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An introduction to the “Hard Roads to Shu” and their environment, history, and adventure since ancient times
David Jupp[1] http://members.iinet.net.au/~jupps_22@ozemail.com.au/
Since ancient times, people have moved between the Guanzhong or “land within the passes” of Shaanxi where the ancient capital now called Xi’an stands to the plains of Sichuan,or ancient Shu. The Qinling and Daba Mountains form a formidable barrier to communications but by skilfully navigating the terrain and developing innovative technology, called “Plank Roads”, ancient people created effective trade and traffic routes between the north and south. These communication lines are collectively known as the “Shu Roads” or more poetically as “The Roads to Shu”. They pass through rugged mountains, forests, wild rivers and natural wilderness, and contain conservation areas, ancient historical relics and minority peoples whose isolation has developed unique cultures. The roads provided a bridge between southern trade routes such as the Tea and Horse road to Tibet and northern routes such as the Silk Road. They are well known in the cultural traditions of Chinese people but are not well known in the west. As its history and ecology become better known, an internationally recognised “Shu roads ecological and historical tourism route” can develop where historical, ecological and adventure tourism will all grow strongly in the future.
Introduction
The name “Shu Roads” is a general term applying to the historical roads that were built through the mountainous East-West barrier formed by the Qinling, Micang and Daba mountain ranges. They linked the Wei river valley (or the Guanzhong) with its cluster of ancient capitals, such as Chang’an, near present day Xi’an in the north and the Sichuan plain with its ancient capital at Shu (present day Chengdu) in the south. They pass through some of China’s roughest and most inhospitable terrain. The first of the major highways was most likely built in the Warring States (481-221 BCE) period with extensive and advanced road building occurring during the Qin (221-206 BCE) and Han (206 BCE to 220 CE) dynasties. In most cases they made use of natural corridors that had been discovered and used much earlier by ancient people. Some of the routes developed at that time have been maintained and consolidated up to modern times. The establishment of these important traffic routes through difficult, steep and dangerous mountain ranges required the development of innovative road building technology known as “Plank Roads” (Figure 1) by which ravines and steep sided gorges were traversed using trestles fixed into the rock face.
The Tang poet Li Bai (701-762 CE) travelled these roads to exile as did many of his friends. He wrote “The Road to Shu is hard, harder than climbing to heaven” and described the Plank Roads as the “ladders to heaven”. But armies, traders, settlers and materials also flowed through these roads for more than 3000 years during which time the developments associated with the Plank Road technology, and the turbulent history associated with the Shu Roads, have together become part of China’s historical and modern culture.
Between the northern and southern sections of the Qinling and Daba mountain ranges is the Hanzhong basin through which the Han River flows to meet the Yangtze River at Wuhan in Hubei. The course of the Han River has provided an East-West corridor to the Hanzhong Basin and Hanzhong has provided a welcome staging point between Guanzhong and Shu since ancient times. The strategic importance of the rich and productive land and environment of Hanzhong is well known in history but apparently forgotten in the relative anonymity of Hanzhong even in China until recent years. But interest in the history and archaeology of the Hanzhong Basin has increased in recent times. For example, the Museum at Hanzhong is preserving and making known the rich heritage of the region including the cultural and historical aspects of its ancient Plank Roads and increasingly Chinese people are coming for education and historical tourism to the place where the Han dynasty began.
Recently, the author of this introduction and others have been undertaking a project to make use of the modern technologies of Remote Sensing, GIS and GPS to help map aspects of the Shu roads in a selected space and time of history (see the Shu Roads Project web site). The project aims to develop information systems that will help the Museum and others to manage, preserve and conserve its geographically scattered relics as well as communicate the geographical and terrain aspects of historical lines of communication to scholars and visitors alike. Such activity is part of the development of a “digital museum” of the kind more common in the other countries and other parts of China than previously in the west of China. For more information see Jupp et al. (2008) Parts I and II and the web site listed above.
The Geography and Geology of the Qinling and the Shu RoadsGeography
The Qinling and Daba Mountains are part of a central mountain area of China running east-west from the Kunlun range in the Qinghai-Tibet palteau and reaching almost to the sea near the Huai River of the North China plain. This mountain range is a barrier introducing differences in China’s environment, climate, natural resources, history and culture between the north and south. The system forms a distinct, but permeable, historical frontier region between north and south in the sense described by Mostern and Meeks (2008) where the communication, traffic, trade and migrations between north and south played as great a role in its history as did its terrain acting as a natural “great wall”.
