Source: Xinhua Daily Telegraph
Wenchang Xingshen ruins. The rebuilt Mahu Mansion Tower in
. Photographed by Nie Zuoping
In the mountains, the pace of time seems to be slower than in plains and basins. At 9:30 in the morning, the worried sun finally climbed up the ridge opposite Shulou Town. The sharp light cuts through the thin mist, pressing the shadows of the archways, gatehouses and courtyard walls in the ancient city together. Birds yelled on the nearby treetops, the faint fragrance of osmanthus flowers seemed to be vague, and three or five residents sat in the sun to drink tea and talk. This is how the day in the ancient city began.
I came to the bookstore late the night before. The car went up the Jinsha River from Yibin city to the mountain road. On one side was a cliff and a platform, and on the platform, some farmhouses were squeezed into the ground. On one side is the Jinsha River flowing deep and still water. Its ears are sharp and you can vaguely hear the whimpering river. When it was late at night, the driver said that the bookstore was about to arrive. Following the direction of his finger and through the car window, I saw a few lights floating in the dark valley, which just echoed the dense stars on the sky.
Although I first arrived at the bookstore, I knew that this was an ancient city trapped in the depths of the mountains and in the depths of time. In this ancient city, there were some little-known past events...
From Mahu to Zhongdu
Through a stack of old photos, I "know" an old county town.
The cityscape of time freezes is not much different from the small southern county town that I remember more than 20 years ago: a slightly wider main street, lined with seven or eight-story buildings that were quite fashionable at the time. More of the narrow alleys, wooden stilt houses and boarded houses squeezed into the middle of the street, the elderly and jumping children sitting at the doorstep, and the flowers hanging from the courtyard wall or fence, all show the tranquility, slowness and tranquility of life.
If you want to talk about something unique, then this old county town that only exists in the image now has its houses and streets located on the bank of a winding river. The city is located along the mountain and is laid on the platform on the river bank. In addition, several city gates with simple appearance are well preserved. From the eaves with ridges to the vermilion gatehouses and the dark plaques, it can be seen that it has experienced the vicissitudes of time.
If we trace back to the past life of this border city, as early as 700 years ago, when it became the Mahu Road gateway that governed large areas of southern Sichuan and northeastern Yunnan, the imperial court built a dirt city on the cramped platform. The simple earthen city was once the leading fortress and capital within a radius of hundreds of miles. By the middle of the Ming Dynasty, Mahu Road was transformed into Mahu Mansion, and the Tucheng City was made of bricks and stones, and a city wall that was 15 meters high, 10 meters thick, and 774 meters (equivalent to two and a half kilometers) was built. There are five gates on the city wall. Each city gate is built. Many years later, through old photos, we can still see its former charm.
This ancient city that has now sunk into the vast rivers of Jinsha is the former location of the road, prefecture and county seats of Mahu Road, Mahu Mansion and Pingshan County. It is called Nixi Town (Today's Yibin Xuzhou District also has a town named Nixi, but it is not the same place as Pingshan Nixi, and is nearly 100 kilometers away).
The changes of Nixi and Mahu Road and Mansion like change in the world start with a mirror-like lake deep in the mountains.
Episode 0 Said the southwest direction of Shulou Town, more than 120 kilometers away from Shulou Town, with mountains and ridges and deep valleys. The Jinsha River and its tributaries were seized from the siege of peaks. On the left bank of the Jinsha River, a strong earthquake in the early years caused the valley to collapse and blocked a tributary, creating a lake with an average water depth of about 7 square kilometers on the one hand. According to "Reading History and the Minutes", in the old days, someone saw dragons and horses appearing in the water, so they were named Mahu.
Today, Mahu has become a well-known scenic spot in central Sichuan because of its beautiful lake and mountains, but those tourists who linger in natural scenery rarely know that in history, there was an administrative agency named Mahu - from Mahu Road in the Yuan Dynasty to Mahu Mansion in the Ming Dynasty - which once governed tens of thousands of square kilometers of areas including Mahu, and became a bridge connecting the mainland and ethnic areas, and the front line for the intersection of Han culture and ethnic culture.
