WHAT MARCO
POLO MIGHT HAVE SEEN AT THE ROYAL PAVILIONS OF THE SOUTHERN SUNG ON PHOENIX
HILL IN THE 13TH CENTURY – A VISUALIZATION
James
C. Manley, Ph.D.
California State Polytechnic University,
Pomona, California, USA
Email: jcmanleyy@gmail.com;
Web: http://www.cpp.edu/~jcmanley
ABSTRACT
Modern GPS and GIS techniques make it possible to
visualize the sites of the major pavilions of the Southern Sung Dynasty. Using
both western and Chinese sources, the author has created a plausible
visualization of what a visitor in the 13th century may have seen as he
approached the location of main palace of the Southern Sung near Phoenix Hill.
This visualization is based on A.C. Moule’s 1958 publication Quinsai
together with a high-quality, digital topographic map provided by Zhejiang
University. The visualization software used by the author will be described,
together with an invitation to explore possible lines of collaborative work
with Chinese faculty in GIS, archaeology, and architecture, aesthetics and
“virtual museums.” The presentation will
include the present state of project, including images and data.
BODY
It is a pleasure to join you in this
conference. In the time that I have I would like to update my findings from
last year, which have not been reported on, and sketch out my plans for the
future, which hopefully can involve collaboration with NCUT and other Chinese
institutions.
As a philosophy professor interested in
GPS and GIS a few introductory words may be in order. My graduate work was done
in the area of aesthetics and for many years I have been interested in museums
and museum aesthetics. With the advent of the internet, the possibilities for
virtual museums and online visualization have grown enormously. I have also
done a substantial amount of overseas-type teaching. While in China in the year
2000, I found a candidate for a virtual museum display.
From a discrepancy on a tourist map of
Hangzhou, I found myself in a project to locate the foundations of the main
palace, or “Da Nei,” occupied by the last emperors of the Southern Sung Dynasty
on Phoenix Hill in Hangzhou. The idea was to create a virtual Sung world that
could be visited, as it were, like a museum. This visualization could be
rendered more specific and concrete over the years with linked collaborations
with interested parties and institutions.
I’ve been back to China each summer
since then to walk the paths on Phoenix Hill that almost certainly represent
paths dating back to the Sung and earlier. In this endeavor I’ve been able to
rely on a particularly interesting modern map of the Phoenix Hill area provided
by A.C. Moule in Quinsai[1],
first published in 1957. The second resource is a wonderfully precise digital
topographic map of the area provided by colleagues[2]
at Zhejiang University. (The red layer actually indicates green vegetation.)
These two resources have made it
possible to do virtual computer walks on Phoenix Hill and then duplicate the
walks on the actual Phoenix Hill. This provides an extraordinary sense of how
the description of early events may “fit” with the existing terrain. We are or
course all fortunate that the Phoenix Hill area is protected and has not been
developed in the seven hundred years since the palaces of the Southern Sung
fell into ruins.
Moule’s Quinsai is referenced in
the much better known work on Sung life and culture by Jacques Gerent in his Daily Life in China on the eve of the Mongol
Invasion[3], which
first appeared in 1959. Gernet provides a map “after the reconstruction by A.C.
Moule” at the beginning of his text. (Figure 1)
Figures 1 and 2: (Combined)
The Moule text is much less easy to
obtain than Gernet’s, but very much worth the effort. His map, which is a
western projection, is more detailed and is “camera-ready,” as it were, to be
superimposed over a digital elevation map. Unfortunately, the Moule map is
unknown in Hangzhou.
When I interviewed the Director, Shao
Qun[4],
of the Hangzhou Antiquities Office in 2004, she said this map was not in the
archives there, nor any other maps done by foreign scholars, but that Beijing
University was currently undertaking a survey of the protected area. There clearly have been discontinuities in
the historical record during the time of Mao, but the city of Hangzhou is
moving aggressively to reclaim the history of its rich cultural heritage.
In the meantime, there is an opportunity
to make some conjectures which were impossible before about the terrain a
visitor may have seen in the 13th century. A central question is,
“Where are the foundations of the “Da Nei?” The Da Nei was the central palace
of the emperor in Sung times and would have been the place where a
distinguished visitor might have an audience.
