Places of Historic Interest in Wuyang
Wuyang boasts profound cultural heritage and abundant cultural relics. The wisdom, courage and diligent toil of ancient generations have left countless historic sites across its land. Yangshao, Longshan, Shang and Zhou cultural ruins scatter all over the territory, featuring ancient architectures, stone stele carvings and antique wares of diverse styles. More than 40 ancient cultural sites have been discovered to date, including the Jiahu Site, Agang Temple Site, Eastern Bugeng City, Hu State City, Jianxiang King City and the ancient Wuyang City dating back to the Zhou and Han dynasties. There are also a host of highly valuable relics such as the City God Temple, Shanxi-Shaanxi Guild Hall, Bi'an Temple and Fan Kuai’s Tomb. Among them, the painted memorial archway inside the Shanxi-Shaanxi Guild Hall of Beiwudu Town ranks first among all Qing-dynasty archway buildings in Henan Province.
Known as a "Land of Emperors and Marquises", Wuyang nurtured numerous outstanding figures through the ages. Many heroes and talents were enfeoffed or born here: Fan Kuai and Wu Han of the Han Dynasty, as well as Sima Yi of the Three Kingdoms Wei State, were all granted marquis titles in this land; Wang Chang, General Who Crosses the Wilds of the Eastern Han Dynasty, and Wang Jian, Emperor of Former Shu, were both natives of Wuyang. Ding Hong, Minister over the Masses of the Han Dynasty, and Han Ling, Palace Secretary, gained nationwide fame for their bold vision and extraordinary talent. In the Qing Dynasty, Kong Guangmai’s calligraphy and the miraculous medical skills of "Divine Physician" Lu Lun won universal praise.
Endowed with fertile soil and rich products, Wuyang was a strategic military stronghold in all dynasties. Many famous historical battles unfolded here: Liu Xiu fought against Wang Mang, Di Qing stationed troops for campaigns against the Western Xia Regime, and Li Zicheng’s peasant army contended for the Central Plains. In modern and contemporary times, fierce struggles against foreign aggression, class oppression and exploitation surged across Wuyang, composing magnificent scrolls of history.
The Jiahu Site
The Jiahu Site lies in Jiahu Village, Beiwudu Town, Wuyang County, Luohe City, Henan Province. It is over 20 kilometers south of Wuyang County seat and 3 kilometers east of Beiwudu Town, serving as a vital Peiligang Culture settlement. Blessed with humid climate and crisscross rivers since ancient times, this land formed an ideal habitat for human settlement and reproduction.
The wide Sha River surges from the northwest around the site, flowing eastward about 3 kilometers away. The Hui River winds past the site 4 kilometers to the west and merges into the Sha River at Beiwudu Town. The Ni River, the closest waterway to the site, runs merely 1 kilometer west of it. Originating from Ye County, the Ni River enters Wuyang 8 kilometers west of the Jiahu Site, traverses the entire county and empties into the Li River at the county boundary. Between the Hui and Ni Rivers lies a small lake named Jiahu, with Jiahu Village standing on its northern bank. To the east of the village stretches the Nihewa Flood Detention Basin, covering roughly 103 square kilometers, with its lowest central point at an altitude of 63.8 meters. This basin was constructed to divert floodwaters of the Sha River during rainy seasons and shield the Beijing-Guangzhou Railway 30 kilometers east of the site from inundation.
The archaeological site sits east of Jiahu Village, taking the shape of an irregular circle with a total area of 55,000 square meters.
In 1961, Zhu Zhi, former curator of the county museum, was sent down to labor in Jiahu Village. He first spotted relics on the broken walls of earthen wells and potato cellars, discovering the site. In the 1970s, construction of a village-protecting dyke damaged the central cultural layers of the site. When pupils from the village primary school reclaimed land beneath the dyke, they unearthed pottery kettles, stone shovels and other artifacts. Jia Jianguo, a teacher at the school, collected these cultural relics and handed them over to the county Cultural Center at that time.
In 1962, Zhu Zhi, cultural relics specialist of the Wuyang County Cultural Center, was wrongly labeled a rightist and dispatched to Jiahu Village for manual labor. While working one day, he noticed abundant pottery shards at the bottom of an eastern village gully and conducted careful surveys across the area. He also uncovered numerous human bones and burnt clay on abandoned well walls, cliffs and ditch banks, alongside husk impressions of rice embedded in the burnt earth. Burnt clay generally refers to earthen blocks vitrified by fire, mostly brick-red, usually linked to dwellings destroyed by massive fires. All these traces indicated the existence of a prehistoric village settlement here.
