The Story of Beiting

文：王東平

No other place on the ancient Silk Road had so many names like Beiting in Jimsar County of Chinas Xinjiang. It was referred to as the Valley of Wutu, City of Jinman, City of Futu-Khan, Xiadu,(Summer Capital), Bashbaliq, etc. in different periods and under different political regimes. The story we are going to tell about it may help you understand why Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889-1957), a British scholar reputed for his interpretation of history from a cultural perspective, hoped to be born in Xinjiang of the first century AD after Buddhism had found its way into China. A major hub of communication that bridged the pastoral and farming regions on the northern section of the Silk Road, Beiting features a cultural diversity built up by people of so many ethnic groups through political, economic, religious and cultural exchange-also through wars. It is for such a cultural diversity that Toynbee cherished so profound an admiration for ancient Xinjiang.

Back in the first century BC, Emperor Wu Di of Chinas Han Dynasty sent an emissary named Zhang Qian to what is broadly referred to as the “Western Region” what is now Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and other parts of Central Asia to its west. According to records written by government historians, Zhang Qian and his entourage were charged with persuading rulers of Da Yueshi State to join the Chinese empire in fighting the Huns, a nomadic group that had kept harnessing Chinas border areas in the north. Unofficial records, however, allege that the emperor sent Zhang Qian westward in search of the “heavenly horse”supposedly able to carry him to the Land of Bliss high up above the blue skies, where he would enjoy an eternal life. He believed that the “heavenly horse”resided in the Western Region, in the Da Yueshi and Wusun states, to be more exact.

Nobody knows whether there is any truth in the story, but Zhang Qian did make history for his pioneering role in opening the Silk Road which, as time went by, eventually developed into a web of roads and trails linking ancient China to central and western Asia, Europe and Africa. Nobody can belittle the importance of the Silk Road in promoting the development of human civilization. Just one example: barely a century after Zhang Qian accomplished his first mission in the Western Region, Queen Cleopeatra of Egypt became able to wear silk robes imported from China.

In the year 115 BC, Zhang Qian, who had already been conferred on the honorific title “Duke of Bowang” left Changan, the national capital, again for the Western Region, again on order of Emperor Wu Di, as head of a 300-men Chinese delegation. This time, he went to the State of Wusun, charged with persuading Wusun rulers to move their people eastward to launch a pincer attack on the Huns jointly with the troops of the Han Dynasty. The Wusun king, however, declined to respond to the request immediately. For a whole year pending a decision by the king, Zhang Qians assistants were able to go to Dayuan, Kangju, Yueshi, Bactra and other states neighboring Wusun to promote Chinas relations with them. One more year afterwards, Zhang Qian and his delegation came back home, bringing with them emissaries from those states they had visited.

That marked the beginning of official exchanges between China and the Western Region. Emissaries of the Han Dynasty eventually made their way into Parthia (Iran), trekking through vast expanses of deserts and grasslands encompassing Qiuchi, Shendu (north India), Yanchai, Tiaozhi and many other ancient states and regions in central and western Asia. Delegations exchanged were invariably large even by modern standard, each consisting of at least a hundred people. The exchanges were so frequent that delegations often met each other on the way. Members of Chinese delegation liked to call themselves “men of Duke Bowang” in honor of Zhang Qian who had opened the road they were traversing.

Relations between China and Wusun were particularly close. Two princesses of the Han Dynasty, Princess Xi Jun and Princess Jie You, were married off to Wusun in 105 BC and 100 BC, respectively. Textual and other research have resulted in the discovery that the ancient state of Wusun was based in what is now Beiting, or what is now Jimsar County of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, or Bashbaliq in the ancient Turkish language.

Zhang Qian did not find the “heavenly horse”even though he went to the Western Region twice. Many years after he died, a Chinese army general named Li Guangli brought back more than 1,000 battle steeds when he returned triumphantly from a war he had fought there. Beginning that time, the term “heavenly horse”were frequently used in classical Chinese writings and poetry, referring to horses of fine breeds.

Beiting:Whence so Many Names?

Beiting, or Bashbaliq, lies at the northern foot of the Tianshan Mountains that snake across the breadth of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. It is where grasslands north of the Tianshan Mountains and oases in the rock-strewn Gobi deserts to the south meet, making it a major hub of communication in ancient times.

To be more exact, Beiting is a part of Jimsar County at north foot of the sacred Mt. Bagda, one of the snow-clad peaks of the Tianshan Mountains. It has a long history, dating back at least to the time when China was under the reign of the Han Dynasty. As we have mentioned, it was home to the State of Wusun, which Zhang Qian visited in both of his visits to the Western Region. After people of Wusun moved further west to the Yili River Valley on Chinas current western border, the place became territory of the Later State of Cheshi with the Valley of Wutu as capital, “wutu”meaning the “royal palacein ancient Turkish.