Once the Moule map is superimposed over
the digital elevation model and rectified[5] with respect to landmarks such as the Su Causeway, the tip of the Lei Fung
Peninsula and the center of the Alter of Heaven, the palace falls quite clearly
in the city near what is now named Sung Cheng Road. Figure 3 shows the Moule
map “draped” in 3Dem over the Zhejiang model.[6]
For display purposes, I’ve chosen a black outline over a white background.
It is always a challenge to select the
most viewable slide, especially within the constraints of this paper. Nevertheless,
Figure 3 is a 3D visualization of the Moule map showing the outlines of the Da
Nei. Figure 3 looks to the north; Figure 4 to the West. The map fits the
territory like a glove, showing especially the route of Wansongling Road
through the pass (Fig. 4, far right, dotted line).
Figures 3: Overlay Palace Area;
Figure 4: The Dai Nei
With conscientious rectification, what
is dependable in one part of the map will permit a dependable extrapolation to
unknown areas. The rough rectification using these large and obvious features
defined the area of the Palace. In turn, walking through the palace area can
permit further rectification with respect to other geographical features, in
particular, valleys and entrances to valleys, as we shall see below. Figure 4 is an overlay of GPS tracks of my
walk in the vicinity of the palace in 2003.
Figure 5 also shows the current best
estimate of the coordinates of the Palace corners7]
and GPS tracks in the area. Figure 6
shows a more distant view from the vicinity of the East Gate. This would be the
view a visitor would have in the 13th century and would have been
the view that Marco Polo might have seen as he approached the palace. It is
also the view with which one expert, Lu Jun[8],
concurred as showing the likely location of the palace.
Figures 5 :
Best Estimate
6 East Gate View (Changed from Beijing, 6/2/2020 - Adding The Red Hiking Line)
The Palace rests under Phoenix Hill from this view, “like a
calligrapher’s table.” With repeated
visits, I am confident that the visualization is consistent with Moule’s intent
in the placement of the Palace. The northern part is located in an area called
now the “Chinese Medicine Factory.” It is said that Mao ordered the factory
built on these foundations when he entered Hangzhou in 1949. Shao Qun said that
permission has now been secured to survey this area, which to this point has
been off limits to archaeologists. In Moule’s
reconstruction, there is a road through the Palace which turns north to connect
on the right to North Gate and on the left to Wansongling and West Lake.
Although the 2000 Tourist map showed the
Palace of the Southern Sung far to the west, there is consensus among locals
that the palace was in the area noted. The question is precisely where. Many
local citizens will tell you that it is in the area of the “Chinese Medicine
Factory.” This facility is in several parts and extends to the south where
Moule placed the two southern gates of the palace wall. In Figure five, one can
see red tracks running east to west across the Da Nei. These tracks are from a
walk along a street bisecting the current placement of the Da Nei. It is my
surmise that this street is located along the path that in the 13th
century would have moved through the palace area to intersect with the North
Road. Today it is the site of a colorful and active farmer’s market on weekend
mornings.
There are geographical features that
support this. In the protected area there are paths which lead away from the
east side of the Da Nei in natural ways: to the area of the north gate on the
east and Wansong Pass to the west. A path leads up the valley to the
newly-reconstructed kiln area near the West Gate. What the visitor here
discovers is that many of Moule’s places are acknowledged in present-day
Hangzhou. A modern gate is placed precisely where Moule’s map would indicate,
though without signage. Although not
noted on Moule’s map, Gernet notes the presence of a kiln in the vicinity of
imperial palace[9].
Not all of the paths noted on Moule’s
map have left modern vestiges. The southern portion of the road on the Da Nei’s
west side is lost in a ravine or would be on the east side of large wall that
is a part of the medicine factory.
Figures 7 :
“Whose woods face one another” - Valley
Figure 8: Detail
But other geographic features are
striking. It is said in Marco Polo’s Travels that the king would often sport
with his concubines and that “... after they tired they went into these woods
which faced one another....”[10]
The sides of the valley leading to West Gate and the kiln are more even than
those of the valleys on either side. The inference is inviting that this is the
valley “whose woods faced each other”, i.e., the valley of the emperor’s
pleasure garden. [Figures 7 and 8]. No pools are currently here, but the
topography would imply that there could well be a cascade of small pools placed
on this terrain [Figure 8]. Notice that the red GPS tracks closely follow the
contours of the terrain. This is an additional cross-check on the rectification
of the model.
