Catch a Sunrise Before Time at China’s Oldest Observatory

Liu Jue

The Yellow River township of Taosi hosts a 4,000-year-old solar observatory with ancient archaeological treasures underfoot

As Yang Yulong adjusted his camera perched on its tripod, he started to get impatient. “Is it time?”

With everyone still drowsy, it took a few moments before anyone answered. It is 4:40 in the morning, but our group of four had already been up for an hour, having spent 45 minutes traveling on the highway and then on a section of dark, bumpy country road. “No, the sunrise isn’t for another 20 minutes,” someone finally replied. Unperturbed, Yang, a retired amateur photographer in his 60s, returned to the task of angling his tripod back and forth, and tweaking the settings on his camera to be ready for the big moment.

After all, he wasn’t trying to capture just any sunrise: This was a sunrise at what is believed to be China’s earliest solar observatory.

To people not familiar with the area, this ancient site in the small township of Taosi in Linfen, Shanxi province, has a peculiar appearance. Under the dim morning stars, a crescent terrace rises slightly above a vast wheat field. Thirteen thick pillars stand side by side, looming over the early visitors, forming a bow-shaped structure arching southeast. A close inspection reveals that the gaps between the monoliths are only a few centimeters apart, except for one large gap on the northern end. A small round platform sits at the center of the terrace, from which three polished masonry lines on the ground radiate toward three specific apertures. Over the pillars, barely visible in the morning haze, a gentle hill stretches across the horizon.

While my traveling companions were busy getting ready to capture the critical moment, I strolled among the pillars, trying hard but failing to discern the labels on them in the faint glimmer of twilight. Distracted, I stepped into the uneven crop fields to find a funeral wreath in bright colors on a small mound—a tomb. These are a common sight in rural China; when the population grows but farmland becomes scarce, the deceased are forced closer to the living.

One might be forgiven for assuming that Taosi is just like any other village in the area, but this town holds a treasure trove of rich archaeological discoveries. Back in 2003, a team of Shanxi archaeologists dug up the ancient foundation of an earthen wall. While they would normally take the structure at face value (as a very old wall), they noticed something unusual in the trenches—lots of narrow grooves that were clearly human-made, forming a series of gaps between the pillars of rammed earth.

In addition to the discovery of a large terrace in the area, pottery shards and the structure’s southeast orientation led researchers to suspect that this area once had a specific religious and astronomical purpose. Scientists calculated the observation point based on the position of the pillars, finding a round observation base—the base on which I was now standing.

Overjoyed, the archaeologists then spent the next two years carefully reconstructing the monoliths and their hypothetical observations. Using data collected and corrected for astronomical changes over time, they finally confirmed the function of this ancient structure: an ancient calendar used thousands of years ago.

For instance, on the morning of the summer solstice, the sun would shine through the 12th aperture from the south, while through the second aperture, the rising sun of the winter solstice could be observed. And the seventh aperture was used to determine the spring and autumnal equinoxes. However, study of the rest of the apertures remained fruitless, as they were not related to any important dates known to us today. Scientists thus suspected that the ancient residents lived by an archaic calendar lost to history.

While the discovery was groundbreaking, it was not totally unexpected. The southern part of Shanxi has long been known for its prehistoric relics. Nurtured by the Yellow River and many of its tributaries, the area is regarded as the cradle of early Chinese civilization. The small town of Taosi only has a population of a little over 23,000 that largely subsists on growing wheat and corn, but beneath their farmland lay invaluable cultural and historical treasures. Since the 1950s, numerous relics have been excavated, revealing a grand ancient city. Carbon dating puts the metropolis all the way back to the late Neolithic period, 3,900 to 4,500 years ago. Covering an area of up to 2.8 million square meters, the Taosi site is the largest prehistoric city ever discovered in China.

Though this was already his third tour, Yang still brimmed with enthusiasm for Taosi. A Linfen local living in the city’s central district and a proud advocate of local history and culture, Yang was serving as our guide. “At first we didn’t know the location of this site and had to ask the village chief to lead the way,” he told us.

“But when we arrived at his courtyard one morning, he was still sound asleep, immune to shouting or knocking on the door,” Yang recalled with a laugh. “When finally a woman in her pajamas came out of the neighboring house and asked what was going on, we were in such a hurry that we asked the poor woman, who turned out to be the relative of the village chief, to show us the way; we didn’t even give her time to change!”

We had no old lady in her pajamas with us this time, but we did have the rare opportunity to repeat one of the oldest rituals of an ancient civilization. Soon, we were fully awake, infected by Yang’s high spirits as the morning twilight grew. As the earth slowly rotated into place, the sunshine touched the ground and everything came into focus. The first ray of sunshine radiated over the mountaintop and through the pillars. A small ball of fire revealed itself and tinted the sky with a warm hue.

Of course, given the random date we selected for our visit, we didn’t expect to see the sunrise in a particular aperture from the exact spot of the observation point. But a slightly shifted point of view would immediately grant the effect—as long as the sun, the gap, and your eyes (and cameras, in this case) were lined up correctly. After a brief moment, the sun rose above the pillars, and a bright sunny day was upon us.

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