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Route in China (CHINA - Xi'an)

Bec
2004-09-19 16:57:28

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west of here and the great Han Dynasty built its capital just north of the present city. After the four centuries of turmoil and disunity that followed the fall of the Han Dynasty, China was reunited again under the Sui Dynasty who built the great Chang'an on this site. Under the Tang Dynasty which followed (618 - 907), Chang'an became the largest city in Asia if not in the world. Its population reached two million in the 8th century! The region around Xi'an and Luoyang remained the heart of China until the Song Dynasty (960 - 1279), moved the capital to Kaifeng east of here in the 10th century and then to Hangzhou on the southern coast in the 12th.

This great North Gate was built much later by the Ming Dynasty (1368 - 1644), but the layout of Xi'an's fortifications and streets dates from the glorious Tang times. It is interesting to note that the multiple small windows of the tower were designed to allow hundreds of bowmen and crossbowmen to defend the gate.

This traditional Drum Tower was also built in the early Ming Dynasty near the city center.

As center of the civilized universe, the great Tang Chang'an was tolerant and cosmopolitan. External influences were invited in as the Tang nurtured sizeable communities of Mazdeans, Manicheans and Zoroastrians from Persia, Nestorian Christians from Syria and later, Muslims from central Asia.
The other communities dwindled but large numbers of Muslim Hui people flooded in from the western reaches of the Empire. They congregated into their own specific area north-west of the Drum Tower very much like the Chinese have regrouped themselves into the Chinatowns of large western cities.

A mosque has stood on this site in the center of the Muslim quarter since the 8th century. The layout of the present Great Mosque dates back to the Ming Dynasty (1368 - 1644), but the Main Gate and other wooden buildings existing today are probably less than a hundred years ...