In 1996, Feng Kaiping came to Jindeng Temple to guard the temple for about a year. One day when the temple was about to close, two female pilgrims rushed to Jindeng Temple to burn incense.
The two female pilgrims knelt down to worship in front of each statue of gods and Buddhas, and observed them carefully.
Feng Kaiping did not raise any suspicion, he just thought that they were very pious, and at first glance they were true believers.
Jindeng Temple
The two female pilgrims finished burning incense and kowtow. It was already dark, so they asked Feng Kaiping if they could stay overnight in the temple and go down the mountain tomorrow morning.
It was difficult for Feng Kaiping to go down the mountain in the dark, and he was not worried about letting two women go down the mountain in the dark.
Moreover, he also had two villagers who helped guard the temple to spend the night in the temple. He was not even worried about the disadvantages that keeping two strange believers would have on the three grown men, so he readily agreed to the request of the two believers. .
He had no premonition about what would happen next.
Feng Kaiping
Feng Kaiping locked the doors of each hall in the temple and went to cook a big pot of porridge for dinner for several people. After finishing the porridge and cleaning up, he arranged rooms for the two female pilgrims and then returned to his residence to sleep.
He didn't sleep well that night. He felt nauseous and couldn't vomit it out. He didn't fall asleep until late at night.
When he got up the next day, Feng Kaiping went to open the doors of each palace as usual. When he came to a palace door, he found that the door lock had been picked open. He opened the door and saw that two holes were left in a row of reliefs in the palace, which were traces left after the reliefs were dug out.
He suddenly felt a chill coming from head to toe, which instantly made his "bones go cold."
Jindeng Temple
Feng Kaiping hurriedly ran to check the room of the two female pilgrims, and sure enough, the room was empty. He then asked two villagers who helped him guard the temple. The two villagers said that they also had Feng Kaiping's symptoms last night.
The three of them realized at this time that the two female pilgrims had drugged the porridge last night. Feng Kaiping asked two villagers to guard the temple, and he went down the mountain to the Yuxiaguan Town Police Station 25 kilometers away to report the crime.
Jindeng Temple is located in Pingshun County, Shanxi Province. It hangs alone on a cliff. It is four kilometers away from the nearest village in a straight line, and the mountain road detours are even longer.
Jindeng Temple
Feng Kaiping came to Jindeng Temple for many years. Jindeng Temple did not have electricity or telephone, and he did not have a mobile phone. When happened to be robbed, it was difficult for the temple guards to find rescue.
When Feng Kaiping first came to Jindeng Temple, he just felt unsafe. So he used incense money and hired two villagers to help guard the property at a salary of eight yuan per person per day. However, the cultural relics were still stolen.
Jindeng Temple was built in the Northern Zhou Dynasty. During the Ming Dynasty from Zhengde to Wanli, it was expanded through four dynasties and many grottoes were excavated. Statues and reliefs are of high cultural relic value.
Jindeng Temple
Some lawless people coveted the cultural relics of the Jindeng Temple. Before being drugged by the female pilgrim, Feng Kaiping had encountered people who tried to steal , but he had not even heard of the female pilgrim's method of stealing. heard about it.
Drugged and stolen, it was not fatal. Soon after, Feng Kaiping encountered a group of robbing people and almost lost his life.
That time, four strong young men came to the Golden Lantern Temple together. At that time, there was only one villager who helped guard the temple. Feng Kaiping felt that the four of them were not good people, so he and the villagers followed the four of them.
Jindeng Temple
In a hall, a young man suddenly turned his head to look at Feng Kaiping and asked him something inexplicable: "Will this Buddha statue move?"
Feng Kaiping replied: "How do I know? ."
As soon as he finished speaking, the young man suddenly grabbed his neck, and his accomplices also rushed forward and pushed him to the ground.
These gangsters had already planned. One of the gangsters took out a hemp rope from his pocket and wanted to tie Feng Kaiping's hands and feet. Feng Kaiping struggled desperately and shouted.
