Upon closer inspection, most of these city walls are made of rammed earth and gray stone, up to ten meters high. Numerous watchtowers with crenels are distributed on the walls. Standing under the base of the wall, you can clearly feel how strict the walls are.
Looking at the city towers on all sides, they present a "mountain"-shaped structure, divided into three, with a tall middle and slightly shorter sides. The city walls are built with stone yellow stones, supporting the round helmet tops of the Western Regions. The three large and small helmet tops are all covered with Covered with colorful tiles.
However, now the colored tiles have lost their color, and only some of the remaining tiles can still see the dazzling brilliance of the original tiles. The windows in each square are deep and exquisite, and the window frame coffin has faded lacquered group paintings, which look like Han-style colored tiles. The eaves appear on the outer wall of the city tower, and all traces can reveal the city's former glory.
On the lintel of the city tower, you can see three ancient Chinese characters for "Secret Orchid City" made of black iron. After the Chinese characters, there will be Sogdian and Arabic characters that the barbarians can read. They have been dilapidated after thousands of years, but they can still be read clearly. Word.
The only thing that distinguishes this barbarian city from the Han is the unique structure of these city walls!
On the city wall outside the city tower, with the city gate as the center, there are five small round-arched gate towers on the left and right. They are only half a meter shorter than the central gate tower and are cut flush with the main city tower, making the four walls form an actual upper surface. Open ten doors pattern.
To the left and right of these circular arches, there will be trapezoidal wedge walls sloping down from the height of the lintel, which separate these arches like lattice and baffles. They can not only divide the arches, but also exert force to lift the city wall, making the city wall more beautiful. For solidity.
Outside the ten-sided arch, there are more regular grooves. These grooves are dug in parallel, with the wedge wall between the arches as the width. While extending forward, you can also see deep cuts downwards, directly connecting from the arch to the sand mountain below. , like some flood discharge channels, with ten channels in a row, which is spectacular.
They turned their perspective to the door lintel, where there were more square windows with a width of one meter. The windows were in the same style as the Chinese-style colorful eaves of the tower, except that there were more protruding stone slabs than the main door window lattice, and each arch door had Similar structures, it can be seen that they have certain unified uses.
"Do these towers need so many doors?"
Yue Guanchao counted carefully and found that there were ten small arches on this city wall alone. The total width of these arches accounted for one-fifth of the width of the city wall. This did not include the three square gates in the middle. Judging from their perspective, the total number of gates on the four sides of Secret Orchid Ancient City would not be less than fifty.
Keli took a look at these strange city gate structures and seemed to already know why. He explained: "Milan City is located at the eastern end of the desert. When the barbarians from Central Asia and West Asia came to Milan Ze, they basically came to Han Dynasty. The Hexi front line of the region, of course, relied on its geographical advantages to become the hub of trade between Central Asia and the Han people."
He paused and continued: "As I said before, this city contains Hu nobles and common people from the Western Regions, Hu merchants, merchants and travelers from the Han Dynasty, and even the Rouran and Xianbei people from the north. , the Huns, and the Xiqiang and Tibetans near the Kunlun Mountains would also trade and live in this city. In addition, the Han people once stationed troops here, and Western Buddhism also preached here, making it a place where Hu and Han people mixed. A trading town and a Buddhist capital.”
It can be said that Secret Orchid City is the real trade capital of Central Asia. The trade atmosphere here is stronger than that of the Han people's cities.
Although Han-style cities often valued trade, they still advocated the social class of scholars, farmers, industry and merchants. Even if merchants were allowed to do business, they would usually set up a trade market in a certain area of the city to allow merchants to pass commerce. These places were mostly Dongshi or West Market.
This structure of separating residential areas and commercial areas continued from the Han Dynasty to the Sui and Tang Dynasties. It was not until the Song Dynasty that the trade economy developed, and residential areas and commercial areas were allowed to be mixed and operated. In essence, Han-style cities still regarded commerce as As part of city life, business is still isolated, so that commercial areas and residential areas are completely separated, so as to distinguish between high and low.
To put it bluntly, Han Dynasty cities valued the taxes brought by commercial interests, but did not respect merchants. In their eyes, no matter how much taxes they paid for the country, merchants were still at the bottom of the hierarchy of scholars, farmers, and merchants.
At this point, the concepts of Secret Orchid City and Han Dynasty City are completely different.
The ancient Shanshan Kingdom occupied the end of the Hexi Corridor. Due to the prosperity of Silk Road trade, they completely reaped the dividends of East-West trade. In the management of the city, they were more inclined to serve merchants. In addition to mixing commercial areas and residential areas, they also This is reflected in the city structure shaped for commercial convenience, which cooperated with the environment of Milanze during the Southern and Northern Dynasties to provide services for merchants and commerce.
Keli pointed to the grooves and arches they saw and said: "These arches you see are the tax gates of Secret Orchid City!"
The so-called tax gate is the gate used by Secret Orchid City to collect taxes!
