Hanjia Granary

Hanjia Granary

The Hanjia Granary is a National Key Cultural Relics Protection Unit.

The Hanjia Granary is located in the northeast of the Sui and Tang Luoyang Palace City. It was established around the first year of the Daye era (605 AD) during Emperor Yang of Sui’s reign when the capital was moved to Luoyang. It continued to be expanded and used during the Tang Dynasty, serving as one of the major official granaries for storing and transporting tax grain during both the Sui and Tang dynasties. It had city walls, hence it was historically known as the “Hanjia Granary City.” Its east-west walls measured 612 meters, and the north-south walls 752 meters. The widest part of the wall foundation reached 17 meters, and the entire granary city covered an area of 450,000 square meters. To date, 287 underground grain storage pits have been identified. The largest pit has a diameter of 13.5 meters, with its bottom 11.9 meters below ground level. The smallest pit has a diameter of just 2 meters and is 3 meters deep. These pits are arranged in rows from east to west and columns from north to south, densely distributed and neatly aligned. The entire granary city housed approximately 400 grain pits. Each row of pits was accompanied by a pathway to facilitate transportation and access.

Based on the 11 excavated pits, the structure and construction method of the granary pits involved first digging a circular pit in the ground with a wide mouth and narrow base. The surrounding walls were smoothed and refined, and the bottom was compacted by tamping. Next, firewood was placed inside, and the bottom and walls were dried by fire. Then, two layers of wooden planks were laid horizontally or crisscrossed at the bottom, with chaff placed on top of the planks, and mats laid over the chaff. The pit walls were also lined with wooden planks, against which a layer of reed matting was erected. Inside the reed matting were mats, and the space between the mats and matting was filled with wheat chaff. The wall mats and bottom mats were connected to form a unified structure. The top of the pit was sealed with layers of earth — two layers of chaff mats were placed over the stored grain, and then sealed with yellow earth piled higher than the ground surface to aid drainage. Once the grain was removed from a pit, a temporary umbrella-shaped thatched roof was erected over the opening to protect the empty pit from rain and snow damage.

Dozens of “inscription bricks” have been unearthed from the excavated pits. Two relatively intact bricks were found in Pits No. 19 and No. 48, which detailed the pit location, origin of the stored grain, types and quantities of grain, the date of storage, and the official titles and names of the granary management personnel. The inscriptions indicate that the types of grain stored at Hanjia included millet (foxtail millet), unpolished rice (rice), and azuki beans.

According to the inscriptions, the amount of tax grain stored per pit ranged from six to seven thousand dan (one dan equals 120 jin or approximately 60 kilograms), with some pits holding over ten thousand dan. Calculating based on 400 medium-sized pits, the Hanjia Granary could store approximately 175,000 tons of tax grain at a time.