Another gangster took out a dagger and stabbed him in the waist, and blood gushed out.
Feng Kaiping
Feng Kaiping and the villagers were unable to fight against the four young, strong and armed gangsters. In the end, Feng Kaiping was tied up hand and foot and locked up in the kitchen, while the villagers were locked up in a side room.
Fortunately, Feng Kaiping was not seriously injured. He heard the sound of "dong dong dong" hitting the wall and anxiously tried to break free.
Just when he was using a saw in the kitchen to cut the tied hemp rope, his limbs suddenly began to cramp violently due to the poor blood flow due to the binding, and the pain made him roll on the ground.
When he finally broke the rope, it was quiet outside. He ran out and saw that the gangsters had not taken away the statues or reliefs, but the raised parts of some reliefs had been smashed by the gangsters.
These gangsters have no "technical content" but are very violent. They were unable to take away the cultural relics and almost killed Feng Kaiping.
Reliefs at Jindeng Temple
Jindeng Temple is located far away from human settlements and the road is rugged. During the many years Feng Kaiping went to Jindeng Temple, usually only pilgrims from nearby came to offer incense.
The vast majority of pilgrims are elderly. Even if they encounter looting of cultural relics, their ability to help is limited. Moreover, pilgrims usually go down the mountain after noon. In the afternoon, basically only the temple guards are left, so the gangsters dare to be so rampant.
The constant dangers of guarding the temple scared away the two villagers invited by Feng Kaiping. After changing people several times, no villagers were willing to help Feng Kaiping guard the temple.
Jindeng Temple
Feng Kaiping stayed alone in the temple, and his situation became even more dangerous. He was afraid in his heart, but he thought that if he left, there would be no one to guard the temple, and the cultural relics left by the ancestors would suffer. So he gritted his teeth and persisted.
In the days before there was electricity before 2007, Feng Kaiping guarded the temple alone, which was truly the Qingdeng Ancient Buddha.
During the day, Feng Kaiping cleaned the temple, wiping and inspecting every hall. When the door was closed at six o'clock in the evening, only a kerosene lamp accompanied Feng Kaiping.
Jindeng Temple
"It's so quiet at night", this is Feng Kaiping's deepest feeling about the night at Jindeng Temple.
Being alone was really boring, so Feng Kaiping stood on the edge of the cliff and looked at the villages and towns in the distance, daydreaming about the situation at home. After he was left alone to guard the temple, he rarely went home.
His home is in the county seat. Before the new highway was built in 2018, he had to walk 25 kilometers of mountain roads to catch the bus in Yuxiaguan Town on his way home.
There is only one bus to the county seat at 3:00 pm every day, and the bus to Yuxiaguan Town is only available the next day. It takes him two days to go back home. During these two days, he is worried about something happening to Jindeng Temple.
A corner of Jindeng Temple
Feng Kaiping couldn't see anyone all day long when the weather was foggy and rainy. There was a continuous period of bad weather, which prevented Feng Kaiping from seeing anyone for more than 40 days. When he saw people again, he was aphasic .
really couldn't stand the loneliness, so he bought a radio. It didn't matter what content he listened to. Hearing people's voices was a kind of comfort to him.
There is no running water on the mountain. His drinking water and domestic water come from mountain spring water flowing down from the cracks in the rocks. The spring water mixed with rainwater gathered in a depression in Jindeng Temple, with stagnant green algae floating on the surface.
Jindeng Temple
There is no refrigerator and food cannot be stored. It is not easy to go to Jindeng Temple, and the family and villagers cannot often send rice and noodles to Feng Kaiping.
In addition, in the first few years after arriving at Jindeng Temple, Feng Kaiping's family had a heavy financial burden. He could not afford much rice and noodles, so could only survive on potatoes for a long time.
There is space in Jindeng Temple to grow some vegetables, but the vegetables that were planted were eaten up by the small animals on the mountain before Feng Kaiping could harvest them, leaving only the potatoes buried in the ground for Feng Kaiping.
