The Ancient City Site of Guntuli Ridge

The Ancient City Site of Guntuli Ridge

The Ancient City Site of Guntuli Ridge is a cultural tourism attraction.

The Ancient City Site of Guntuli Ridge

The Sanjiang Plain, known as the "Great Northern Wilderness," has long been regarded as an ancient, desolate land. However, archaeological discoveries at sites such as the Ancient City of Guntuli Ridge reveal that during the Han and Wei periods, the ancestors of the Manchu people—the Yilou—had already begun to settle and thrive on the magical land of Shuangyashan. It can be said that this is one of the main birthplaces of the Manchu ancestors and an important cradle of Yilou culture. This May, I visited the Ancient City of Guntuli Ridge out of admiration. Although the site has long been cultivated into farmland and is now surrounded by fruit trees, the remnants are still clearly visible.

The site is located on Guntuli Ridge, approximately 1,150 meters southeast of Fuxing Village, Fulizhen Town, Jixian County. It sits at an elevation of 137.2 meters, about 4 kilometers south of Shuangyashan City and 4.5 kilometers north of Jixian County. Guntuli Ridge is part of the low mountain and hilly area at the northern foot of the Wandashan Mountains. To the northeast lies the boundless Sanjiang Plain, while to the southwest are rolling mountains and foothill hills. The terrain is higher in the east and west, and lower in the north and south, sloping from the ridge toward the southwest.

The Ancient City of Guntuli Ridge mainly consists of two fortresses, eastern and western. At both the eastern and western ends of the ridge stand earthen mounds about 3 meters high, 40–50 meters in diameter, roughly circular or oval in shape, with a distance of 160 meters between them. Each mound also features semi-subterranean pits. A section of wall remains intact from the western to the southern part of the ridge, extending about 250 meters.

The Guntuli Ridge Culture is a representative early Iron Age cultural relic found in the Sanjiang Plain, dating back to the Han–Wei and Northern and Southern Dynasties periods. In 1984, the Heilongjiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology excavated the Guntuli Ridge site in Shuangyashan City, uncovering over 60 artifacts. The site was subsequently named the "Guntuli Ridge Culture." In 1999, the Guntuli Ridge City Site was designated as a provincial-level cultural heritage protection unit by the People’s Government of Heilongjiang Province. In May 2001, it was listed as a fifth batch National Key Cultural Relics Protection Unit by the State Council.

Address: Jixian County, Shuangyashan City, Heilongjiang Province