The differences are especially clear between the three protected basins in the west of China that were linked by the Shu Roads. The most northerly of these is the watershed of the Wei River and its tributaries in Shaanxi. It has been known for a long time as the Guanzhong, or the “the Land within the Passes”, and is a site of prehistoric Chinese civilisation since the Stone Age. It is where the Western Zhou (1100-771 BCE), Qin, Han, Sui (581-618 CE) and Tang (618-907 CE) as well as many originally foreign northern Dynasties grew and emerged to conquer and govern parts, if not all, of China. Chang’an (present day Xi’an) is a place which has been the centre of government for China for the longest period of its history. The Guanzhong takes its name from five major (and other minor) barrier passes through the mountains that form the “gates” to the area through the mountain barriers and provided natural sites for its fortification.
Although the Guanzhong is best known, there are two other “lands within passes” to its south (see Figure 2). To the far south, across the Qinling and Daba Mountain ranges lies the Sichuan basin. Although its archaeology is not as widely known as that of the Guanzhong, the Sichuan plain has also been the site of ancient civilisations which grew in parallel with those of the north and east. Sichuan has been a populous, rich and fertile area for thousands of years and has mostly (with some notable exceptions) been able to avoid the turmoil of the east of China through its natural protection by the high mountains. However, it was also the natural resources of Sichuan that brought armies from the state of Qin across the Qinling in the Warring States period, building mountain roads to conquer, bring settlers and develop agriculture using advanced irrigation engineering.
Finally, between these two areas, south of the high Qinling Mountains and north of the Daba and Micang mountains lies the Hanzhong basin. The Qinling Mountains stand between the drier, predominantly wheat growing areas in the north and the wetter, predominantly rice growing areas in the south. The climate and agriculture as well as the wildlife and natural vegetation in Hanzhong are transitional between north and south. The Hanzhong basin was known in ancient times as “Yu Pen” or the Jade Basin for its rich natural resources and productive soil. These, together with its central location have made it the linking region for the traffic that grew as people found ways to move across the mountains between the Guanzhong and Shu and ways to move along the Han and other rivers to link Shu, Guanzhong and the lower Yangtze river area. The roads they built between north and south were the Shu Roads (see Feng Suiping, 2003). Geology
Geologically, it is thought (Meng and Zhang, 2000) that the north and south sections of the Qinling (Daba being regarded as part of the south section of the Qinling) were formed in geologically recent times (late Triassic to Paleozoic) from collisions between the north and south China blocks. The extensive folding and mountain building resulted in a change in climates between north and south China leading to north China drying, to Loess formation and to the separation of the present Yangtse and Yellow river basins. The subsequent cutting of river valleys both along and across the main east-west structure has formed a characteristic geomorphology of deep valleys separated by granite ridges. The sediments cut from the mountains filled valleys and small basins – such as Hanzhong. Although the tectonics of the south Qinling are different from those of the north, the mountains there are still inhospitable with sharp peaks separating steep ravines and fast flowing rivers. At the western edge of the Sichuan Basin lies the Longmen Mountains where the Qinghai-Tibet block meets the south China block. The three blocks collide at the three-way border between Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu. The mountains and blocks are still tectonically active as has been illustrated with great tragedy recently when the Longmen Fault slipped to bring about the destruction of the May 2008 Wenchuan earthquake.
Geomorphology
Obviously, a significant flow of goods, people and communications within, through and across a divide like the rugged landscape shown in Figure 3 will be difficult to achieve. However, the permeability of a barrier does not depend on how steep are the hill slopes but rather on whether there are connected ways through the system and whether people can learn to navigate the terrain as well as mariners have learned to cross equally formidable oceans to trade and interact. In the Qinling, the people of ancient times certainly found pathways from the north to the south and vice versa. Papers presented at the Hanzhong Symposium in 2007 also provided evidence of extensive communication since Paleolithic and Neolithic (prior to 2000 BCE) times and during the Shang and Zhou (prior to 1000 BCE) periods. The means by which ancient people travelled to Shu from the rest of China must generally have been via the rivers and valleys since the ridges were and are generally very steep and sharp. This meant using boats where possible along stretches of major rivers (as described in relation to the Han River by other papers at the Symposium) and also using the valleys cut by rivers. But the rivers are confined to watersheds and to cross the watershed divides it is also necessary to find and use saddle points of the terrain so that the pathways within the watersheds can be linked and become Shu Roads. The significant terrain points at watershed divides make up many of the “gates” or “passes” (also called barrier passes) that provided points of control or defence and have played a major role in the history of the Shu roads (Wiens, 1949a,b).