Feng Kaiping
Food on the mountain is not easy to come by. Feng Kaiping is reluctant to throw away the potatoes with green sprouts. He pinches off the green sprouts and eats them as usual.
Enduring such an "inhuman life", Feng Kaiping stayed at the Golden Lantern Temple for twenty-seven years.
Is he a devout layman? no.Then he must be someone who is keen on studying cultural relics, right? Neither is
. When the number of visitors to Jindeng Temple gradually increased, tourists often asked him some specific questions about the statues and reliefs, but he didn't know anything about them. He only knew that the Golden Lantern Temple began in the Northern Zhou Dynasty, and there was a legend that golden lanterns flew into the temple.
Feng Kaiping
In 2008, the County Cultural Bureau gave Feng Kaiping the position of director of the Jindeng Temple Management Office. At that time, his salary was 1,300 yuan per month. The income level of was not high at the county level at that time.
Feng Kaiping stayed alone at Jindeng Temple for twenty-seven years, relying on a simple belief: "Someone has to do some things."
Feng Kaiping entered the drama school at the age of 13, and was assigned to the county cultural bureau after leaving school. Belongs to the Luozi theater troupe. He never became an actor and had always been doing odd jobs and side jobs.
By the 1990s, with the popularity of television and the rise of popular entertainment, the drama market was in decline, and Feng Kaiping's age was no longer suitable to be a drama actor.
Feng Kaiping
One day in May 1995, Li Yinsheng, a former teacher at Feng Kaiping's drama school and the then county culture director, came to Feng Kaiping's home and said to the 37-year-old Feng Kaiping: "I came to you to invite you. Go to Jindeng Temple to be a cultural relics administrator. The Cultural Affairs Bureau has been choosing candidates. I think you are the most suitable. "
Feng Kaiping never thought that he would be assigned this job. After the director left, Feng Kaiping's wife Meng Ximei came back to tell her. Meng Ximei exploded immediately about this matter.
She felt that Feng Kaiping was not suitable for this job at all. They had two sons and one daughter, and the youngest son was only one year old. Feng Kaiping went to the Jindeng Temple, 60 kilometers away from the county town to become a monk. What would happen to the children?
Seeing Feng Kaiping's hesitation, Meng Ximei put her youngest son into his arms and said angrily: "Ask your son if he agrees to go."
Feng Kaiping
Seeing his wife's attitude, Feng Kaiping fell silent. , he had been thinking about what the director told him in those days. It turns out that the keeper of the Golden Lantern Temple was an old man who never got married. He died of a sudden cerebral infarction when he was over 70 years old. Now he can't find anyone to take over as the keeper of the temple.
No one has been guarding the temple for a long time. What should I do if the ancient Golden Lantern Temple was destroyed? Feng Kaiping did not understand cultural relics, but his immersion in the cultural system gave him a strong awareness of cultural relics.
He knows the significance of Jindeng Temple to the cultural heritage of Shanxi and the cultural heritage of the entire nation . He is not willing to give up his responsibility to protect cultural heritage just because of family ties.
Relief murals in Jindeng Temple
When Meng Ximei calmed down, Feng Kaiping told his wife his thoughts. Meng Ximei didn't say anything for a long time after hearing this, but she no longer stopped him from becoming an eunuch.
As soon as Feng Kaiping became a monk, the burden of taking care of his three children fell on Meng Ximei.
Feng Kaiping gave all his meager salary as a temple keeper to Meng Ximei, but she still had to do some small business alone to maintain the family's expenses.
Meng Ximei sells clothes, opens grocery stores, and sets up catering stalls. Meng Ximei, a woman with three children, runs these businesses alone. The hardships involved are no less difficult than Feng Kaiping.
Feng Kaiping
When Feng Kaiping stayed alone in the temple for a long time and could not leave, Meng Ximei had to go to Feng Kaiping regularly to deliver daily necessities.