In the year 60 BC, General Geng Gong of the Han Dynasty and his troops came to Beiting, where they built a city and named it “Jinman” The general was in fact the chief of staff at the dynastys Military Viceroys Office for the Western Region, which was charged with overseeing Chinas vassal states in the Western Region. When it was under the reign of the West Turk State, the same Beiting area was called the City of Futu-Khan. Then it was named Xiadu and served as the summer capital of the Kingdom of Gaochang Ouigour whose territory included the Turpan Depression to the east of Beiting. During the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), its name was changed into Bashbaliq.

Now, wed like to tell you the history behind some of the ancient names for Beiting.

Stories about the Different Names of Beiting

China was able to enjoy an unprecedented prosperity in the seventh and eighth century, under the reign of the Tang Dynasty (618 to 907). Business along the Silk Road boomed, and so did the cultural exchanges between China and lands to its west. Well over 100 states had trade relations with China, and huge numbers of traders and travelers came to the country from afar, from places including the East Roman Empire, the Arab Peninsula, India and Persia. This promoted rulers of Chinas Tang Dynasty to pick up the task of protecting the Silk Road to ensure unimpeded communication between the east and the west.

In the sixth century, Turks in Xinjiang were divided into two separate states, the Eastern Turk and the Western Turk. The Eastern Turk became a vassal state of the Sui Dynasty that proceeded the Tang. This, however, turned out to be an expedient measure taken by the Eastern Turk when it was still weak and unable to effectively protect itself from potential enemies. During the period spanning the late Sui and early Tang, troops under the command of Khan Xieli of the Eastern Turk frequently invaded Chinas heartland in what is now southern Shaanxi Province. Just 20 days after Emperor Tai Zong, the second emperor of the Tang, was enthroned, Khan Xieli led his troops in a surprise attack on China and before long, Changan, the countrys capital city, was besieged. With exceptional courage and wisdom, Emperor Tai Zong made the invaders withdraw, without fighting.

A few years later, elite troops of the Tang Dynasty, numbering more than 100,000, launched a punitive expedition against the East Turk and captured Khan Xieli alive. On order of Emperor Tai Zong, none of the POWs were killed and more than 10,000 of them were allowed to settle in the Chinese capital, where they were to receive the same treatment as all other Chinese citizens. Moreover, the imperial court set up an office in Xinjiang to govern the countrys western territory and designated Khan Xieli to serve as governor of the Western Region.

The Silk Road thus regained its glory after communication along it was broken for a few decades. Emperor Tai Zong won great respect from people of the Western Region for his leniency towards the Eastern Turk and its people. A large part of the Western Region came to be ruled by the Tang Dynasty, where the emperor was referred to as the “Khan of all Khans”

It is during the early Tang period that the name “Beiting”came to be used. In the year 638, the State of Western Turk split into two parts, which were based in “Beiting”and “Nanting? separately – “bei”meaning “north” “man” meaning “south”and “ting” the “chieftains camping site” Textual research has proved that the so-called “north camping site”is a part of what is now Jimsar County.

Nanting rulers acknowledged allegiance to the Tang Dynasty. Their Beiting counterparts, however, refused to do so and challenged the central government by launching a war against one of its vassal states in what is now Hami in the Turpan Depression. In 640, the imperial army launched a punitive expedition against Beiting. Yipi Duolu Khan of Beiting fled and his troops, which were stationed at a place called the City of Fu-tu Khan, surrendered. The City of Fu-tu Khan was a part of Beiting, according to textual research.

Shortly after the expedition ended, the imperial court instituted the administrative system practiced in Chinas hinterland in all parts of the Western Region under its control. The City of Fu-tu Khan was made the seat of a prefecture government, which had three counties, Jinman, Luntai and Putai, under its jurisdiction. The prefecture also served as military stronghold under the Dadu Military Command for Pacification of the West. Beginning 685, the City of Fu-tu Khan underwent a massive expansion. At the same time, two more prefecturesYizhou (Hami) and Xizhou (Turpan) were designated in east Xinjiang, both of which neighbored Beiting.

Empress Wu Zetian of the Tang Dynasty, the only female sovereign in feudal Chinas history of well over 2,000 years, added importance to Beiting by designating it to serve as the seat of the Beiting Civil and Military Affairs Office. The office governed the entire areas to the north of the Tianshan Mountains and to the south and east of the Balqush Lake, roughly half as large as Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region that has a land area of 1.6 million square kilometers.

Beiting had by then developed into a major hub of communication on the Silk Road, by taking advantage of its geographic location and its political importance. To be more exact, it had become the center for a web of roads and trails radiating to Xizhou in the south, to Suiye (what is now Kazakhstan) in the west, and to Yizhou in the east and then to Changan, the national capital. One more routes snaked northward from Beiting, extending deep into the Mongolian grasslands.