Furthermore, even when the watershed divides could be crossed via a mountain pass, the river valleys or sections of the river valleys were often steep, unstable and dangerous and as the ancient traffic grew there emerged a unique technology for linking valleys along mountainous cliffs to enable people and goods to pass through. These were the “Plank Roads”. Through the steepest ravines, wood or stone planks were set into the cliff face and used to construct trestle roads over which trade, armies and cultures were to flow on structures that were often wide enough for horse-drawn carts and chariots to pass in two directions. Sections of Plank Road were widely used in all parts of the Shu roads. Sir Joseph Needham (1971) in “Science and Civilisation in China” described the plank or trestle roads between the Wei valley and Sichuan as the “The greatest engineering work of Qin/Han road builders” and provides one of the most detailed discussions of the technology available in English. His enthusiasm is justified not the least by the fact that although the separation of China into north and south by the Qinling has played a role in China’s history, it has not prevented China from developing a cultural and historical identity.
Shu Roads in Chinese history, literature and culture
The river valleys that can become corridors using Plank Road technology and can also be linked to other watersheds through mountain passes provide the potential corridors through the mountains. However, the ways people have used to link the north and south have not only involved geomorphology but also politics, conquest, power, culture, trade and human interactions. From the combined effects of geography, history and culture emerged the historical system of Shu roads linking north and south.
Seven major roads are recognised with four crossing the Qinling mountains and three the southern Daba and Micang mountains (see Figure 4 taken from Jupp et al., 2008). Naming them from west to east, the four in the north were the “Old Road” (or Chencang Road), the Baoxie Road, the Ziwu Road and the Tangluo Road. Those in the south were named the Jinniu (or “Golden Ox”) Road, the Micang (or “Rice Granary”) Road and the Yangba (or “Lychee”) Road. Another section of road (called the Lianyun or “Cloud Linked” Road) joined the Chencang Road with the Baoxie Road providing an alternative route. In addition, a network of secondary roads, often through very rough terrain, spread out though the region to no small degree being the ways by which the traders of the time avoided the tolls along the main roads (Wiens, 1949a). These roads occur constantly in the records and history of the region. The geographical extent of the main roads is shown in Figure 4 in which major modern towns along the routes are linked by lines. The issue of how to define the tracks or actual paths between the places along the roads during the different time periods of history is an active area of research.
The first major “made” road seems to have been one built by the state of Qin in the Warring States Period. The road probably included sections of what were later called the Chencang and Jinniu Roads. There are stories that the road was built by the state of Shu for the Qin state to bring their king a gift of a “Golden Ox” (Jin Niu)[2]. But in the end, whatever its original motivation, it simply brought the Qin army to annex Shu as well as 10,000 families of settlers from Qin. This conquest took almost a hundred years to the mid-fourth century BCE, and vastly increased the power of Qin. Qin developed the resources of Shu, including the important irrigation structure at Dujiangyan (Shi Ji, 29; see Burton Watson, 1993) and Shu became a "rice bowl" for Qin. The Shu roads through the mountains provided essential supplies to Qin as it united China under the Qin Dynasty in 221 BCE.
In the Qin, Han and the Three Kingdom (220-230 CE) periods, well engineered Plank Roads were built, repaired and extended very widely through the Qinling and Daba mountains and in easier terrain to the south, paved stone roads were consolidated and maintained to form part of China’s Postal Road system. With the possible exception of the Yangba Road, all of the major roads mentioned above were completed and used during this time. During the Western Han Dynasty, the Shi Ji, 29 (Burton Watson, 1993 records how the state engineers convinced the Emperor to fund major works and extend the Baoxie Road so that rice and other materials could be brought to the Guanzhong via the Han River and the Bao and Xie rivers with a short linking land road across the Wulipo divide. As recorded by Sima Qian (as translated by Burton Watson, 1993) “When the road was finished it did in fact prove to be much shorter and more convenient than the old route, but the rivers were too full of rapids and boulders to be used for transporting grain”.