If you start from Chengdu and head to the south, you will pass through plains, hills and mountains in sequence. In Pingshan, the Sichuan Basin is sutured with the mountains in southwestern Sichuan and the eastern Yunnan Plateau. The eastern and northern Pingshan are close to the southern Sichuan hills, the western mountains in southwestern Sichuan, and the southern Yunnan Plateau. From the topographic map, it can be seen that the Daliangshan and Wulian Peak, which are northeast-southwest, are one west and one east, and are surrounded by thousands of mountains and valleys, and the Jinsha River flowing from southwest to northeast, travels between the two mountains. At the end of the mountain range, when the Jinsha River became slightly more stable from the fierce tiger-like rage in the canyon, it entered Pingshan County.
Like most rugged mountainous areas, alluvial plains or mountain terraces will generally become densely populated villages and towns. The same is true for Pingshan. Zhongdu Town under Pingshan is located in Zhongdu River Valley where the two mountains confront. Standing on the high ground, I saw a chaotic border town, but in history, it had its prominent time.
After the autumn rain, a local friend took me to an ancient courtyard in Zhongdu Town. Although the courtyard looks dilapidated, the architectural shape still vaguely reveals its former exquisiteness and grandeur. This is the Heilong Tuzhu Temple, which the locals call Heilong Temple.
The so-called Tuzhu Temple, according to the "Nanzhao Historical History", is: In the first year of Kaiyuan (713), the Tang Dynasty "granted Piluo Pavilion as a special promotion and was granted the title of Taiding County King... In the second year of Kaiyuan, Tuzhu Temple was established." Scholars believe that the Tuzhu Temple and Tuzhu beliefs that were popular in the southwest region originated from Nanzhao during the Tang Dynasty. The Tuzhu Temple in Weibaoshan, Yunnan is the source of Tuzhu Temple in various places.
In layman's terms, the landlord is equivalent to the patron saint of a region. This custom that originated from the Tang Dynasty was passed down, and the one who believed in the landlords most was the Yi people who lived in Sichuan and Yunnan. The Heilong Tuzhu Temple in Zhongdu Town I saw, the landlord it worships was the ancestor of the Yi people, named Laqu.
Laqu is a leader of the Yi people who lived in the late Northern Song Dynasty. At that time, there were endless wars in the border areas. He led the people to protect the country and safeguard the people. Unfortunately, he died in the battlefield. Emperor Huizong of Song Dynasty named him the Heilong Earth Lord and issued an order to set up a temple to commemorate it. The tomb burying Laqu still existed decades ago, and the locals called it the Da Tomb Bao. It is said that the wide tomb chamber can accommodate 200 people. Before the founding of New China, some people used to open opium tobacco restaurants in tombs.
Yi people's Heilong Tuzhu Temple is a hint that it implies that Pingshan, located in the branch of Liangshan, is the edge of the intersection of Yi and Han cultures and the collision of Yi and Han cultures. As the junction of multi-ethnic culture, the history of ethnic and cultural exchanges in Zhongdu and Pingshan can actually be pushed forward by the Song Dynasty for more than 1,000 years.
Jianwei is another county less than 100 kilometers away from Pingshan, with only Muchuan between them - in fact, Muchuan also cuts out from Pingshan. In a place called Wannian Village in Jianwei, a large number of cultural relics have been unearthed since the 1970s. Among them, the most eye-catching one is a jade-patterned copper seal. The copper seal carved a crescent moon, and under the moon are the patterns of seedlings and cuckoo birds. What kind of secrets do these mysterious patterns hide?
was identified and examined, and the examiners confirmed that this is the well-known Bashu picture language in the archaeological world. The so-called Bashu graphic language, also known as Bashu symbols or Bashu graphic characters, are some graphic symbols found on cultural relics unearthed from the Warring States Period to the early Western Han Dynasty from Sichuan. The current mainstream view is that the Bashu pi-language is a tool used by the ancient Bashu tribe to record language, similar to hieroglyphs, and is the prototype of ancient characters. It is inferred that the Bashu pictorial language may have originated during the enlightened dynasty of the ancient Shu Kingdom.