What did Marco Polo see? Did he even visit Hangzhou? Without entering
the debate directly, I do want to acknowledge works such as Frances Wood’s Did
Marco Polo Go to China?[11]
On the other hand, I’m struck by how geographical features seem to confirm
aspects of his narrative. He would most likely have entered from the East Gate of the palace
wall, situated on a hill overlooking the palace, now occupied by a radio/transmitting
station (point 1) of Figure 9. He might have proceeded as described in Travels[12]
through the Da Nei. He would then have seen the paths which continued on to
West Lake [Figure : points 4, 5, and 6]
Figures 9 :
From East Gate to West Lake
Figure 10: Through Wansong Pass
The route is different today. In Figure
10 one can follow the red GPS track through Wansong Pass from the Palace area
to West Lake in the distance. According to Moule, in Sung times, the approach
would been over the left ridge of the woods which “face each other and then up
over the right ridge and then through the pass. The reason for this “up and
down” route may well have been flooding in those times along the lower modern
route.
CONCLUSION
While the temptations are very great to
delve even more deeply into these non-philosophical areas, the author’s main
interest is in visualization and a virtual museum of the Phoenix Hill area.
Shao Qun of the Hangzhou Antiquities Office said that the first priority for
Phoenix Hill was preservation, followed by a survey, followed by education. She
said Beijing University was currently doing a survey of the archaeological
legacy and will undoubtedly the final arbiter in China on the location of the
palace. But the possibilities are very great through open architecture
visualization programs such as VTP[13]
and others to create a rich virtual world with geo-referenced terrain,
populated with appropriate vegetation, CAD-designed buildings, and a variety of
historical and other annotations, hidden and manifest, available to “curate”
the exhibit.[14]
There are additional recent Chinese
texts on Sung architecture and on the hills of Hangzhou, including Phoenix
Hill.[15]
In taking the next steps in this project
I would like to work cooperatively with Chinese institutions, including the Hangzhou
Antiquities Office and Beijing University’s Phoenix Hill Survey Team, in the
“Education” phase of the development cycle in creating a museum-quality virtual
Phoenix Hill.
ENDNOTES
[1]
Moule, A.
C. Arthur Christopher 1873-1957. Quinsai; with other notes on Marco Polo.
Cambridge, 1958 (first published in 1957)
[2]周斌
zhoubin 浙江大学农业遥感与信息技术应用研究所 and his graduate student Xin
Wang.
[3] Gernet, Jacques. Daily life in
China, on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion, 1250-1276. Translated by H. M.
Wright, Stanford, 1962
[4]
[1]邵群 Shao Qun, Cultural Relics Department of Phoenix
Hill, Dean of the Cultural Relics Department, interview, July 2004
[5]
3Dem is
one of several excellent applications for visualization. It is available at http://www.visualizationsoftware.com/3dem/
ERDAS is another at http://gis.leica-geosystems.com/
Finally, ArcView: http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/arcview/
[6] Rectification is, of course, ongoing,
but the Da Nei coordinates have remained stable through many cross-checks.
These cross-checks test the rectification by walking projected routes and also
testing the several software applications (ERDAS, 3Dem, etc.,) against each
other.
[7]
Coordinates
for the "Da Nei" Central Palace Foundations
Latitude Longitude
North West Corner: 30.2269 120.16192
Southwest Corner: 30.2251 120.16195
Southeast Corner: 30.2251 120.16285
Northeast Corner 30.2269 120.16285
[8]陆君
Lu
Jun, Antiquities Clerk, Wu Hill, interview, July 2004
[9]
Gernet, p.
84
[10]
Gernet, p.
120
[11]
Wood,
Frances, Did Marco Polo Go to China? Westview Press, 1995
[12]
Marco
Polo, quoted in Gernet, pp. 119-120
[13]
VTP for
“Visual Terrain Project” at http://vterrain.org/
[14]
Ongoing
efforts in this regard will be available at http://www.cpp.edu/~jcmanley
[15] Hills of Hangzhou and Phoenix Hill (in Chinese)