A major event in Chinese history involving the Plank Roads occurred when the Qin Dynasty was overthrown by a coalition of rebels in 206 BCE. The “Grand Hegemon” Xiang Yu was fearful of another king setting up in the Qin capital at Xianyang near present day Xi’an in the “Land within the passes” (Guanzhong) and banished his major rival, Liu Bang (Figure 5), to be King of the three states of Han (present day Hanzhong), Shu (present day Sichuan) and Ba (present day Chongqing). There had been an agreement that the general who captured Xianyang (who turned out to be Liu Bang) would rule the Guanzhong, but Xiang Yu argued that Han, Shu and Ba were also “lands within passes” (Shi Ji, 7; Burton Watson, 1993) and sent Liu Bang off (he hoped) there for a long stay.
Liu Bang and his troops travelled on Plank Roads to reach Hanzhong. On the advice of Liu Bang’s advisor Zhang Liang (who knew the Qinling well and has his temple near present day Liuba on the Lianyun Road) they burned the Plank Roads after they passed to discourage pursuers and convince Xiang Yu they did not intend to return. At Hanzhong, on the site of the present day Hanzhong Museum is the Hantai or Han Platform where Liu Bang proclaimed the Han Kingdom. As it turned out, it was the also the platform from which Liu Bang launched his armies to reunite China as the Han Dynasty and became the first Han Emperor. There is too much to describe here and there are better places to find out. Interested people are referred to translations of Chinese books such as the Shi Ji (see Burton Watson, 1993) or to more recently published histories such as Twitchett and Loewe (1986) to explore the events of these times.
A strikingly similar event occurred after the final fall of the Han in 220 CE. At this time, China split into the Three Kingdoms of Wei (including the Guanzhong and Luoyang), Wu (with capital on the site of present day Nanjing) and Shu with its capital at Chengdu. The king of Shu was Liu Bei and he looked at himself as the successor of the Han so that his Kingdom was called “Han Shu” and he styled himself as Emperor. Just as his ancestor Liu Bang had a smart advisor called Zhang Liang, Liu Bei had a clever Prime Minister called Zhuge Liang. Zhuge Liang was also known by his style as Kongming and by an early appellation of Wolong or “Sleeping Dragon”. During his life he was given the title of Wuxiang Hou or the Marquis of Wuxiang, a township north of Hanzhong. Following his death, he was apparently entitled by the Shuhan emperor as the “Faithful Martial Lord” or Zhong Wuhou and to this day, his ancestral temples and memorials often refer to him as Wuhou, the Martial Lord. Zhuge Liang almost emulated Liu Bang’s success in a series of raids against Wei across the Qinling into the Guanzhong but in the end was not successful.
However, the stories of the times have become part of Chinese culture in the form of a famous historical novel (which is at least as much novel as history) called “San Guo Yan Yi” translated by Moss Roberts (1994) as “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” (Figure 6). To find out how the Shu Roads also form a stage for a romance of stirring history and heroic deeds you can do worse than to read this book. For the history of these areas and events at the end of the Han there are more accurate accounts in English in de Crespigny (1984, 1991) and other publications and translations based on the historical records of the time.
The Tang Period (618-907 CE) saw the Plank Roads remain part of literature and history as statesmen and poets such as Li Bai (also known as Li Bo) were sent to exile in Shu away from the court(s) in Chang’an and Luoyang. On one such occasion, Li Bai wrote a famous poem called “The Road to Shu is Hard” and a translation (eg Minford and Lau, 2006) will give its reader a flavour of what it was like to travel through the Qinling at that time. In the poem, Li Bai describes the Plank Roads as “ladders to heaven”:
“When earth collapsed and the mountain crashed, the muscled warriors died. It was after that when the ladders to heaven were linked together with timber and stone.”
The Tang Emperor of the time (Tang Xuan Zong) also travelled to Shu along the roads in exile as rebels invaded the capital. He came back along the Jinniu Road as an abdicated monarch and without his favourite concubine, Yang Guifei who had been forced to kill herself as his army fled to Shu. The Yangba Road was said to have been built earlier to bring Lychee from the south of China to Xi’an for the extravagant imperial concubine. The Song painting in Figure 7 shows a “map” of the emperor’s journey to Shu and it is possible to see Plank Roads winding up the steep and sharp ridged mountains on the left side of the image.