The tax system of Secret Orchid City is different from that of Han-style cities. Han-style cities fix merchants and businesses in the market in the city. They can pay taxes after merchants' goods enter the East and West markets. Secret Orchid City does not divide the so-called The market, the market is completely mixed with the residential buildings. It can be said that the whole city is a large free market.
In the case of a huge city, it would take a lot of manpower and material resources to wait for merchants to enter the city before collecting taxes one by one. It would also be easy for some merchants to miss paying business taxes due to human negligence. Therefore, these Shanshan nobles created the city Menshi tax law.
This kind of city gate tax law is equivalent to collecting taxes in place when merchants enter the city. As long as the merchants are willing to pay the tax, they can enter the city for free trade. Otherwise, they will not be able to enter the city, let alone gain access to Secret Orchid City. Protect.
Under this system, merchants often gathered outside the city gate to wait to pay taxes. If the passage was not smooth, merchants would be completely backlogged outside the city gate. These round arches were all built to speed up tax collection into the city, with ten gates on each side. , if there are too many merchants, all the city gates will be opened to speed up the inspection of goods and collect taxes to facilitate merchants entering the city.
The tax collectors of Secret Orchid City are sitting in the window above the arch. They are responsible for collecting customs clearance documents from merchants at the city gate. When merchants want to pass customs, they will first send the customs clearance documents to the window through the hanging basket and show them to the tax collector. Official, once their identity is confirmed, the tithe arch will open.
At this time, merchants can let the goods enter the arch. There will be walking boards on the left and right sides of the inner wall of the arch, which will be directly placed on the cargo ship. They will declare and count them, pay the tax, and then get the customs clearance documents and enter the city.
Under such a structural process, merchants can enter the city as quickly as possible, and tax collectors can collect taxes and inventory goods as quickly as possible, which is the most convenient and prosperous.
Having said this, Keli pointed to the grooves they saw: "These grooves are not actually flood discharge ditches, but cargo ship canals. What you see is just the dried up river channel..."
At that time, when Milanze was not exhausted, the water level of the lake was just below the waist of the sand mountain, just level with the water surface of the canal they saw. The water from these lakes would pour directly into the canal and directly pass through the circular canal. The arch forms a waterway inside the gate. Only in this way can cargo ships be able to park in the canal and pass through the city gate smoothly when they sail to the end of Miranze.
Within the city gate, there is also a large inner city Cao River, which is cut parallel to the four city walls. It is like a moat in the city and is connected to the canal. After entering the city, boats can go around the city along the canal. It not only facilitates trade, but also solves the problem of ships being suspended at night.
When Keli said this, he paused and continued: "Mylan City is a large marsh city. This Mylan Ze is already a moat. There is no need to dig additional ditches outside the city. In order to allow merchant ships to berth into the city, they have to Excavation of a 100-meter-wide canal and ditch in the inner city will not only allow navigation, but also introduce clean water from Daze to provide water for the people."
Yue Guanchao said: "Looking at it this way, Secret Orchid City is completely different from the Han-style city. Aren't these cities afraid of being robbed by bandits?"
There are so many doors, but if the bandits take a fancy to them, they can be easily breached from anywhere, just like a room with air leakage.
Keli shook his head: "It all depends on the abilities of these bandits. As far as I know, the reason why the tall walls of Secret Orchid City are so high is not only to protect against the desert wind and sand in the northwest, but also to protect the safety of the city. , the role of resisting enemy bandits."
These city walls are not rammed earth walls, but stone walls made of riveted stones. There is also a lot of clay tamped on the outside. It is impossible for ordinary bandits to break through this city wall.
The Daze outside the Sand Mountain Oasis can be regarded as a huge moat to some extent, which can protect against any invading enemies. As long as the people in the inner city stand on this city wall, they can take advantage of the height difference to See the invading enemies clearly and defend them from high to low. Firearms and artillery alone are too much for thieves to bear.
Having said this, Keli nodded to everyone: "You are right about one thing. At that time, this place was close to the desert, sparsely populated, and the wilderness was indeed dangerous. In a sense, this Secret Orchid City was not only a trading town, but also a national treasure of the ancient Shanshan Kingdom. A fortress military town, tasked with encircling the surrounding territory.”
"The combination of these different functions, such as a trading capital, a city of Buddhism, a border guard town, and a business post city, makes Secret Orchid City very unique. The architectural style of the entire Secret Orchid City is a reference to the Western Region Hu in Central Asia. At the same time, due to the mix of Hu and Han people in the city, a large number of people from outside the city settled in the city. This also allowed the architecture of Milan City to integrate the different architectural decoration styles of Han, Tubo and Uighur. It can be said to be a collection of the best of both China and the West. Entering the city tower After that, you will understand.”
After saying that, Keli and the others pushed open the gate of the city tower, walked into the ancient city of Secret Orchid that was thousands of years ago, and walked up the stairs to the wall of the ancient city of Secret Orchid.
Standing high and seeing far, they were now standing on a city wall nearly ten meters high, and the inner city scenery of Secret Orchid Ancient City gradually came into view.
