The Baikou City Ruins

The Baikou City Ruins

The Baikou City Ruins is a National Key Cultural Relics Protection Unit.

The Baikou City Ruins: Located on the southern bank of the Gan River, 3 kilometers southwest of Taihe County, the site covers an area of 230,000 square meters and is shaped like an inverted trapezoid, divided into inner and outer cities. The outer city stretches 1,941 meters in total length, with most of it well-preserved except for partial damage in the northwest.

The inner city has a square layout, located on the northern side of the site, measuring 861 meters in total length and covering an area of 43,000 square meters. There are currently seven breaks in the outer city wall, with three confirmed to be gates: the northwest corner, the center of the south side, and the center of the north side. The inner city has three gate breaks as well—on the east, northwest, and south sides—all of which can be confirmed as gates. The northwest corner gate is 35 meters wide, with its base only 2 meters above the water level of the Gan River; during floods, river water could directly flow into the city, suggesting it may have been a water gate. The central west gate is 28 meters wide.

It has a "convex" structure, and analysis of the surviving overlapping tiles suggests that this might have been a gate tower. The central north gate is 15 meters wide, with a steep entrance that leads separately into the inner and outer cities. The inner city’s northwest gate features a "concave" structure, resembling a "barbican," and also has a large accumulation of rubble.

The inner city’s south gate is 17.4 meters wide, with large amounts of rubble found on both sides. A complete four-leaf cloud-patterned tile end was also unearthed here.

In the southwestern corner of the inner city lies a rectangular earthen platform, the highest point in the entire city. It measures 47 meters from east to west, 35 meters from north to south, and covers an area of 1,645 square meters, standing 0.8 meters higher than the surrounding flat land and about 2 meters higher than other parts of the inner city.

The city walls were built from rammed earth. Their heights vary inversely with the terrain, which slopes from high in the south to low in the north,

ensuring that the top of the walls remains roughly level all around. The southern wall is 4.5 meters above ground level, the eastern wall is 10.2 meters high, and the northern wall reaches 20.5 meters. The top width of the walls ranges from 2 to 3 meters, and the base width from 20 to 28 meters, with the northern wall base being the widest. Outside the walls is a moat,

with the southern section of the wall and its cross-section showing that the southern moat is 16.5 meters wide and 1.5 meters deep. The eastern and western moats are 30 meters wide. The moat flows from south to north into the Gan River. Based on the current terrain, it appears the moat water could not circulate.

Research confirms that Baikou City was the seat of Luling County—one of the famous eighteen counties of the Western Han Dynasty in Jiangxi Province—and the birthplace of Luling culture. The richness of the cultural strata and the exceptional preservation of the site are truly rare. It can serve as a benchmark for urban archaeology in Jiangxi and even the broader Jiangnan region, holding significant historical, cultural, and scientific value. Baikou City was designated as a county-level cultural relics protection unit in 1984 and as a provincial-level key cultural relics protection unit in 2004.

Further Reading:

· Sixth Batch of National Key Cultural Relics Protection Units