Yuchikate Ancient City

Yuchikate Ancient City

Yuchikate Ancient City is a cultural tourism attraction.

Yuchikate Ancient City

Yuchikate Ancient City

Located 22 kilometers southwest of Xinhe County, it consists of three sets of city walls: the outer city, middle city, and inner city, covering a total area of 1,740 mu. It is a key cultural relic protection unit at the autonomous region level.

Tian Weijiang, director of the History Research Institute of the Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences, researcher Zhong Gao, and researcher Zhang Ping from the Xinjiang Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute, after conducting an investigation, preliminarily identified that Li Chong, the last Western Region Protector General of the Western Han Dynasty, died in Yuchikate Ancient City. This site is believed to have been the location of the Western Region Protectorate during the late Western Han Dynasty.

The ancient city is 1,450 meters long and 800 meters wide. In 1928, Professor Huang Wenbi from Peking University, during his archaeological excavation here, collected a large number of Han Dynasty relics and also discovered the bronze seal of Li Chong, the Western Region Protector General. The seal’s back has a semicircular knob and is engraved with seal script on the base, along with other important artifacts such as the “Chang Gong Zhi Yin” seal (some say it is the bronze seal of the Han official title — Danghu). In 1953, the “Han Guiyi Qiang Zhang Yin” seal was also found here. The discovery of these two seals provides crucial archaeological evidence for determining the nature of Yuchikate Ancient City.