Site of the Shangjing Longquanfu Capital of the Bohai Kingdom

　　The Site of the Shangjing Longquanfu Capital of the Bohai Kingdom is located in Dongjingcheng, Ning’an County, Heilongjiang Province. The Bohai Kingdom was a local regime established by the Sumo Mohe people of the Sushen tribe during China’s Tang Dynasty in the northeastern region. It had five capitals (“Five Jing”), with Shangjing Longquanfu as its primary capital.

　　The ancient city is surrounded by mountains on all sides, with three sides bordering the Mudan River. In the late Tianbao era of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty, King Wen Dae Cheon-mu moved the capital here from the old capital, but it was later relocated to Dongjing Longyuanfu in the early Zhenyuan period. In the tenth year of Zhenyuan (794), King Seong Dae Hoa-jin moved the capital back to Shangjing, which remained the capital until the Bohai Kingdom was destroyed by Liao Taizu Yelü Abaoji in the first year of Tianxian (926). The Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (later part of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) conducted large-scale surveys and excavations at the site between 1963 and 1964, further clarifying the layout and structure of the capital city.

　　The layout and scale of Shangjing were entirely modeled after the Tang Dynasty capital Chang’an. The city is divided into an inner city, outer city, and palace city, with the overall plan forming a rectangle. The outer city has a perimeter of 17.5 kilometers, with stone walls about 2.4 meters thick, surrounded by a moat. There are ten city gates in total—three on each of the north and south sides, and two on each of the east and west sides, arranged symmetrically. Inside the city, there are five east-west streets and three north-south streets, all straight and intersecting to divide the city into many neat rectangular blocks, or “wards,” most of which have stone walls and only face the street on two sides.

　　The inner city is located in the center of the northern part of the outer city, with a perimeter of about 2.5 kilometers and stone walls, the remnants of which are about 3 meters high.

　　The palace city is situated in the center of the inner city, with a rectangular layout approximately 1,390 meters long from north to south and 1,050 meters wide from east to west. It is surrounded by stone walls, with one gate on each of the four sides. The palace complex is in the center of the palace city, where only the foundations of five tiered palaces remain, aligned along the central axis from north to south. The first two palaces were used for ceremonies and court assemblies, the largest in scale, with stone-paved foundations decorated with carved stone dragon heads, square bricks featuring treasure-flower patterns on the floor, green-glazed pottery column bases on stone plinths, gray roof tiles mixed with green-glazed tiles, and green-glazed ridge ornaments and animal head decorations on the roof ridges. The three smaller rear palaces were likely living quarters, equipped with heating features such as heated kang beds and chimneys.

　　To the east of the palace city lies the site of the imperial garden, with a pond covering nearly 20,000 square meters to its south. On the north side, there were originally two pavilions facing each other from east to west, with their original column base stones still preserved. Artificial rockeries and the ruins of pavilions and towers are found on both the eastern and western sides of the pond.

　　The Site of the Shangjing Longquanfu Capital of the Bohai Kingdom serves as important physical evidence for studying the history of the Bohai Kingdom, as well as the urban and architectural history of the Tang Dynasty. In March 1961, it was designated by the State Council as one of the first batch of Major Historical and Cultural Sites Protected at the National Level.