Zhao Xin City was a Xiongnu town beyond the Gobi desert, at a mountain called Tianyan.[1] It took its name from Zhao Xin, a Hu chief whom the Han had made a marquis and who had gone back to the chanyu in 123 BC.[1] The Xiongnu kept stored grain there.[2]

The grain of 119 BC

In the spring of 119 BC Wei Qing and Huo Qubing each led 50,000 horsemen north, with several hundred thousand foot soldiers and carriers behind them.[2] Wei Qing met the chanyu north of the desert and fought him until dark. The chanyu broke out with a few hundred horse and rode northwest.[1] The Han followed. At dawn they had gone more than 200 li and had not found him.[2] They then reached Mount Tianyan and Zhao Xin’s town. There they found the grain of the Xiongnu and fed the army from it. The army stayed one day. It burned the rest of the grain in the town and went home.[2] The chapter on the Xiongnu says only that the Han went as far as Zhao Xin’s town and turned back.[3]

The Han Shu chapter on Wei Qing and Huo Qubing repeats the account of the grain.[4] Its chapter on the Xiongnu has only the march to Zhao Xin’s town and the return. It adds that the Han had planned the march because Zhao Xin had advised the chanyu to stay north of the desert, where he thought the Han could not reach.[5]

The town

The sources give no more of the town than its name and its grain.[2] Some scholars hold that the Xiongnu did not build large walled towns, because the Chinese armies could take them easily. Zhao Xin, they say, came from the walled towns of Turkestan and had a walled town built for himself inside the Xiongnu country.[6] They regard the grain as a store of barley or wheat. It cites the commentator Yan Shigu for the remark that the grain was food for people. It adds that the town had been emptied before the Han came.[6]

The town appears once more in 90 BC. When the Han sent three armies against the Xiongnu, the chanyu sent all his baggage away. He moved it to the Zhiju river, north of Zhao Xin City.[5]

The grain of Zhao Xin City is one of the notices on which the question of Xiongnu farming rests.

References

  1. ^ a b c Shiji, juan 110; Shiji, juan 111
  2. ^ a b c d e Shiji, juan 111; Han Shu, juan 55
  3. ^ Shiji, juan 110
  4. ^ Han Shu, juan 55
  5. ^ a b Han Shu, juan 94
  6. ^ a b Ögel 2015, p. 40

Sources

Literature

  • Bahaeddin Ögel, Büyük Hun İmparatorluğu Tarihi II (2015)

Related

What links here1

Institutions and Titles
Xiongnu Agriculture

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Zhao Xin City.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/places/zhao-xin-city/

Last revised: 8 November 2026