On the way back from exile in Shu, the Emperor wrote a poem at “Sword Gate Pass” (Jianmen Guan in northern Sichuan) in which he wrote (perhaps in remorse for his failing to be a virtuous Emperor)[3]:
“Our tour complete our carriage returns to Sword Gate’s cloud-barred peaks its mile-high screen of folded jade its cinnabar walls breached by heroes our pennants weave through the tapestry of trees ethereal clouds brush past our horses rising to the times depends on virtue how true is this description?”
In the Song (960-1279 CE), Yuan (1271-1368 CE) and Ming (1368-1662 CE) times the Shu Roads continued as major routes of communication between north and south as well as roads travelled by armies of invasion and liberation moving between the north-west and the south-west of China. Over that time, despite the many wars, the roads gradually became paved and stabilised and the Lian Yun road and Bao river valley became sections of the main Post Road from Xi’an to Chengdu. The description of the main post road from present day Baoji to Chengdu by Marco Polo (Yule and Cordier, 1998) is geographically accurate and an indication of the importance placed on secure and well paved road communications by the Mongol Yuan Dynasty. The Ming maintained the roads but in general there was reducing interest in the west of China and in road traffic as the Yangtze valley with its river and canal transportation became the centre of the economy and the area between Nanjing and Beijing became the centre of the empire.
At the end of the Ming in 1644 CE there was a breakdown in social order with rebellions by peasants and minority peoples. The population of Sichuan was decimated[4] by the combined efforts of the rebel Zhang Xianzhong (also called “Yellow Tiger”) and the Qing army that came to re-conquer Sichuan, and consequently the roads fell into disrepair (see Wiens, 1949a). Starting in the Qianlong reign of the Qing (1662-1911 CE) period, Sichuan was repopulated, including by many Hakka people from the south of China. As this happened, the north-south roads were repaired and many travellers and writers left detailed accounts of the roads of the day and the natural wonders they found along the way. The Shu Roads as consolidated and repaired at this time were, despite the ravages of the Taiping Rebellion and the decay at the end of the Qing, still in use during the early and middle years of the Republic of China (Min Guo 1912-1949 CE).
The 2000 years of history of the Shu Roads, the people who moved or lived along them and the mountainous regions they passed through as well as local events were all recorded. The records include literature and art, calligraphy, artistic scroll maps, the records of travellers and Stele and most importantly the “Fang Zhi” or the regional and local gazetteers of everything that happened to people, the environment and down to the local level. Much of the information is geographical and included maps but it was rarely mapped in the sense of modern mapping and was not always consistent or accurate. But the rich local records are nevertheless a unique and significant source of written information on the Shu Roads that allows us to recreate and experience its events after many years.
Modern “Shu Roads”
The ancient engineering innovations and their enterprise have continued to inspire modern Chinese as they have built a new country and modern times have seen equally great engineering feats as present day “Shu roads” have come into existence. According to the English language Shanghai Sunday Times (Nov. 12, 1932)[5], in 1932 there were only 1269 miles (2040 km) of automobile roads in Sichuan and 235 automobiles, and in Shaanxi there were 1808 (2910 km) miles of automobile road and 414 automobiles. China as a whole had 39,350 miles (63,350 km) of automobile road and 43,834 automobiles. In 1952, the total length of roads in China had doubled to 126,700 km. By contrast in late 1997 there were 1.226 million km of road in China (about 10 times what it was in 1952) and 57,570 km of railroads[6]. Since then there has been a further massive growth of Tollways covering the country, including the recently completed Xihan Tollway that crosses the Qinling using 110km of tunnels and as many overpasses. It has been a dramatic change.
Between Chengdu and Xi’an in 1932, when the Shanghai Sunday Times published its statistics, many of the roads were not much better than they were during the Qing period. The state of these roads has been recorded in old photographs preserved by the Hanzhong museum such as the photograph in Figure 8 taken by missionaries travelling from Fengxiang to Hanzhong in 1934. But China was moving to link the north and south across the Qinling. By 1935 sections of modern road covered the sections from Cehengdu to Guangyuan and Baoji to Fengxian. The highway from Hanzhong to Baoji (the Baohan Highway) was started during the late 1930’s and, along with linking roads in the Hanzhong Basin, was completed in 1941 along the “Lianyun” section (Wiens, 1949b). The Shu Road that had been the main “Post Road” since the Yuan period was thereby finally replaced by more modern materials. But it was done only through the major stimulus of the war effort against the Japanese and heritage photographs show that the road to Shu was still “hard” at that time (see Figure 9).