Historical records show that the first Shu king in ancient Shu Kingdom was called Emperor Wang, and his name was Du Yu . Legend has it that Du Yu pioneered the system of farming in Shu, and later generations regarded it as the God of Agriculture. When he established the ancient Shu Kingdom in the Chengdu Plain, he established the capital Pixian . After Du Yu's death, his soul turned into a cuckoo. Every spring plowing season, he always cried loudly in the fields, reminding future generations to farm in time and not forget the farming season.
The pattern on the jade-patterned copper seal depicts the story of Du Yuhuan, teaching the people to farm.
Du Yu's capital is in Pi County. Why is his story spreading in Jianwei, more than 200 kilometers away and solemnly carved on copper seals? "The Book of King Shu" records: "There were few people in Shu at that time.Later, a man named Du Yu, who fell from heaven and fell from heaven and Zhu Ti ... Yu established himself as the King of Shu and was called Emperor Wang. "From the sky is the deification of him by later generations, but Zhu Ti is really in this place, that is today's Zhaotong, Yunnan.
Based on various historical materials, it can be seen that the Du Yu tribe, who originally lived in Zhaotong, went north to Yibin along the Jinsha River, then went up to Minjiang , and gradually developed to the Chengdu Plain. Pingshan is the only place they must pass to enter the plain from the mountains.
Zhongdu Township is also known as Mudao and Yidu. It was once the fief of the Yi family, the son of the ancient Shu king, so the name Yidu was given. When the Du Yu tribe was strong, they gradually descended from the eastern Yunnan Plateau to the southern Sichuan mountain, and then entered the Sichuan Basin through Pingshan. When the ancient Shu country established by the Du Yu tribe gradually declined and was destroyed by Qin, the remaining people followed the path of their ancestors and retreated step by step to the southern Sichuan mountain, including Pingshan and the adjacent Liangshan area. Therefore, more than 2,000 years ago Pingshan area is not only the southern gate of the ancient Shu Kingdom, but also an important node in the ethnic corridor.
The imprint of chieftains
In the pre-Qin period, part of the residents of Mahu Mansion were now disappeared, and part of the ancient Shu people with the same roots and origins as Du Yu. After Emperor Wu of Han developed the southwest Yi, the Han people in the Sichuan Basin moved to Pingshan and merged with the locals. During the Sui and Tang Dynasties, it was formed A new tribe is called Mahuman. It is also called Dongman because its leader's surname is Dong. The center of the power of Mahuman is in the area of today's Mahu Scenic Area. The island with a snail-shaped snail bun in Mahu with hundreds of people living in it, which is the "capital" of Mahuman. During the Song Dynasty, Mahuman was divided into two branches, and one branch led by the An clan merged with the Yi tribe, and a support represented by the Wen clan continued to be in the Chinese state.
The ancient Shu people regarded themselves as natives, and their power was The heart is in the area of Zhongdu Town, Pingshan County today. Due to constant friction with the central dynasty, it was demoted to be called Yidu Man.
Yuan Dynasty was the first unified dynasty established by ethnic minorities in China. Although its existence lasted less than 100 years, it had a profound impact on China at that time and later. One of the influences was that some border areas that were originally out of the central dynasty were included in the jurisdiction of the central government for the first time. The biggest ones were Yunnan and Tibet, the smallest ones are like Mahu.
1276, that is, the year when the Yuan Dynasty destroyed the Southern Song Dynasty, the Yuan Dynasty set up Mahu Road (the road was a first-level administrative division in the Song, Jin and Yuan Dynasty. The Song and Jin periods were equivalent to later provinces, and the Yuan Dynasty was equivalent to the prefectures), and the capital was established in Xikou, which is today's Pingshan Xinshi Town .