War Fought in Beiting

Beiting had its heyday during the Tang Dynasty, when it served as the political and economic center of a vast area encompassing northern Xinjiang and parts of Central Asia to its west. Increasing numbers of immigrants came to settle in Beiting, making it the most thriving city on the Silk Road. But before long, two wars were fought in the Beiting area.

The first was fought in 714, when troops of the Eastern Turk started a rebellion and besieged the City of Beiting. General Guo Wen, governor of Beiting Civil and Military Affairs Office, led the imperial troops under his command to fight back and suppressed the rebellion. After that, the remnants of the rebel force fled to the west, and gone forever was the State of Eastern Turk.

In 789, troops of Tubo, a rising kingdom on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, invaded the Beiting area and captured it after ferocious battles with the garrison troops of the Tang Dynasty, as well as troops of the Ouigour who came as reinforcements.

After the ninth century, the Ouigours, who used to live a nomadic life in northern China, migrated to the west and south. One of the Ouigour tribes occupied Gaochang in the Turpan Depression and set up a kingdom there. As the Ouigour Kingdom kept expanding westward, Beiting became a part of its territory. The kingdom had Gaochang as its capital and Beiting had its name changed into “Xiadu”- the Summer Capital, in fact the summer resort of the royal family. Wang Yande, an emissary of the Song Dynasty, spent four years, from 981 to 983, in the Western Region for a first hand knowledge of the conditions there. It was April when he arrived in Ouigour Kingdom of Gaochang, and the Khan of the kingdom happened to be in Beiting. The emissary was granted an audience and had a good time boating on a lake with the king.

Thanks to Wang Yandes travelogue entitled My visit to the West Region, we are able to “see”what Beiting looked like more than a thousand years ago. According to the emissary, numerous theaters, gardens and temples were found in the city. People there had fair skin and regular features. They were good at making things of gold, silver, copper, steel and other metals, and seemed to enjoy a good life as even the poorest had meat to eat. The kingdom had a vast territory and produced horses of find breeds.

During the Yuan Dynasty, Beiting was given the Turkish name “Bashbaliq”-“bash”meaning “five”and “baliq” city. It is no coincident that in some documents of the Tang Dynasty, Beiting is referred to as “five-City” In 1251, 20 years before the Mongols inaugurated the Yuan Dynasty to rule a unified China, Beiting, or Bashbaliq, was made one of the Chinese provinces in the Western Region on order of Mongul, the third Great Khan of the Mongol Kingdom. These provinces had under their jurisdiction the entire Xinjiang and areas to the south and west of the Balqash Lake. This was the first time that provincial-level administrative regions were set up in Xinjiang under Chinese jurisdiction. After the Yuan Dynasty came into being, Beiting became the seat of the Chinese government office charged with administering both civil and military affairs in north Xinjiang.

citing rose and fell alternately in history, but was eventually reduced to ruins in wars fought for political, economic and religious reasons. Despite that, it is deeply imprinted in the Chinese culture, and is still remembered as a source of inspiration for the traditional Chinese poetry whose creation peaked during the Tang Dynasty.

Among those poets of the Tang Dynasty whose works are still taken as models of Chinese literature, Cen Shen (about 714-770) stands out as one of greatest for his poems about the life of Chinese soldiers guarding the countrys border areas. At 20, he went to the national capital, Changan, hoping to find his way into officialdom. He stayed there for ten years before he passed imperial examinations for official posts and after that, he was given a secretarial job with the imperial troops guarding the Gansu Corridor neighboring Xinjiang. Cen Shen worked on that job for 13 whole years before he left for Xinjiang and became a lieutenant of Feng Changqing, governor of Beiting. While in the Gansu Corridor and Xinjiang, Cen Shen produced numerous poems rated as representative of what literary critics call “frontier poetry of the Tang Dynasty” In these poems he gave a free rein to his patriotic sentiments while providing a graphic description of the magnificent Gobi desert, the snow-clad mountains and, moreover, the hardships Chinas defenders endured and their devotion to the country. Here is a translation of a poem written by Sen Shen while working with the imperial army in Beiting, which is recognized as a most outstanding piece of the “frontier poetry”

howling is the north wind, with the grasslands withering

In August, in this land far, far away, it is already snowing

Snowflakes, pure and white, adorn the trees

Like pear flower petals brought in overnight by the wind of spring.

My bedding is wet, as into my tent, snowflakes are dancing

Though in fur coat, for cold I am shivering.

The general is unable to open his bow and

The governor shudders in armor as the cold is biting.

The desert, as vast as the sea, is ice-bound

The land is frozen with clouds dark and hovering.

Ongoing is a farewell banquet, in the commanders tent, for a friend who is leaving

Amid music played by alien instruments that sounds so touching.