An east-west railway connection between Wuhan and Hanzhong was also completed as part of the war effort. Since 1949, a major railway linking north and south was constructed crossing from Baoji to Chengdu for the most part along the track of the Old (Chencang) Road and taking what was likely the path of the Qin road along the valley of the Jialing River. Extensive road building over many of the previous Shu Roads was also undertaken with great effort and facing great hardships to open up road traffic. In the same period, large dams were built at the two ends of the Baoxie Road to irrigate land and produce food. The “Plank Road Spirit” must have helped in the success of these efforts. Now it is possible to go from Hanzhong to Xi’an in two hours using the recently opened Xihan Tollway – but through some of the world’s longest modern tunnels and overpasses rather than over ancient Plank Roads.
The People and Environment of the Shu Roads
The Shu roads were not like the isolated and impersonal freeways of today that maximize speed of travel, minimise services and avoid stops at towns and villages. In the past, a day’s journey was not very far by today’s standards but was much more tiring for people and horses and so the routes supported a significant population servicing the needs of people, animals and goods as well as taking advantage of the access to materials provided by the roads and the protection provided by the authorities that were stationed along them. Where the extensive imperial postal services operated, the modern towns still carry names indicating the original reasons for their settlement. These include Pu (铺, relay station) and Yi (驿, post station) as places that supported the provision of horses and rest for travellers and Tang (塘, barrier or embankment) or Ba (坝, barrier) which often indicated an inspection (or duty) point. The mountain passes through which people passed between watersheds were natural for fortification and location of inspection points and many modern towns have Guan (关, gate) as part of their name from their association with the fortified passes. The secondary roads also supported a population servicing the traffic and travellers as many people wished to avoid the inspection points (the modern equivalents of the Toll Stations along the highways) and took to the mountain roads. Perhaps it was a more interesting population that grew up on these secondary tracks.
But life along the Shu roads was at least as hard for those who lived there as for those travelling them. The mountains were the scene of fierce winters, floods, landslides and earthquakes. In early times wild animals made life dangerous for people and domestic animals. But perhaps the most dangerous times were when armies moved north and south along the roads. At these times, rebels, dynasties and invaders battled for dominance and people along the roads suffered. The relatively small areas of arable land had to support the population through these events as well as during less difficult times. The first road apparently took the Qin army to conquer Shu and ever since as the Three Kingdoms vied for power, the Tang Dynasty battled or escaped from rebels, Song battled Jin and Mongols invaded China the region periodically became a battleground. The armies of the Ming and Qing ruthlessly recovered territory as the dynasties started out but later could do little to stop rebel armies wandering through the mountains destroying towns along the way as each dynasty declined. In all cases it was the people living there who bore the brunt.
The attractions of trade and travelling as well as the protection afforded in stable times by garrisons and walled cities clearly outweighed the possibility that these hard periods of change would occur. Over the history of the Shu Roads, the Han people tended to trust in the strength of the fortified and established towns while other peoples occupied the remote valleys where they were safer but life was harder. Among these minorities, the Qiang people (羌族) have a special association with the secondary Shu roads that moved goods to Chengdu via less accessible but probably tax free pathways. The Qiang is an ancient Chinese minority that has claimed associations with the Xia Dynasty (夏朝) and the famous Da Yu (大禹, a legendary King who tamed the waters of the Yellow and other rivers who some believe came from Beichuan). But in more certain history they were certainly brought to Gansu from present day Qinghai by the Han to settle and farm and rebelled as the Han dynasty ended. In the mountains between the Wei River and Chengdu the Qiang people lived in the remote valleys. They guarded the entrances fiercely against intruders as armies moved through the Qinling, Ba and Longmen Mountains. The town of Ningqiang (宁强) in southern Shaanxi was previously called Ningqiang Zhou (宁羌州) with “qiang” in the Qing period being the character for the Qiang people. It has been suggested that it was so named to indicate to the Qiang people that it was a safe place to come to from the mountains – although other explanations have also been given.
