Jin Fan Screen John

This paper is a historical text of enthnography on Weisuo (garrison town). Based on the fieldwork in Ningwu county in Shanxi Province, this paper took the frontier Weisuo as a cut-in point and placed it in the cultural scenery of the frontier areas between Shanxi Province and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. After that, it was in order to rediscover the value of "city" in a big system of civilizations.As we know, there were few anthropological studies focused on Weisuo in a long time. Historians led the current Weisuo studies. They usually paid close attention to some particular areas of Weisuo, and formed some different research approaches such as history of system, history of economic, historical geography, social history. But all of them were lack of the research paths on Weisuo as total social facts. And then, they extended the research field from the system to the city. In response to that, this paper started with the city morphology of Weisuo. In current time, the research view of economic geography such as G.William Skinner led the field of urban studies. Beside the market, yamen was another important part of Chinese cities'dual-structure. As a part of the Great Well defense system, Weisuo was a typical city which set the military authority in a most important position. Thus, this anthropology studies concerned with Weisuo was divided into two parts:In the first part, this paper focused on the town morphology such as geographic structure, myths and legends, city site, spatial arrangement, ideal world. As a combination of farming with animal husbandry, Ningwu areas were full of mixed culture between Mongolian and Chinese affected the local myths structure, and something became the structural factors of Ningwu Town. As a frontier Weisuo, Ningwu Town should follow the architecture rules of cities of imperial China. This rules included two parts: site selection and spatial arrangement. From the folklore of the Ningwu town's establishment, "Changshan snake potential "was used as its site selection pattern. It was followed the Feng-shui principle, and then chose the fortunate site as the city site. Moreover, local people used the religionary landscaping to improve the feng-shui scenery. After that, Ningwu Town was to be established in 1467, and it was extended and formed a city pattern called "phoenix". The inner part of the town made the Wanhua spring as the coordinate centre. Besides it, the town god's temple, the Guandi temple and the Confucian temple became the town's three ceremony centres, and they represented the town's three symbolic systems. Furthermore, temples in the suburbs and the pilgrimages presented a hierarchical ideal world which included the town, the suburb and the countryside.In the second part, this paper focused on the historical process of Ningwu Town. It contained "the times of Weisuo", "from Weisuo to the state" and "from Tianxia to the nation", corresponded to Ming Dynasty, Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China. During the times of Weisuo, Ningwu Town was conditioned by frontier situation, and then this garrison town was upgraded a fortress town in 1540. As a barrier and an intermediary place between Mongolian and the Han people, this town was quartered by the Company Commander of Shanxi and his officers, and it reached the summit for its military times. After that, Ningwu Town was changed to Ningwu State in 1725. During the process of its transformation, government officials took the civilized enlightenment as a priority to make the town reach a civilized state. In the meanwhile, the frontier trade became the mainstream between Mongolian and the Han people, and Ningwu Town approached its commercial climax. Around the 1911 Revolution, many modern things such as new school education, railway, the system of company appeared in this frontier town. After the anti-Japanese war broke out in 1937, Japanese army occupied this town and destroyed the city morphology. That looked Ningwu county today.In a word, this paper tried to make a historical anthropology study on Ningwu Town's morphology, cosmology and life history. Based on the research way of "Inner Asian Frontiers" by Owen Lattimore, this paper showed the town morphology of Weisuo as a total social fact. After all, the frontier town as a combination of many relations gave us a really rich and complete world. This way which researched a big system of civilizations by city may be a theoretical significance.