Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
newly-discovered materials. What we need to do is to make full use of all the new
concerning materials we have so far grasped, and to make further investigations on
the origin of the city of Ji and its characteristics.
For this purpose, it is necessary to make some essential explanations about the
location of the city of Ji and its geographical features.
Firstly, the grounds of argument found in the special writings about the exact
location of the site of Ji City, written either in Chinese or in the other languages,
were mostly insuffi cient and even unreliable. On the basis of the new materials
hitherto grasped, the original site of Ji City can be located in the southwestern cor-
ner of the present-day Beijing city proper, that is, in the vicinity of the present-day
Kwang'an Gate (The Gate of Extensive Peace).
Secondly, this original site is also situated in the southwestern corner of a vast
stretch of fl at land, which is called the Beijing Plain. To the west, north and north-
east of the plain, where there are continuous encircling mountains, which remind
people of a bay. Seeing this topographical feature, people also name this plain
“Beijing Bay”. This plain was principally washed by two rivers, the Yongding
River on the west, the Chaobai River on the east, which had cut through the hills
and found their ways into the bay. Like the Yellow River, these two rivers are well-
known for their carrying large quantities of silt. The sand and mud carried along
by the two rivers gradually silted up the ancient bay and turned it into fl at land,
which extended southward, linking itself with the alluvial plain formed by the
Yellow River.
Thirdly, talking about the conditions for communications, we must take note of
the relationship between the Beijing Plain and the great North China Plain. Over the
last 3,000 years, great changes have taken place geographically in this area. If we
fail to see this, we won't be able to really understand the reason why the ancient city
of Ji should have developed here.
Now, from the viewpoint of the geographical conditions, it is very easy to go
from the North China Plain northward to the Beijing Plain, and vice versa. But at the
time when the city of Ji fi rst rose over 3,000 years ago, it was diffi cult for access. At
that time, to the south and southeast of Ji City, there were lakes, ponds, swamps and
marshes spreading all over, which isolated the city from the south. It was only
thanks to the careful cultivation of the hard-working peasants from generation to
generation that vast reaches of wet low land in this area were turned into fertile
cultivated fi elds. This is one of the greatest geographical changes the last 3,000 years
have ever witnessed here. It is a pity that I have no time to elaborate on that point in
this talk.
Over 3,000 years ago, there was only one way leading from the North China
Plain to the Beijing Plain. One had to walk northward along a path to the west of the
North China Plain and to the east of the Taihang Mountains. The path was gradually
trodden along a narrow belt between the plains and the mountains. The Taihang
Mountains mark the east edge of the Shanxi Loess Plateau, from which numerous
rivers run eastward, and cutting through the Taihang Mountains, surge over into
the North China Plain, where they converge into several bigger rivers and fl ow into
the sea. The rivers which ran through the mountains into the plains formed many