Yuan Dynasty had a very clear understanding of the strategic significance of Mahu, which was due to the establishment of Mahu Road. Two bloody battles occurred in 20 years: In 1256, the famous general Wuliang Hetai was ordered by Mengge to go north from Zhaotong, Yunnan, and planned to occupy the lower reaches of the Jinsha River (also known as the Mahu River at that time), and went eastward to break the Xuzhou and Luzhou, and then advanced to the Southern Song Dynasty's most important fortress in the southwest region: Hechuan Diaoyu City.
However, although Wuliang Hetai defeated the navy of the Song general Zhang Shi on the Jinsha River and captured 200 warships, when he took advantage of the situation to go east, he was attacked by Syria. The prefect Shi Jun attacked and the Mongolian army was defeated, and had to dispel the plan to encircle Diaoyu City.
However, although Mahu Road was under the jurisdiction of the central government, because it was an ethnic area, it was implemented as a chieftain system.
The so-called chieftain system, according to the definition of "Cihai", is a system in which the dynasties of the Southern Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties enfeoffed the leaders of various ethnic groups in some ethnic minority areas to rule the local people. "Since the Qin Dynasty implemented the county system, the central government's governance of local governments was to send officials at all levels (called liberated officials), but in ethnic minority areas that were beyond the reach, the hereditary system of ethnic leaders (called local officials), and chieftains were the common name of various local officials among the people.
Take the Ming Dynasty as an example. According to the level, the chieftains' yamen were divided into Xuanwei Envoy, Xuanfu Envoy, Pacification Envoy and Chieftain, etc., as well as Tufu and Tuxian. Correspondingly, their chieftains were called Xuanwei Envoy, Xuanfu Envoy, Pacification Envoy and Chieftain (this is a military position), as well as Tugong and Tuxian (this is a civil position). Whether it is military position or civil position, the common people are collectively called chieftains. These chieftains "maintain their territory for the whole world, and inherit their people for the whole world."Although their inheritance required approval from the court and tribute was given to the court as required, they had the privilege of life and death within their ruling areas, which was equivalent to a semi-independent small kingdom. During the Yuan Dynasty, Mahu Road had 6 chief officers under the jurisdiction of Rongzhou and Changning troops. More than 20 years later, the Mahu Road Management Office moved to Nixi, which was later Pingshan County. After the founding of the Ming Dynasty, the abolition of roads and prefectures kicked off the Mahu Mansion for more than 300 years. Mahu Prefecture also implemented the chieftain system, and the Tu Taigong was hereditary by the An family. It was not until more than a century later that the An family rebelled and the imperial court changed its territory and returned to the rebellion. The chief lawsuits under Mahu Prefecture also changed from 6 in the Yuan Dynasty to 4 in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, namely Barbarians, Pingyi, Nixi and Muchuan. Its jurisdiction is "one hundred and ten miles east to the Yibin Border, one thousand two hundred miles west to the Jianchang Border, one hundred and forty miles south to the Wumeng Border, and one hundred and thirty miles north to the Zhuyamen Border of Yibin". It roughly includes Pingshan, Mabian , Muchuan, Leibo , and Yongshan, Suijiang, Shuifu and other counties in Yunnan today.
There is no doubt that multi-ethnic settlements often cause bloody conflicts due to cultural, customs, economic and other reasons. In the history of Mahu, it is common to have tribe fighting to regular army attacks. Among them, the "Three Heroes" rebellion that occurred during the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty had the most far-reaching impact.
In the mountains outside Zhongdu Town, there is an ancient tomb called General Gu’s tomb by the locals. In front of the tomb, there is a large letter on the brown and yellow stele: "The former Ming Dynasty authorized General Huaiyuan to be named Gu Gong, the tomb of the old master Guowei." This Gu Guowei, who was General Huaiyuan during the Ming Dynasty, is General Gu who was rumored by local people.
During the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, there were many rebellions of chieftains or tribal leaders in the southwest region. For this reason, the court had to use troops year after year, and the rebellion of the Three Heroes was one of them.