It had only been a year since Feng Kaiping went to Jindeng Temple. His child had a hernia operation. Meng Ximei was the only one guarding him in the hospital. Feng Kaiping was guarding the cultural relics at Jindeng Temple without knowing it. The helpless tears of his wife and children at that time were the guilt that he could not forget.
Meng Ximei was suffering from cholecystitis, and Feng Kaiping could not stay by her side for the first time. Twenty days after the operation, Feng Kaiping was able to go home and take care of her for a while.
Her pain had not gone away, and there was no one guarding the Golden Lantern Temple. Feng Kaiping had no choice but to entrust his wife to his mother-in-law and sister-in-law, and hurried back to the mountain.
Feng Kaiping
Due to the failure to keep up with her recovery, Meng Ximei became so thin that she lost her shape half a year later. The condition recurred and she had to go to Taiyuan for surgery. It was not until the day before the surgery that Feng Kaiping found the person to take over and rushed to his wife's side.
Meng Ximei agreed that Feng Kaiping would give him the greatest support if he went to Jindeng Temple to work as a cultural relics administrator.
Before the Chinese New Year in 2005, Meng Ximei and her daughter were involved in a car accident when they were out. Half of Meng Ximei's face was cut by the car window glass, and a piece of flesh fell off her lip. She needed 47 stitches in the hospital. One of her daughter's arms was also fractured in the car accident.
In 2000, the Cultural Affairs Bureau assigned Feng Kaiping a Motorola mobile phone . His brother-in-law wanted to call him to inform him of his wife and daughter's injuries, but Meng Ximei firmly stopped him.
"Tell him how he will go down the mountain if there is no one to take over? What should he do if cultural relics are damaged when he goes down in a hurry? It is better not to let him know, so as not to embarrass him."
Feng Kaiping
It wasn't until the sixth day of the new year that someone from the county came to Jindeng Temple. After offering incense and asking Feng Kaiping about the injuries of his wife and daughter, Feng Kaiping learned that something serious had happened at home.
Many of Feng Kaiping's relatives accused him of not caring about his family and not taking care of the affairs between relatives. "For that little money, you left your family alone. You really have something wrong with your brain."
Without the support of his wife and the understanding of his children, Feng Kaiping would not have been able to stay alone at the Golden Lantern Temple for twenty-seven years. Feng Kaiping’s twenty-seven years of dedication to cultural relics is also the contribution of his entire family.
For nearly half of the past twenty-seven years, Feng Kaiping lived like a primitive man in Jindeng Temple.
Feng Kaiping
In 2007, the Jindeng Temple finally received electricity, but the circuits on the mountain became terrifying when it rained. The blue light on the wires "chichi", as if it was about to burst out with destructive power at any time.
Every rainy day, Feng Kaiping would go to sleep in a room without electricity and continue to let the oil lamp accompany him. The electricity brought another kind of trouble to Feng Kaiping.
However, the benefits of having electricity to Feng Kaiping definitely outweigh the worries. He can use his mobile phone freely and no longer has to worry about running out of battery power and having to go down the mountain to a villager's house to recharge.
Three years after it was powered on, the Jindeng Temple was equipped with advanced surveillance equipment and the new highway was built to increase the number of tourists. The safety situation of the Jindeng Temple has been greatly improved. Feng Kaiping guarded the temple alone and was no longer as worried as before.
Feng Kaiping
In 2014, the local government began large-scale protective renovation and reinforcement of the Jindeng Temple. During the Spring Festival of that year, Meng Ximei spent time with Feng Kaiping and his wife on the mountain for the first time.
In the past, when his children were young and the Jindeng Temple was dangerous, Feng Kaiping never dared to let his wife stay overnight in the Jindeng Temple.
At this time, his children were older and had gone out to work. The temple was connected to electricity and life was much more convenient. There were workers renovating the Jindeng Temple on the mountain at night. Safety was not a problem, so Feng Kaiping dared to keep his wife in the Jindeng Temple to celebrate the New Year.
