Tongwan, the capital of the Daxia Kingdom, has lain buried beneath the desert sands for more than 1,000 years. Located in today's Jingbian County, Shaanxi Province, this ancient city was built in 419 by Helianbobo, chief of the Huns. It bears testimony to the prosperity once enjoyed by these nomadic people on China's northern frontiers.

Extending to nearly 20,000 square kilometers, Tongwan is on the southern edge of the Ordos Plateau just north of the vast Mu Us Desert, both of which are in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. It was laid out on an east-west axis with what have been termed the outer city, inner city and palace city.

The outer city was for the homes of ordinary folks. Government offices and the residences of the nobility were located in the inner city. Inside the palace city was the inner sanctum of the imperial city where Helianbobo himself lived.

Historical records suggest that by the year 431 Tongwan City and its hinterland supported a population of over 40,000 Hun nomads and Han farmers. However by 984 the city had been abandoned, eventually to become buried under the shifting sands.

The city site was placed under state key-level protection in 1996. "As part of the renovation project, Yong'an Tower has been reconstructed. It was here that Helianbobo stood to review military parades. The next restoration objective is the 31-meter-high watchtower in the southwest," said Gao Zhan, head of the Bureau for the Preservation of Tongwan City.

The towers represent the initial projects in the renovation work to take place at the city site. The trial reconstruction, which is based on archaeological excavations, aims to go on to repair and consolidate parts of the city wall together with a number of individual buildings.

After repeated trials, light colored bricks each 36 centimeters long, 20 centimeters wide and 12 centimeters deep were fired from cohesive white clay, gauged with sand and lime. They were used to stabilize the base of the rammed-earth Yong'an Tower.

"Tongwan City was built following the natural contours of the ground and so is higher in the northwest and lower in the southeast. This served to provide a measure of protection against the cold winter winds. Meanwhile, the river in the north of the city could easily be channeled to supply water to the residents or used for the city moat," said Dai Yingxin, a famous archaeologist who has been engaged in field investigation and trial digs at the site for years.

"The city wall was constructed in layers by ramming a mix of cohesive white clay and sand bound together with glutinous rice gruel and slaked lime. The western section is 16 to 30 meters thick. This type of rammed earth construction has proven to be almost as strong and resistant to erosion as stone masonry," Dai said.

"The construction of Tongwan City is a symbol of the Hun people's struggle for survival in a harsh desert environment," said Prof. Hou Yongjian from Shaanxi Normal University. "Historical documents show the city was established at a place where there was adequate freshwater at the edge of a desert. The rise and fall of Tongwan City, lying where agriculture and animal husbandry overlapped, vividly record how human activities adversely affected the fragile ecological environment."

Seeking to restore the city to how it must have looked in antiquity, Shaanxi Normal University and the Japanese Association for Loess Plateau Afforestation jointly initiated a program to make the ancient capital of Tongwan green again. In the spring of 2002 after two years of field survey work, they started work towards setting up an afforestation base at the city site. Objectives for the work were established at the first International Forum on the Preservation of Tongwan City held last September.

"Tree-planting in recent years has turned what had once been drifting sands around the ancient city into fixed or semi-fixed dunes. With the improvements in the surrounding environment, more and more visitors will be attracted here and the unique value of Tongwan City in terms of its ecology, geography, archaeology and ethnology will come to be recognized," said Zhu Shiguang, president of the Chinese Society of Ancient Capitals and an active participant in the Tongwan City afforestation project.

Aerial photography and trial excavations have shown that in its overall layout and exterior decorative style, Tongwan City differs from the typical capital cities of the Central Plains (feudal China's main territories in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River).

"The exotic design features found in the well-preserved Tongwan City have attracted the attention of researchers both at home and abroad," said Xing Fulai, an expert on the history of the Northern and Southern Dynasties (386-589) from the Shaanxi Institute of Archaeology.

"The local government is preparing an application for world cultural heritage listing for the city site. To date a program for the preservation of Tongwan City has been mapped out and research work is in full swing to discover how best to conserve and develop the historical resources at the site," Xing said.

Shaanxi Province has already seen the Mausoleum of the First Emperor of the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC) along with its buried army of guardian terracotta warriors and horses enter the list of world cultural heritage sites.