The "Three Heroes" rebellion refers to the alliance between the three people of Sakuao, Anxing (the descendant of the Tugong of Mahu Prefecture), and Yang Jiuzha, known as the "Three Heroes". The "Three Heroes" raised an army to rebel against the Ming Dynasty in 1587, and Sa Fei proclaimed himself the King of Ping of the Western Kingdom. Upon hearing the news, the court first sent the capital officer Li Xianzhong to lead three thousand troops to attack. The "three heroes" pretended to surrender, and Li Xianzhong and others were killed. The court was furious and sent another general Li Yingxiang to lead an army of 20,000 to fight. After more than a year of hard fighting, the "three heroes" were captured or killed one after another, and the rebellion came to an end. This massive rebellion caused a large number of people to die in danger. The records at that time were recorded as corpses piled up. The court also paid a huge price for this. In addition to "millions of treasury and money were thrown into barren land", a large number of soldiers were killed in battle and buried in General Gu outside Zhongdu Town, who was one of the victims.
In order to better control the border area, Pingshan has the function of a military fortress. Just the year after the quellation of the "Three Heroes" rebellion, the court ordered the establishment of a new Pingshan County, and at the same time moved the Syrian Mashang Road from Changning to Pingshan, with Sichuan General Li Yingxiang serving as the same position, which was equivalent to setting up a provincial war zone's "headquarters" in a remote town.
Pingshan was originally a multi-ethnic mixed residential area with five sides. After the Qing Dynasty, with the demise and sinicization of the sacred people and the ancient Shu people, and the Yi people migrated to the big and small Liangshan, Pingshan still retained the rule of chieftains, but it has become a region with the Han people as the main body.
However, Pingshan's advantage of being able to gain a better place is more prominent, making Pingshan more important.
Next to the road from Pingshan to Mabian, there is a towering red cliff called Hongxiyan. After someone's guidance, I found an ancient road covered with moss and weeds under the cliff. The ancient road made of bluestone slabs is more than one meter wide, and it is swept by snake, winding in the empty and cold mountains. Although I can't see a pedestrian for a long time now, the deep footprints on the bluestone slabs and the cliff inscription "Forever Reliance on the Same Promise" engraved on the rock can still imagine its glory when people came and went. This ancient road, called Wang Highway, was built by Wang Jing, the co-minister of Anbian during the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty. The Wang Highway starts from Pingshan, passes through Xinshi, Zhongdu and other places, connects to the horseside, and goes deeper into the more distant hinterland of Liangshan. According to historical records, Zhuge Liang's southern expedition during the Three Kingdoms period, one of the troops went deep into Bad along this route.
There are many ancient roads like this in Pingshan, the most important ones include:
. One of them is:
. From Yibin to the river, through Loudong and Nixi, then to Xinshi and Pingbian. After arriving at today's Leibo, the north bank goes deep into Liangshan and the south bank goes into Yunnan. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, copper produced in northeastern Yunnan went out along this road and arrived at Pingshan and transported it to the mainland along the Jinsha River. For example, in the 11th year of Qianlong's reign (1764), more than 990,000 kilograms of copper were transported through this route.
The second, from Zhongdu Town to the south and cross Wuzhishan is Nixi Town, Pingxian County; from Zhongdu Town to the north, you can reach Muchuan, Leshan and Sichuan Basin. These two ancient roads, with the Nixi River as the origin, form a large cross.
1884, in order to investigate the relevant situation of ashworms, Xie Lishan, the first British Consul General in Chengdu, set off from Chengdu to Anbian, Yunnan and sailed eastward, and passed through this ancient road. In his travel notes, he truly recorded the scene of the small team seeing the Jinsha River from a high place after crossing Wuzhi Mountain: "We left Zhongdu Township and the river flowing behind it with ease, and began to cross the mountains in the southeast and south. The mountains in the north were piled up, and the mountains that were painted black into the sky came one by one. When we came to the southernmost end of a rolling plateau, we could see a deep stream below, and a small stream flowed in the deep stream. In the southeast, we were far from the dark mountains. A yellow dot was identified in the background. There was a huge banyan tree near the top of the plateau, and a lonely inn under the shade. So I asked the gatekeeper there: 'What is that yellow dot?' He replied enthusiastically: 'That's Jinsha River.'"
controls the geographical location of Liangshan, making Pingshan a gateway that communicates between the mainland and the border areas for thousands of years: in war, it is a place where military strategists must fight for victory or defeat; in peace, it is a major commercial center where boats and vehicles converge. Between the constant switching between the military strategists and the important commercial centers, Pingshan's history is more profound, the culture is more diverse, and the land is more vibrant.