In August 1975, torrential rains battered Wuyang County, causing simultaneous levee breaches on the Sha, Ni, Hui, Li and other rivers. Raging floodwaters submerged Jiahu Village and surrounding hamlets in a catastrophic deluge. After the flood receded, villagers rebuilt their homes amid ruins. To guard against future floods, they erected a dyke encircling the village, cutting straight north-to-south through the central zone of the archaeological site. Massive pottery, stone tools and human bones were unearthed during construction, inflicting severe damage to the ruins.
In autumn 1978, villagers reinforced the dyke again, with its base 14 meters wide, embankment height ranging from 2 to 3 meters, and dyke crest altitude at 69 meters. Earth extraction for the dyke created a borrow pit east of the embankment, 1 meter deep and 26 to 42 meters wide, where cultural layers were completely destroyed. One day, teacher Jia Jianguo led students to level land outside the dyke and found scattered stone axes, stone shovels and broken pottery shards. Recognizing these Neolithic artifacts, he gathered the relics together with his students and delivered them to the county museum. By then Zhu Zhi served as museum curator; he had known about the ancient site during his labor years and long planned to launch formal surveys.
At that time, excavation reports on the Peiligang Site had been published, earning immense renown among academic circles at home and abroad. After comparing artifacts from the two sites and conducting research, Zhu Zhi found their cultural features largely consistent, confirming the Jiahu Site as an important settlement of Peiligang Culture. In 1988, the People’s Government of Henan Province designated the Jiahu Site a Provincial Protected Historic Site.
In 1980, Zhou Dao from the Archaeological Team of Henan Museum conducted field surveys in Wuyang and verified that the Jiahu Site contained early Neolithic cultural remains. In October 1982, Professor An Zhimin, Deputy Director of the Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, visited the Jiahu Site in Wuyang.
From March to May 1983, Chen Jiaxiang, Guo Tiansuo, Feng Zhongyi and other researchers from the Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics launched the first trial excavation, covering an area of 50 square meters. Dozens of pottery, stone and bone artifacts, 11 storage pits and 17 tombs were uncovered.
Between 1983 and 2001, seven systematic scientific excavations were carried out successively, exposing over 2,600 square meters of ruins. Nearly a thousand types of vestiges were discovered, including house foundations, storage pits, pottery kilns, tombs, animal sacrificial pits and moats, alongside thousands of relics made of pottery, stone, bone and other materials. Of exceptional academic significance are large quantities of artificially cultivated japonica rice, more than 30 multi-tone crane bone flutes, and over a dozen carved symbols dating back 8,600 to 7,800 years from Phases II and III of Jiahu Culture, which scholars regard as primitive proto-writing.
The prosperous religious and musical culture of the Jiahu people rested on solid material foundations. The Jiahu region boasted abundant flora and fauna, and its advanced rice agriculture supplied ample plant and animal food resources. This laid material prerequisites for the emergence of a shaman class and the creation of spiritual culture. The enrichment of material and spiritual life generated both necessity and feasibility for the birth of primitive writing, giving rise to Jiahu proto-writing and laying a foundation for Chinese characters stretching back over 8,000 years.
Timeline of Seven Major Excavations
- September–December 1984: The second excavation, led by Zhang Juzhong and Wang Liangqi, uncovered 100 square meters, revealing 19 ash pits and 14 tombs.
- September–December 1985: The third excavation, also headed by Zhang Juzhong and Wang Liangqi, exposed 355 square meters. Excavation was halted before reaching intact cultural layers due to excessive groundwater levels.
- March–June 1986: Zhang Juzhong and Yang Zhenwei continued clearing the unfinished cultural layers from the third dig, with the landmark discovery of three seven-hole bone flutes.
- September–December 1986: The fifth excavation led by Zhang Juzhong covered 556 square meters, unearthing sequentially expanded multi-room house foundations.
- March–June 1987: The sixth excavation, directed by Zhang Juzhong and Wang Shengli, spanned 1,296 square meters. Key finds included carved symbols on turtle shells and three intact pottery kilns. During this period, undergraduates majoring in archaeology from Zhengzhou University’s Class of 1984 completed field internships here under the supervision of Jia Zhoujie, Song Yuqin and Zhang Guoshuo.
- March 2001: The seventh excavation was jointly conducted by experts including Zhang Juzhong, Qin Ying and Pan Weibin from the University of Science and Technology of China and Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics, with coordination from the Wuyang County Museum, exposing 300 square meters of ruins.
Across all seven excavations, a total area of 2,657.6 square meters was cleared. Archaeologists unearthed 53 house foundations, 11 pottery kilns and 445 tombs, alongside more than 5,000 cultural relics and specimens (including 30 bone flutes, 17 carved symbols and thousands of carbonized rice grains).
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