"Chang'an City of the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC - AD 25), Daming Palace of the Tang Dynasty (618-907) and the Forest of Steles in Xi'an are all also competing to enter the world heritage list, but Tongwan City is the most likely to succeed," said Zhang Tinghao, director of the Shaanxi Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau. "As the only capital city left by the ancient Huns, Tongwan City is the clue to the fate of these nomadic people who disappeared mysteriously over a thousand years ago."

Where are the Huns now?

Standing at the Tongwan City site, visitors cannot help but ask: Where on earth did they disappear to, these ancient people who galloped across the vast north of China for nearly a millennium?

Historical documents indicate that this strong, bold people had been waging war and migrating continuously across northeast and northwest China from the 3rd century BC through to the 5th century AD. Their activities came to seriously threaten not only the traffic along the Silk Road but even the very security of the feudal dynasties with their power bases located deep within the Central Plains.

After unifying the country, the First Emperor of the Qin Dynasty deployed imperial troops in pursuit of the Huns and finally built the formidable protective screen of the Great Wall. The years that followed were to bring increasing exchanges with dynasties in the Central Plains and some Huns began to be assimilated among the Han people. Others migrated to Central Asia and on to Europe. By the 6th century the Huns had gradually disappeared as a separate people as they merged into other peoples.

The nomadic Huns had first emerged as a distinct tribe in the 3rd century BC. They expanded rapidly by a process of subsuming neighboring tribes and eventually established a regime founded on slavery on the northern frontiers of China.

"After making war or peace with the feudal dynasties of the Central Plains for three or four hundred years, the Huns became plagued by both internal and external troubles and their slavery empire fell apart," said Professor Zhou Weizhou from Shaanxi Normal University.

"After this many Huns migrated southward or westward. Through submission to other peoples or by intermarriage they became progressively assimilated. However, the western migration in particular was to have a considerable impact on the course of world history," Prof. Zhou said.

"Between 89 and 91, groups of Huns who had suffered defeat in battle began to move westward to the valleys of the rivers Ili, Don and Volga," said Prof. Lin Gan from Inner Mongolia University.

"In fact, it was the fall of the Sogdian Kingdom lying east of the River Don in 374 that raised the curtain on the Huns' large-scale incursions into Europe. From then on the Huns began to play an important role in promoting population movements in this continent," said Prof. Lin. "As they pursued the Goths, the Hun troops even arrived at the city walls of Rome, capital of the Roman Empire (27 BC - AD 476). By the 5th century, Attila the Hun had established an empire on the banks of the Danube that was to deeply influence European history."

"Although Attila's empire proved to be short lived, many Huns stayed on in Europe and researchers commonly consider the Hungarians to be the descendants on the Huns," said Wang Shiping from Shaanxi History Museum, an expert on the history of the Sui (581 - 618) and Tang (618 - 907) dynasties.

"Generally speaking, Hungarians don't look like other Europeans," said Wang, whose opinion was echoed by both Prof. Qi Sihe of Peking University and former Hungarian Ambassador to China Otto Juhasz. "And what's more, many popular Hungary folk songs are similar to those sung in northern Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia. There are also echoes of the past to be found in their religion. Although Hungarians generally profess allegiance to the Eastern Orthodox Church, they still retain many of the customs and habits of shamanism originating among the nomadic tribal peoples of Siberia on China's northern border."

"The Hungarian traditions of playing the suona horn (a woodwind instrument) and paper-cutting are reminiscent of those seen in northern Shaanxi. Even the way final syllables are pronounced in Hungarian is quite similar to the northern Shaanxi accent," said Gao Jianqun, a well-known Chinese writer and author of the novel The Last Hun. "Many Hungarian researchers hold the view that the establishment of Hungary is closely connected with the descendents of the Huns."

"Although the Huns may have disappeared as a people, their cultural conventions haven't faded away," said Zhang Mingqia from Shaanxi History Museum. "For instance, their folk songs have greatly enriched Mongolian folk music. The reed pipe (hujia), an instrument used by the Huns in ancient times, is still played today in China's Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang as well as in Mongolia and Russia."

(China.org.cn by Shao Da, April 14, 2004)