Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
To reach the Black City today, one has to cross a desolate and unpopulated des-
ert, only a little easier than to approach the ancient city of Ju-yan. The walls of the
Black City still stand lofty and magnificent in the desert today. They look as if they
were square, but actually the south wall is 425 m long, 15 m longer than the north
wall; and the east wall is 405 m long, 48 m longer than the west wall. On the city
walls, we saw stones that had been used as projectiles in ancient times, still piled
there as if the garrison had been preparing for a defensive battle. The strange thing
is that historically the city was actually taken after a fierce battle. But the stones
have remained undisturbed on the city walls ever since, suggesting that the city may
have been abandoned as soon as the battle was over. That decisive battle took place
in the late 1360s when the emergent Ming Dynasty, having captured Dadu and
exterminated the Yuan Dynasty, dispatched a contingent of troops to take the Black
City in their advance westward. They stormed into the city and reduced its buildings
to ashes. When the expedition was finished, not only was the Black City abandoned,
but the middle and lower reaches of the Ruo-shui River were separated from the
Hexi Corridor by the newly-built Great Wall. The Ming Dynasty concentrated the
energy exclusively on developing the Corridor. The ancient Ju-yan area, protected
by an earlier Great Wall, was now given up as “beyond the frontier” and no further
effort was spent on its development.
From our investigations, we are of the opinion that the area reclaimed during the
Han Dynasty, with the city of Ju-yan at its core, consisted mainly of the middle and
lower parts of the ancient Ruo-shui delta. Reclamation by the West Xia and Yuan
Dynasties, with the Black City at its core, shifted to the upper middle part of the
same delta. Certain places were reclaimed on the basis of work done in the Han
period; in fact, the Black City itself may have been built upon the ruins of a Han
castle. From the Han Dynasty down to the West Xia and Yuan Dynasties, the south-
ward shift of the reclamation area was directly related to the drying up of waterways
in the delta area. This, however, is a subject undergoing further investigation.
8.2
Land Reclamation and Desertification
The ancient Ju-yan area is an outstanding example of desertification occurring in
historic times, but many other places in west Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region
have suffered a similar fate. During the early years of the Han Dynasty when the
Ju-yan area was first reclaimed, another area of importance was also being reclaimed
on the south prairie west of the Yin Mountains. Although the average annual rainfall
here was higher than in the ancient Ju-yan area, it nevertheless turned into a desert
in the end. This area is situated in the north of the present Ulanbuhe Desert. In
Mongolian, “ulan” means “red” and “buhe” means “bull”, the whole phrase signify-
ing that the scourge of the wind and sand is like an unruly bull. The north part of the
Ulanbuhe Desert was originally an alluvial plain formed by the Yellow River, flow-
ing in ancient times north along the west side of the Ordos Plateau, heading straight
for the foot of the Yin Mountains (Fig.
8.3
). There it turned east and formed the first