Night is falling, and into the camping site snow is slashing

Our flag, crimson red, stands firm though gale-force wind is blowing.

I bid farewell to my friend at the east gate of the garrison headquarters

When the trails winding the Tianshan Mountains are snow-laden.

Making a turn, far, far away my friend is disappearing

I can only see prints of the horse hooves in the snow, dim yet shining.

A Trove of Cultural Treasures

Beiting is shrouded in mystery as so many names are attributed to it. In 1876, the second year of the reign of the Qing Dynastys Emperor Guang Xu, some Russians came and then left with some cultural relics unearthed from ruins of the Tang Dynastys Civil and Military Affairs Office. After that, groups after groups of foreigners also came in search of cultural relics, including Kozvi Otani of Japan and Mark Aurel Stein of Britain.

Ruins of the ancient city that served as the seat of the Civil and Military Affairs Office of the Tang Dynasty are still there, lying 12 kilometers to the north of the seat of the Jimsar County. Greeting your eyes are the old city walls which, though in ruins, are still discernible as are those government offices and streets within. The city, so to speak, is rectangular in shape, surrounded by walls of rammed earth in three rings, one inside the other. The outermost part of the city is 1,500 meters long and 1,000 meters wide, with a circumference of 4,590 meters. The part surrounded by the second ring of walls measures 600 meters in length and 400 meters in width. The innermost part is a neat square, the sides measuring 200 meters for each. The walls underwent repeated repairs when the city was alive. There are watchtowers and other defense works on the walls and round the walled city there is a moat, though all of these are in ruins. There are three gates on the walls of each ring, facing south, north and east, respectively, and the south-facing gates are obviously the main gates. Archeologists agree that the inner most part of the city is home to the Civil and Military Affairs Office and other government institutions. Ruins of streets and residential buildings are found in the part in between the innermost and outmost parts of the city. The outermost part of the city is where troops and militia were stationed. Two rivers flow by the outermost walls in the east and west, which converge into a crescent-shaped lake beyond the north gate. Archeologists have unearthed numerous relics of the Tang Dynasty from the ruins, including iron coins, seals, copper lions, jade paperweights, as well pottery sewage pipes and porcelain articles. Bricks, tiles and eave tiles unearthed from the Beiting ruins roughly have the same shapes as those unearthed from the two capitals of the Tang Dynasty, Changan and Luoyang. The layout of the Beiting City bears clear evidence to influence of the architectural style prevalent in Chinas hinterland. In 1988, the Beiting Ruins here were designated for state-level protection on order the State Council.

The best-preserved structure in the Beiting area, however, is an Ouigour temple of Buddhism some 700 meters to the west of the ancient city. The south-facing temple was built in the late ninth century or the early tenth when the Ouigour Kingdom of Gaochang ruled the area, and was reduced to ruins during the Ming Dynasty. It measures 70.5 meters and 43.8 meters wide, and consists of the gate, a courtyard, the main hall, eight auxiliary halls, five dormitories for monks and four warehouses, in addition to 15 caves in which Buddha images are placed for worshipping. The upper part of the main hall has collapsed. Inside the hall there is a Buddha sculpture of clay in sitting posture. The sculpture has broken apart, and the remaining part measures six meters tall. Small caves are dug into the cliffs immediately beyond the north, east and west walls of the hall. These caves are arranged in two layers, the upper and lower layers, and colorful murals are found in every cave, in which there is also a small Buddha sculpture. Three of the auxiliary halls are still in fair conditions, and inside the hall facing west there is a sculpture of “sleeping Buddha”- Buddha enjoying freedom from physical existence, which is nine meters long. Murals on the walls are no longer complete, but the fragments are still bright in color, bearing vividly portrayed images of gods and goddesses. Also worth mentioning are those clearly discernible worlds written in Ouigour scripts, which read “portrait of the sacred Iduqut (guardian god of the area)”

Ji Xiaolan, a most reputed scholar of the Qing Dynasty who doubled as high-ranking official, visited the Beiting ruins when he lived in exile in Xinjiang. Wrote Ji in his travelogue, “Ruins of Beiting City are found in Jimsar County ... There is a temple outside the city, which is already in conditions of dilapidation. Inside the temple there is a Buddha sculpture of stone which, though buried below the waist, still measures seven or eight chi (about two meters) tall. There is an iron bell as tall as an adult. It has gathered so much rust that the words inscribed on it are beyond recognition. I rubbed off the rust on some of the words and only some fragmented strokes are exposed.”

The stone Buddha sculpture is no longer found in the temple, and nobody knows who took it away and when. Maybe it has sunk into the ground or was buried by those rolling sand dunes. But once there, one cant marveling this trove of cultural treasures created many, many centuries ago by those living on the Silk Road.