Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Let us discuss the fi rst question now.
Obviously, the reason why they gave up the old town was that the original palaces
had been burned down to the ground. They would rather build a new city with new
palaces than to rebuild them on the ruins of the old town. But there was an even
more important factor which made them build a new city in a new place. That was
the need of new water sources.
When the city of Ji was in its early stage of development, its need for the sources
of surface water was limited, as its site and population were not big. The West Lake
located near the city and the small river running by the city could quite satisfy the
city's demand for water. But great changes took place after Jin Dynasty founded its
capital in this place. To keep up China's ancient tradition, the emperors would have
imperial gardens built in connection with the building of the imperial palaces in
their feudal capitals. An important factor of building imperial gardens was that they
must be embellished with streams, lakes, hills and mounds. If there weren't any
natural hills or waters, then artifi cial lakes would be made by digging into the
ground and artifi cial hills would be piled up with the earth dug out from the lakes.
So the lakes and ponds in the imperial gardens were given a fi xed name: “the
Heavenly Water Pond”, which meant that the water of the imperial lakes came
directly from the Heaven and that this elemental force was the origin of life. To
build imperial gardens, large quantities of water were needed. Thus larger and richer
sources of surface water were required. Besides, for the construction of canals lead-
ing to the capital sources with plenty of surface water were also needed. The man-
made rivers were important channels by which grain collected from the peasants
and other articles of daily necessity provided for the royal families, the central gov-
ernmental institutions and the garrison troops were transported to the capital.
When the rulers of Jin Dynasty expanded their capital of Zhongdu, they enclosed
the river running into the lower part of the West Lake within the city. And they also
built their imperial gardens in the west of the imperial palaces. The West Lake as a
water source could supply enough water to fi ll in the imperial lakes. However, it was
far from being able to provide the canals with suffi cient water. The rulers of Jin
Dynasty did open up a canal linking the city of Zhongdu eastward to a river called
the Chaobai River. Their original plan was to direct water from the Yongding River
located to the west of the city. Dams and dykes were built to keep back water.
Ditches were dug up to direct the controlled water running to the east. But because
of the unsteady fl ow rate of the Yongding River and the limitation of the low-level
technology then, they didn't achieve their desired results with these projects. All the
attempts they had made to direct water into the canal all turned out to be unsuccess-
ful. This was the most important reason why the Yuan rulers decided to give up the
old town and build a new one.
Now let's come to the second question about the selection of the site of the new
city and its planning.
Here I'd like to mention something interesting in the past. When Khublai fi rst
came to Zhongdu in 1260, he had no place to live in, as the palatial residence had
been burned down to the ground. He had to live in a place not far from the ruined
city. This fact was defi nitely recorded then. (Later the fact was recorded again in the
