire was in disarray, the
"enormous size" of the city impressed an Arab
visitor. The Tang period was one of the most noteworthy
ones for the impact of Western products and fashions on
Chinese elite culture, and the teeming markets of the capital
played a significant role in the dissemination of such goods.
Among the dominant figures at least under the early Tang
(in fact their presence in China can be documented from
several centuries prior to that) were Soghdian merchants
from the region of Central Asia which encompasses today's
Samarkand. The poet Ban Gu evoked the crowds of the markets:
In the nine markets they set up bazaars,
Their wares separated by type, their shop rows distinctly
divided.
There was no room for people to turn their heads,
Or for chariots to wheel about.
People crammed into the city, spilled into the suburbs,
Everywhere streaming into the hundreds of shops.
(Tr. David Knechtges; cited by Xiong, p. 165.)
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Under the Tang, the city was a major religious
center, not only for Buddhism and Taoism but also for several
religions which were relatively recent arrivals in China:
Zoroastrianism, Nestorianism and Manichaeism. The most famous
of all the Buddhist pilgrims, Xuanzang, had to sneak out
of Chang'an in 629, but by his return in 645 would be greeted
by a huge throng. Apart from the remarkable feat of his
journey, his great accomplishment was to bring back copies
of the Indian scriptures which he spent his remaining days
translating. One of the few major Tang-era buildings left
in Xi'an today is the Big Wild Goose (Dayan) Pagoda, first
built in 652 in the Daci'en Monastery to house the library
Xuanzang collected. The current structure was re-built in
701-704; by climbing to its seventh story, which "rubs
the blue sky's vault," a Tang poet Cen Shen felt he
was able to "bypass the world's bounds" (Tr. Stephen
Owen; Xiong, p. 261). (Shown here is also a small pagoda
erected much later, in the Ming period and located near
the main southern entrance to the Ming city.) The Japanese
pilgrim Enin was in Chang'an in 840 and noted that there
were monks from the "Western Lands" (apparently
India) in one of the several hundred monasteries there who
still did not know Chinese very well but presumably were
helping with the explication of Sanskrit versions of the
Buddhist texts. He later enumerated South Indian, North
Indian, Ceylonese, Kuchean (Kucha in the Tarim Basin), Korean
and Japanese monks among the foreign ones in the city. Enin
documented the ceremonies on the occasion of Buddhist festivals
such as that for the offering to the relic of the tooth
of the Buddha:
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The various monasteries took part, each
arranging fine offerings. All sorts of medicines and foods,
rare fruits and flowers, and many kinds of incense were
carefully prepared and offered to the Buddha's tooth. They
were spread out beyond count in the gallery around the storied
offering hall...All the Reverences of the city were in the
storied hall adoring it and making praises. The whole city
came to worship and make offerings. One man donated one
hundred bushels of non-glutinous rice and twenty bushels
of millet. Another man provided biscuits plentifully and
without restrictions. Another man donated enough cash for
the miscellaneous needs of the meals...People tossed cash
like rain toward the storied hall of the Buddha's tooth.
He goes on to note that there were four teeth of the Buddha
in the city, three of them having come respectively from
India, Khotan and Tibet and the fourth from heaven.
The spread under the Tang of the religions
other than Buddhism can be documented fairly specifically.
A stele (inscribed stone pillar) erected in 781 relates
the introduction of Nestorian Christianity as early as 635
by Syrian priests. This famous stele was largely neglected
in a field outside Xi'an until the beginning of the twentieth
century, when it was moved to the location in the city where
it can can be seen today in the "Forest of Stele"
museum. The text and carvings exhibit a curious syncretism
of Christian and Chinese traditions. Zoroastrianism received
some impetus when the last of the Sasanian (Iranian) princes
Firuz took refuge in China in the 670s, having fled the
Arab invasions. Manichaeism also was connected with the
arrival of Persians at the Tang court as early as 694; it
really flourished though only after the An Lushan rebellion
in the mid-eighth century, when the Tang dynasty was saved
by the support of the Manicheaen Uighurs.
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Enin was one of the first to note how the
Emperor turned viciously on the Manichaeans when the Uighur
empire disintegrated in 840, and he stayed long enough in
Chang'an to witness the onset of severe persecution of Buddhism,
which lasted from 842-845. The emperor was persuaded by
his Confucian advisers that Buddhism was siphoning off too
much wealth; the situation was undoubtedly compounded by
a sense of growing crisis as the Tang state weakened. Buddhist
scripture were burned, monks and nuns were forced to abandon
the religious life. In the capital various disorders broke
out:
Four [imperial] Secretaries...were decapitated
on Imperial command and their men and women and their slaves
were all killed and their houses destroyed...In the third
watch of the night (midnight) fire broke out in the Eastern
Market and burned over four thousand houses in twelve alleys
westward...Public and private money and gold, silver, silks,
and drugs were all destroyed...In the third watch of the
night a fire broke out in the Palace...Fire broke out outside
the Ch'ang-lo Gate and burned a hayloft. Previously there
had been an Imperial edict to burn the Buddhist scriptures
in the Palace and also to bury the images of the Buddhas,
Bodhisattvas, and Heavenly Kings. Later fire broke out in
two places and still later, on two nights, fire broke out
again in several places in the Eastern Market.
The glory days of Chang'an were numbered.
With the collapse of
the Tang at the beginning of the tenth century, Chang'an
decayed rapidly. However, it continued to play a role in
the Western trade and experienced a revival under the Ming
beginning in the late fourteenth century. The fortifications
which so impress the visitor today date from the Ming period.
Here we see the Eastern Gate, as it looked nearly a century
ago, and a recent photograph of the southern gate (Nan Men),
built in 1370-1373, with a later temple atop it. If we look
along the wall from the temple, the fortifications are so
vast that they disappear into the distance. Nearly a century
ago, the Bell Tower (Zong Lou) located at the intersection
of the main north-south streets in the walled part of the
city really stood out above the surrounding houses; today
it is barely visible from a distance, dwarfed by multi-story
modern buildings. The Bell Tower was built in 1384 (and
then rebuilt several times beginning in the sixteenth century).
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Undoubtedly it was in the Ming period
that the large Muslim community in Chang'an really took
root and its members became largely sinicized. Muslim merchants
arrived in China much earlier both by sea through the ports
of the South China coast and from Central Asia, but they
had been required to live in enclosed communities which
the Chinese authorities kept largely insulated from serious
cultural interaction with the Chinese. We know that by the
sixteenth century, however, many of the Chinese Muslims
apparently knew little Arabic or Persian, they had become
so assimilated. While it is claimed that Chang'an's Great
Mosque (Qingzhen Dasi) was first built in 742, there is
some doubt as to whether it or any other mosques in Chinese
cities are anywhere near that early in date. The buildings
one sees today in the mosque date from the late Ming period.
For example, its entrance gate was erected in 1600-1629.
In its arrangement of courtyards and purely Chinese-style
architecture, the mosque is visual evidence of the degree
to which there was a syncretism of Islam and at least some
of the externals of Chinese culture. The Inscription on
the "One God Pavilion" is the Muslim declaration
of faith "God is One" rendered in Chinese characters.
The mosque as we see it today is located in a Muslim quarter
of Xi'an, not far from the location of the western market
whose merchants played an important role in the continuing
trade of Ming and Qing times through the Hexi corridor into
the Western Lands--that is along the classic Silk Road to
Inner Asia.
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