0,000 miles of the Yangtze River No. 1 port
If you want to see the whole picture of the fresh town, you can only cross the river to Yunnan on the other side of the river. In the western part of Pingshan, the Jinsha River flows in a circle under the squeeze of the mountains. The river flowing northward turns eastward and then goes south, forming an n-shaped shape. The upper left and right ends of the n-shaped shape, the Xining River and Zhongdu River flow in; the peninsula surrounded by the n-shaped shape is Nan'an Town, Suijiang County, Yunnan. The west side separated from Nan'an Town, that is, the vertical on the left side of the n-shaped shape is Xinshi Town.
The new town I saw was like Nixi Town, an old county town in Pingshan in the old photo. It is also a chaotic and vigorous border town with many houses clustered on the top terraces by the river. The national highway passes by the town, but when entering and leaving the town, you have to pass through a deep tunnel - because the mountains encircle the town among the mountains, and the winding Jinsha River connects it with the world outside the mountain.
Whether in yesterday's Mahu Mansion or today's Pingshan County, Xinshi Town is an extremely important existence. Because it is the veritable number one port of the Yangtze River - it seems that in order to prove this name, ships of all sizes are docked in the dock under the main street of Xinshi Town.
I have seen photos taken by German Consul Wei Si while traveling southwest China in 1917. Several of them were taken on the Jinsha River in Yibin. There are many small boats parked one by one at the muddy riverside pier. Although these small boats can only carry a dozen people, each boat has more than a dozen sailors - if the boatman is added when he goes upstream, the staff will obviously exceed the passengers.
The only reason why this wonder occurs is: Jinsha River is a roaring river. As the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, the Jinsha River originated from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, rushing downwards. After breaking through the obstacles of the major mountains of the Hengduan Mountains, it entered the lower reaches of Yunnan and Sichuan, and finally became a little gentle (the lower reaches of the Jinsha River generally refer to Lei Bo to Yibin, and most areas belong to the former jurisdiction of Mahu Mansion) - However, this is compared with the violent rage that is like a wild horse in the upper reaches, compared with the tide and wide both sides of the Yangtze River, it is still full of murderous intent and terrifying step by step.
In ancient times, when modern transportation was lacking, boats played a crucial role in human communication and material exchange. Therefore, although vortexes and reefs laid a series of gates of hell, shipping in the lower reaches of the Jinsha River still began very early. As stated in "Song Huiyao": "On July 18, the eighth year of Chunxi, my ministers said that Mahu was born in barbarians... I have been running horses all year round, and I drove my boats downstream to the city of Xuzhou Prefecture." In the eighth year of Chunxi, that is, 1181, even from this year, the navigation of the lower reaches of the Jinsha River has been around for nearly 900 years. After the Yuan Dynasty, all dynasties attached great importance to the clearance of the lower reaches of the Jinsha River, and had repeatedly rectified the reefs and dangerous shoals in the river. The reason is, on the one hand, the importance of Mahu in military control of Liangshan, and on the other hand, it hopes that copper produced in northeastern Yunnan will be transported through shipping. Due to the rapid river flow and the dangerous and bad water, for a long time, wooden boats with a load capacity of less than 60 tons can only be driven in the lower reaches of the Jinsha River, and you must rely on a boatman when going to the water.
In my hometown, boaters and miners are considered to be the two most dangerous and hardest jobs. The boatman is "dead and not buried", while the miner is "buried and not dead". Before the 1950s, most of the middle-aged men in the villages and towns along the Pingshan River made a living by pulling their own strength. Today, on both sides of the Jinsha River, dangerous rocks stand with weeds, but if you are careful enough, you can still find that in places where there were originally no roads, the steep and narrow paths that the boatmen stepped on with their feet: the fiber path.
and the fiery way witnessed that period of time, there was also the boatman's horn, which was the song sung loudly when the boatmen pulled the fiery. In the 1970s, the famous singer Li Shuangjiang went to Yibin to collect folk songs. After listening to the authentic Jinsha River Boatman's Rover, he created and sang the later popular " chuanjiang horn ".
