Trace of History-Aihui Ancient city

Aihui Ancient city is located about 30 kilometers southwest of Heihe city. As an important historical humanistic tourist attraction in the local, its history can be traced back about 300 hundred years ago. According to "Aihui County" records, the name of Aihui originated from Aihui river in the east of Heilongjiang river, meaning "Heilongjiang City". It was the biggest city along the Heilongjiang river back then. As the political, economic and cultural center of Heilongjiang region during that period, the city saw its best of the time in the history.



Walking inside the city, you would get strong sense of historical traces. I tryied to imagine what it was like hundreds years ago, must be very interesting. About the main business street of Aihui city, some Russian guy named Mark once had a vivid description in his journal ages ago. As it goes, “After we went through the fort gate, a long and wide street was in front us. It was parallel to the river and stretched for miles.There were a lot stores and restaurant along the street, with signboard filled with Chinese and Manchu Script, some were even using flags with different shapes, like dragon. All of this made this place look wonderful.”



Many famous people in the history were from Aihui city and it had 9 generals successively. When it comes to the 9 generals, there was an interesting story. Legend has it that when the city was in construction, some fengshui master came here and was amazed by its beautiful sceneries. He told people this was a treasure land and they were going to have 10 generals in the years to come. But only on one condition, they had to built a tower to make sure everything went perfectly. So the people did what they were being told. Unexpectedly, a butterfly flied from the ground when they were digging the foundation of the tower. The master screamed, “The Fengshui of this place has been broken, you can only have 9 generals now!”



However, in reality, it was not the butterfly that destroyed?the city, it was the Russian invaders that broke the peace. Kuixing Pavilion witnessed the horrible invasion of Russian. It is about 16 meters high and is also the best place to look far in the distance. In the year of 1900, everything in the city was rubbled, only Kuixing Pavilion remained well after the invasion. It was once used as important military spot during the war, so no tourists were allowed to visit. Standing on top of the pavilion, you would get a panorama picture of the whole city and river.

The new-built Aihui city also have many temples with different purposes and different gods such as Chenghuang Temple, Longwang Temple,Wen temple, Guandi Temple and others. Till today, the history of Aihui city still keeps reminding every Chinese that in any time you have to be strong and powerful to keep the invaders away.