Where is the location of the Beiting Ancient City ruins?

The Beiting Ancient City ruins are a national AAAA tourist attraction and a national key cultural relics protection unit.

The Beiting Ancient City ruins are located in Hubaozi, about 12 kilometers north of Jimusar County, Xinjiang Autonomous Region.

The ruins of the ancient city are commonly known locally as "Pochengzi". It was built on the basis of Tingzhou City in the Tang Dynasty and belonged to the Xizhou Uighurs after the ninth century. At the beginning of the 13th century, it was affiliated to Mongolia, and during the reign of Emperor Xianzong, the Shangshu Province was established here. The Yuan Dynasty established the "Marshal's Mansion in Bali" here, which was still an important town in northern Xinjiang at that time. The old city was abandoned until the early Ming Dynasty.

In the 25th year of Jiaqing in the Qing Dynasty (1820), Chinese scholar Xu Song first came here to conduct investigations and discovered precious cultural relics such as the ruined stele in Manxian County of Tang Dynasty and Jin Dynasty. In 1908 and 1914, the Japanese expedition team led by Otani Mitsui and the British Stein came here to illegally investigate and excavate respectively. In 1928, the Northwest Scientific Expedition also excavated the site, and Chinese scholar Yuan Fuli was responsible for mapping. From 1979 to 1980, the Institute of Archeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences conducted two more surveys and mappings. A large number of clay statues and exquisite murals were discovered in the ruins of a Buddhist temple from the Gaochang Uighur period excavated more than 700 meters west of the city.

The scale of the ancient city is very grand, with an irregular rectangular plane. It is divided into two parts, the inner and outer city. The inner city is located slightly northeast of the middle part of the outer city. The outer city wall has a circumference of 4,596 meters, and the inner city wall has a circumference of 3,003 meters. The city wall is more than 10 meters high, made of rammed earth, 8 to 12 meters thick, and has military defense facilities such as horse faces and moats. All the original buildings in the city have been destroyed, and only 3 broken wall foundations and 9 ruins have been preserved, of which 2 are the foundations of Buddhist temples.

According to the analysis of existing data, the outer city should be built in the Zhenguan period (627-649), Xianqing (656-661), Kaiyuan (712-756) and Gaochang During the Uighur period, the city site was repaired or added to on many occasions. The inner city was built during the Gaochang Uighur period. Many Tang Dynasty slab tiles, tube tiles and square bricks with lotus patterns were unearthed in the city. In the northwest corner of the city, the Tang Dynasty bronze official seal "Puleizhou Seal" and high-level bronze lions, stone lions and grape tiles were unearthed. There are various cultural relics such as bronze mirrors, Kaiyuan Tongbao, carved stone balls, sewer pipes and pottery.

(State Administration of Cultural Heritage)