The Honglujing Stele () is a tablet 3 meters wide, 1.8 meters tall, & 2 meters thick. It has 29
Chinese characters
Chinese characters are logographs used Written Chinese, to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represe ...
written on it.
It is the only
Tang dynasty
The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, c=唐朝), or the Tang Empire, was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907, with an Wu Zhou, interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed ...
stele found in
Manchuria
Manchuria is a historical region in northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day northeast China and parts of the modern-day Russian Far East south of the Uda (Khabarovsk Krai), Uda River and the Tukuringra-Dzhagdy Ranges. The exact ...
. It mentions the founding king of
Balhae
Balhae,, , ) also rendered as Bohai or Bohea, and called Jin (; ) early on, was a multiethnic kingdom established in 698 by Dae Joyeong (Da Zuorong). It was originally known as the Kingdom of Jin (震, Zhen) until 713 when its name was changed ...
,
King Go.
The stele is currently located in the
Tokyo Imperial Palace
is the main residence of the Emperor of Japan. It is a large park-like area located in the Chiyoda, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Chiyoda district of the Chiyoda, Tokyo, Chiyoda ward of Tokyo and contains several buildings including the where the Emperor h ...
. It was taken by the Japanese from the Chinese city of
Lüshun in circa 1907 after the
Russo-Japanese War
The Russo-Japanese War (8 February 1904 – 5 September 1905) was fought between the Russian Empire and the Empire of Japan over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and the Korean Empire. The major land battles of the war were fought on the ...
. Chinese researchers are now studying it for the first time.
External links
"1,300-year-old stele eyed by Chinese, Japanese archaeologists", article from ''The Peoples Daily'', 1 June 2006{{DEFAULTSORT:Honglujing Stele
Art and cultural repatriation
Balhae
Tang dynasty art