It was not until the Song Dynasty that Cheng Dachang made an insightful statement about Shanglinyuan in his book "Lu Yong": "The forest above Qin Dynasty, its marginal reach, is difficult to study in detail!" Observing Yichun in Shuijing Note, Yun: This is the former site of Qin entering the forest. "Historical Records" Shanglin said: "Shanglin Garden in Weinan is the court, first the front hall. ".Then Yichun and Afang are the old places of Qinyuan. "
According to Cheng Dachang's position, Yichun Palace and Epang Palace were both in the gardens of Qin Dynasty. The location of Epang Palace is very clear, but where is Yichun Temple? There is a note in Li Daoyuan's Notes on Water Classics Wei Shui in the Northern Wei Dynasty: "(Waterlogged) water flows out of the waterlogged valley in Nanshan, reaches Yichun View in the north and Jinghu County in the northeast. Waterlogged water flows out from the north and joins the muddy water. (Hey) The water goes out of Yichun Guanbei, the northeast into waterlogging, and the north into Wei, that is, Shanglin's hometown. " The view of Yichun mentioned here refers to a view of Taiwan Province located in the west of Huxian County, south of Huanbei Water. However, there is another garden in Qujiangchi, east of Shanglin Garden in Qin Dynasty, namely Yichun Garden. "Qian Shou was buried in Yichun Garden of Du Nan II" in Historical Records of Qin Shihuang refers to this garden; When Yan Shigu commented on this garden in the Tang Dynasty, he also talked about "the land of Qujiangchi today". Because there is Yichun Palace in the garden, later generations often confuse the Yichun Palace in Qujiangchi with the Yichun view in Huxian County. On this point, Yan Shigu has already made a clarification when he wrote the biography of Han Dong Fang Shuo: "Yichun Palace is also in the southeast of Chang 'an. ..... At home, it is naturally Yichun Guaner, west of Chang' an. " Obviously, although Yichun has the same name, it is a palace and a different place.
It can be seen that the hometown of Qin Shanglin Garden should be in the west of Jinhu County to the east of the Epang Palace site of Xi 'an Third Bridge. Today, the vast area south of the Weihe River in Xianyang is the center of Shanglinyuan in Qin Dynasty. The expansion of Shanglinyuan began in the period of Emperor Wu of Han Dynasty. According to Han Dong Chuan, in the third year of the Yuan Dynasty (BC 138), Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty ordered King Wu Qiushou, a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine, to expand Shanglin Garden in the area south of Sanqiao Town, north of the mountain, east of Zhouzhi and west of Qujiang Pool, and to requisition all the cultivated land and grassland of the people in this area to build various landscapes in the garden. Later, Shanglinyuan further expanded eastward and northward, extending to Weihe River in the north and Chanba East in the east, forming an unprecedented scale and entering its heyday.
At the beginning of its construction, such a huge royal garden was dissuaded by Dong Fangshuo, a frequent assistant minister, on the grounds that "the country was short of use and the industry of agriculture and mulberry was taken away". After Emperor Zhao and Xuan Di arrived, because the imperial court was overwhelmed, the officials who managed Shanglin Garden were all abolished, and the ponds and fields occupied by Yichun Garden were returned to the poor. When he became emperor, he gave the "three vertical" (east, south and west) gardens to civilians. At the end of the Western Han Dynasty, in the first year of Emperor Huang (AD 20), Wang Mang demolished more than ten palaces in Shanglinyuan, took its tiles and built nine ancestral halls. What followed was the battle for the capital between Wang Mang's regime and the red-eye rebels, which made Shanglinyuan suffer a devastating disaster.
"Xi Du Fu" said: "See the reason in the old city", indicating that Shanglinyuan was in ruins when Ban Gu wrote "Xi Du Fu" in the early years of the Eastern Han Dynasty. Shanglinyuan has existed in the history of China for about 240 years from the Qin Dynasty to the Western Han Dynasty.