However, the improvement in the security situation of Jindeng Temple did not reduce Feng Kaiping's sense of responsibility.
During the several years of the renovation project, the mountain was crowded with workers. The workers cooked meals and invited Feng Kaiping to eat with them. Feng Kaiping would scoop out a bowl of rice, add some chopsticks and vegetables, and bring it back to the temple to eat. He always remembers that it is his duty to take good care of cultural relics.
Jindeng Temple
During the years when the Jindeng Temple was being renovated, his family came to visit him and gave him rice, noodles, milk powder, and vegetable oil. It was more convenient for him to stay on the mountain overnight.
However, after the project was completed, for the safety of his family, he still stayed alone at the temple . The safety was only improved compared to before, and he would not let his family take risks with him. After the renovation project of
was completed, a China Unicom base station was installed on the mountain, and the mobile phone signal was greatly improved. Making and receiving calls in the temple were relatively smooth. In the past, when he made a phone call, he had to travel a long way to find a signal, and sometimes the call would be interrupted.
The renovation of Jindeng Temple
has attracted more tourists, which is another thing that makes Feng Kaiping happy. At the same time, the increase in tourists also caused Feng Kaiping some displeasure. Some tourists threw money into the pool of Jindeng Temple for good luck, and some even washed their hands and feet in the pool.
Feng Kaiping also had to get his drinking water from the pool. He tried to dissuade tourists again and again, but could not put an end to these bad behaviors. As time went by, he no longer wasted his words.
However, most people in society respect Feng Kaiping's work. In 2017, Feng Kaiping was selected as the annual Internet Touching Person by "China Internet Affairs·Touching 2017" .
In 2018, he won two consecutive "Sixth Changzhi City Moral Model of Dedication and Dedication" and "National Advanced Worker in the Cultural Relics System" awards.
Feng Kaiping received the award
When he went to Beijing to receive the cultural relics system award, Feng Kaiping specially brought Meng Ximei with him.
Over the years of guarding Jindeng Temple, Feng Kaiping has never been anywhere, and even Meng Ximei can't go anywhere to take care of the family alone. Feng Kaiping feels that he owes his wife the most, and he must take his wife with him when he goes to Beijing. When
came to Beijing, the leaders of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage accompanied Feng Kaiping and his party to visit the Forbidden City, Badaling and other scenic spots, and expressed their high respect to the outstanding cultural relics workers at the grassroots level.
Meng Ximei was very happy. Not only did she experience the beauty of the capital for the first time, but she also felt the importance of Feng Kaiping's work. She was glad that her many years of efforts had not been in vain.
Feng Kaiping
Feng Kaiping's deeds also moved many netizens. After a charity team interviewed Feng Kaiping, they launched the "Cultural Relics Umbrella Holder Guardian Plan".
There are many grassroots cultural relics administrators like Feng Kaiping across the country who are protecting cultural relics in difficult environments. They hope to arouse the attention of the whole society through the "Cultural Relics Umbrella Guards Program" to these cultural relics administrators who work silently.
Feng Kaiping turns 63 this year and has exceeded retirement age. Because he couldn't find anyone to replace him, he still stayed alone in the Golden Lantern Temple.
As he gets older, Feng Kaiping's physical strength is not as good as before. He is already somewhat unable to perform daily tasks such as cleaning temples and wiping Buddha statues.
His biggest hope now is that someone younger can take over his job. He is worried that he will not find the next keeper of the temple until he can no longer do it.
Feng Kaiping is sweeping the temple
Feng Kaiping is the most ordinary at the grassroots level. An extremely ordinary person, with his simplicity, tenacity and conscientiousness, can also be praised by the society and let his life shine.
Not many people can bear twenty-seven years of loneliness. Feng Kaiping can afford the honor he has received. Twenty-seven years of heavy loneliness also contains a heavy value of life.