The areas surrounding the Shu roads also contain some of China’s most remote and extent wilderness areas. Many areas have been exploited, such as for timber and resources, but not to the degree seen in most of China. In modern times, large areas have been set aside for wildlife and environment conservation including conservation areas for Pandas, Macaque monkeys, Golden Monkey, Crested Ibis, Musk Deer and many other species of wildlife, some endangered and many still abundant. As late as the Song period, according to Ma Qiang (2008), tigers, including the South China Tiger and elephants could still be seen near the Shu Roads in Sichuan. The south China tiger and elephants can no longer be found, however, there are still areas in Sichuan where historical sites and temples, climbs to peaks and descents into valleys coexist with some of the wildlife described by Ma Qiang.
The dense forests of the Qinling, Ba, Micang and Longmen mountain ranges have been remarked upon and admired for a thousand years. Marco Polo was greatly impressed by the dense forests (Yule and Cordier, 1998) of these mountains although he did not mention the Plank Roads. Conservation of forest resources has been a tradition in this part of China as evidenced by the records of Stele in the Micang Mountains (Zhang Haoliang, 1990) and the changing extent of forests and the cycles of responsible forestry can be found in the detailed records of the Fang Zhi, or local records. However, The current forest cover seems to have been dramatically reduced following years of fighting and rebellion in the 19th century as the Qing dynasty declined and lost its authority throughout China and internationally.
The dense mountain forests are also source areas for unique components of Chinese herbal medicine. Traditional Chinese medicine has been a major industry of the areas covered by the Shu Roads throughout their history. In the Qinling Mountains is found the Temple of the Han Prime Minister Zhang Liang. Zhang Liang is famous in the history of Daoist philosophy and the Qinling have been a bastion of Daoism for much of written history. Buddhism seems to have gained a few footholds, but stayed close to the main roads with major centres such as Maiji Grottoes (near Tianshui) to the north, Qianfo Grottoes (at Guangyuan) to the south with some temples along the roads between. In the deep mountain valleys, the Daoists seem to have held sway from Baoji through to the Wudang Mountains on the lower reaches of the Han River.
As a place where history, environment, natural religion and conservation are co-located with adventurous trails through forests and mountains and along wild rivers, it is clear that the Shu Road region forms a modern traveller’s paradise. However, although the history and relics of the Hanzhong and Shu Road areas are well known to Chinese people they are not so well known among the western people who would come looking for walking trails and experiences of wilderness. I hope this introduction to the region, its history and environment will be the start for a change to this situation. As an example, Zibai (Purple Cedar) Mountain is near the Zhang Liang Temple and famous for its relics of ancient Daoism as well as its unique geology and environment. It is the home of the rare Musk Deer. A climb to the top, as shown in Figure 10 is not for the faint hearted. It is just one of hundreds of opportunities that exist in the region for walking and climbing.
In this situation it is possible to imagine that a “Shu Roads historical and eco-tourism route” could be promoted and include the history and all of the other aspects that exist along the way. Of course, the idea already exists in China, but as a statement it does not currently have the same effect on people overseas as might the “Silk Road” or the “Royal Inka Road” etc. In the large, the Shu Road route stretches from Xi’an to Chengdu and has links to the Silk road in the north and with the Chamadao (Tea-Horse route by which tea from Yunnan was exchanged for horses from Tibet) route in the south. It has sub-areas (such as the Lianyun road or the Jinniu road) and branches and twigs from its main trunks with “leaves” consisting of the sites that people will visit. Some of the sites are ideal for eco-tourism but also have interesting history (such as Zibai Shan) and others are historical sites, temples, tombs and relics with added scenic views, wildlife and opportunities to hike the walking trails. With some promotion, the number of Chinese and overseas visitors who wish to travel the Shu Road Route could be increased to the benefit of the people who live there and open up a new area of China’s history and culture to people from all over the world.
But the people and environment of the Shu Roads have had a difficult time since May 12, 2008 when the Longmen fault slipped and the world watched as the aftermath of the Wenchuan earthquake unfolded to reveal huge losses of people, infrastructure and relics. The landscape of northern Sichuan has changed and disasters previously only brought about by armies (such as the Taiping in the Qing period and the rebel Yellow Tiger of the late Ming) occurred in many of the cities strung along the southern sections of the former Shu Roads. The Qiang people in particular suffered greatly from the Wenchuan Earthquake. Since then, the Chinese government has developed a plan for reconstruction of infrastructure and as special support for the Qiang people has created the fourth “cultural and ecological protection experimental area” where unique environments and minority cultures are supported as the areas of the mountains where Qiang culture has found its home. The provincial governments of Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu are also bringing resources to bear on the repair of damage and a plan for the future that goes beyond what was in place before. It is a good time for everyone interested in History and Adventure tourism to get involved in the future of the areas formerly covered by the many Shu Roads to help support the people who live there.
