Wei expedition reaches the Li river; Rouran flee
The Wei shu basic annals record that on the dingwei day of the fifth lunar month of Shenjia 2 (AD 429) the Wei expedition halted at the desert, left its baggage and with light cavalry and spare horses reached the Li river (栗水), and the Rouran (蠕蠕), terrified, burned their dwellings and fled west without trace.
What this does and does not establish
An official history compiled 551-554 by Wei Shou under the Northern Qi from Northern Wei records; the English is an AI working translation. The fourth-month entry records the emperor setting out on this northern campaign; the annals refer to the Rouran biography for details.
- Read through an AI working translation.
- Region
- East Asia
- Theme
- Politics and institutions
- Kind of record
- Placed in a year. A source places this in one year. It is listed under that year; no day precision is invented.
How it is dated
- Date reference
- 神䴥 2 (神䴥二年 as numbered by the annals), lunar month 5
- How we use it
- Year assigned from the lunar month under which the Wei shu annals enter the item; the sexagenary day was not converted to a Julian day.
The date reference is this project’s reading of the source’s date. It may give an era name, a reign or a calendar in a normalised form rather than in the source’s own words; the dating notes say what the source prints.
Dating notes from the research record
Lunar month 5 of 神䴥 2 = Julian 429-06-18 to 429-07-16, per Academia Sinica 兩千年中西曆轉換 year table(s) 神䴥2.html (sha256 66d4b4c2c92e…); the whole month lies in AD 429.
File names and line numbers in these notes, and in the limits above, refer to the project’s retained copies of the cited sources. Names such as calendar_headers are the project’s calendar look-ups, and “the investigator” is the research step that prepared the record.
Sources and quoted text
Line and character numbers under “Location” refer to the project’s retained copy of the source. For database rows, “Edition” names the batch of rows that was fetched together.
Source 1 · Supports the statement
Wei shu (Book of Wei), basic annals
Wei Shou (魏收), Northern Qi court historian
The credit or link shown here was corrected after an audit of the retained source.
Quoted text (Classical Chinese)
五月丁未，次于沙漠，舍輜重，輕騎兼馬，至栗水，蠕蠕震怖，焚燒廬舍，絕跡西走。AI working translation into English; not official or authoritative
Fifth month, dingwei day: [the army] halted at the desert, left the baggage, and with light cavalry each leading spare horses reached the Li river; the Rouran were terrified, burned their huts and fled west, leaving no trace.
Source credit and reuse conditions recorded for this source: Source: Wei shu, juan 4上, zh.wikisource transcription (revision 2318474). English renderings are AI working translations, not published translations.
Exact source version
0ebe736ce6c2465660f92d3bc9e6e90351e4073c10d5f38c50daecc57c0ba384Checks and changes
Source checked 2026-11-05. An independent AI evidence review supports this bounded, attributed wording. That review does not guarantee historical truth. How records are checked
No correction has been made to this record’s statement or limits.
Revision s1h_429_wei_1
Exact revision fingerprint
a527500bebd2960d131820fb7935b785686516874419fce95a569ed37e6f821b