The challenge of bringing in travellers and tourists has become easier as just before the earthquake struck the new Xihan Freeway had been opened to traffic linking Xi’an and Hanzhong. Soon, new modern freeways from Chengdu will reach Hanzhong and the complete Freeway between Xi’an and Chengdu will become the modern high speed “Shu Road” with the “Plank Roads” of the former routes being replaced by modern tunnels through mountains and flyovers across valleys. It is fitting that at the first rest stop out of Xi’an there is a memorial to the Shu Roads (Figure 11). At this time the new roads are being worked hard by convoys of trucks providing relief to Sichuan but in time they will also provide easy access to the Shu Roads historical and eco-tourism route.
Conclusions
Mountains, rivers and lakes have been subjects of Chinese art and literature since ancient times. In the history of the Shu Roads the terrain has been the ruling factor and the rivers the agents of change as well as communication. Ancient people learned how to navigate the great east-west divide of the Qinling, Ba and Micang mountains and the north-south passages of the Longmen mountains to travel and transport goods between the Wei River valley and the Sichuan plain. Throughout the dynasties that followed, the Shu roads have linked north and south China with the Hanzhong basin as a middle ground and haven from the hard crossings of dangerous mountain systems. The roads attracted a population of people servicing the traffic and travel as well as maintaining a hinterland of people dependent on the materials they supplied and the trade they could take out. The history of the area thorough which the roads passed has been as hard as the travel but throughout the history the heroism and high adventure of the events that took place have put the region into a place in Chinese culture and literature occupied by few others.
The arrival of modern road building and communications provides both another chapter for the complete discussion of Shu Roads as well as an urgent reason to manage the history and archaeology of the ancient systems. Starting with the road building of the period of war against Japan, modern roads have, in many places, obliterated relics and in other places, due to the actions of agencies and individuals, have led to relics being preserved in museums or as photographs, copies and rubbings rather than the original materials. Balancing preservation and exploitation has always been difficult and it is no less an issue for the Shu Roads as it is for any system of historical communication paths.
But because of the conjunction of human innovation that found ways to traverse the difficult sections and the spirit of the ancient and modern road builders which saw them extend the road system across the major mountain systems that surround Shu/Sichuan, the Shu roads provide a relatively unknown but waiting area where western travellers can open up the history, environment and culture of the “Shu Roads historical and eco-tourism route” for people all over the world and spread the word to others who wish to visit and be entranced. The recent events of the Wenchuan earthquake have provided this opportunity with greater impact as such a development will also directly support will help rebuild the damaged infrastructure and shattered lives of people, including the Qiang people, who have been living along the Shu Roads.
Acknowledgements
The Australia-China Council and the Shaanxi Relics Bureau provided valuable financial support for the Shu Road project and the Hanzhong “International Symposium on Historical Research of Plank Roads and Applications of 3S Technology” and the work that has led to this summary. The staff of the Hanzhong Museum and Director Feng Suiping, have made the discovery of the Plank and Shu roads a great adventure. The Google Earth image in Figure 4 was created using Google Earth Pro licensed from Google Inc.; Ruth Mostern, University of Merced, California USA provided the image for Figure 7. Figure 8 was provided by the kind permission of Frank Moore of Melbourne, Australia. Figure 2 is from the famous Historical Atlas of China by Herrmann (1966).
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[1] The author of this introduction has made considerable use of material from a number of the papers from the “Collected Papers of the International Symposium on Historical Research of Plank roads
and Application of 3S Technology” held in Hanzhong in May 2007. The Proceedings are available from Hanzhong City Museum.
[2] Wiens (1949) reports a more elaborate story in which the oxen were stone but excreted gold and the road was built on a promise to send some of these miraculous beasts plus a number of beautiful
young ladies as presents for the Shu king.
[3] Translated by Red Pine (2003) as “Reaching Sword Gate Pass after touring the Land of Shu”.
[5] Quoted. by G B. Cressy in “China’s Geographic Foundations”, McGraw-Hill, 1934. This book provides useful information on the resources of Republican China prior to the Japanese invasion.
[6] Figures since 1949 are from China National Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Yearbook of China and other sources.