In 1942, a ship from Minsheng Company flowed upwards from Yibin and arrived at Pingshan. Then it continued to rise and arrived in Xinshi City. This was the first time a motor ship appeared on the Jinsha River. Since then, the motor boats have slowly replaced the wooden boats, the boatman's figure has disappeared, the fibrous stairs have been abandoned, and the high-pitched boatman's horn no longer echoes, and has become an intangible cultural heritage that needs protection and inheritance.
The turbulent flow of Jinsha River is not only the end that can be reached by boats on the Yangtze River, but also another specialty produced in Mahufu. This specialty is nanmu. Most tourists who have been to the Forbidden City in Beijing are impressed by the huge pillars in the hall. These house pillars made of whole wood are all precious nanmu, which is called golden nanmu by the people, and a considerable part of them comes from Mahu.
There is a row of majestic mountains in the middle of Pingshan. The main peak is more than 2,000 meters above sea level. It is called Wuzhishan, which is the remnant of Liangshan. However, for a long time in the past, it was not called Wuzhishan, but Shenmushan.
"The Unification of the Ming Dynasty" says: "Shenmu Mountain is twenty miles west of the chief of the Muchuan River. It was formerly known as Huangzhong Gexi Mountain. In the fourth year of Yongle in the dynasty, I cut nanmu trees on this mountain. A night of nanmu is moved several miles without human power, so I was named Shenmu Mountain and sacrificed it to me every year."
According to local people, a Shenmu Mountain Temple was once built on a mountain on the other side of the river in Zhongdu Town (this is also the evidence of sacrifice at that time), and there is a stone tablet of "Shenmu Mountain Temple Records" in the temple. The stone tablet was destroyed in the last century, but the text on it is recorded in local historical materials.
The inscription is more detailed than the description of "The Unification of the Ming Dynasty", telling an incredible story: in the early Ming Dynasty, the court ordered the cutting of nanmu on the mountain. The tall nanmu is extremely heavy, and there are either small roads in the mountains or there are not even small roads. It is natural to transport them out. "There are several plants that are more than half a year old, and you can be lucky if you make a fortune." Unexpectedly, one night, some nanmu trees moved to the main road as if they had grown feet. Moreover, none of the plants and trees along the way were broken. For such a miracle, local officials hurriedly submitted a report to the court. The emperor believed it was auspicious, so he enthroned Huangzhong Gexi Mountain as Shenmu Mountain.
Although there are monuments, temples and historical materials, this is still an absurd legend. The real history is that the construction of the Ming Xiao Mausoleum and the Forbidden City in Nanjing in the early Ming Dynasty, and the construction of the Old Summer Palace during the Qianlong period, all cut down nanmu from Shenmu Mountain.As recorded in the "Sichuan Tongzhi": "In the 30th year of Qianlong's reign (1765), Sichuan Governor Ortai introduced twenty nanmu, two remaining trees, and Pingshan inspectors and inspectors of Fushun County were transported to Beijing and sent to the Old Summer Palace for delivery... In the 30th year of Qianlong's reign, thirty-six large nanmu were purchased in Pingshan County, Leibo County, and other places... and transported to Beijing and sent to the Old Summer Palace for collection."
A giant nanmu had thousands of kilograms per piece. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, which lacked modern tools, how should it be sent to Beijing thousands of miles away? What you can use for
is the endless river. First, the nanmu cut from Shenmu Mountain slid to the foot of the mountain through the grooves opened in the mountains, and then carried it to the Zhongdu River by manpower and put it into the river. The nanmu drifted to Xinshi along the water, and then tied several or more nanmu drips together to form a raft. A simple shack was built on the raft, where the workers who placed the raft and the officials who were escorting them were all fed and accommodated. They drove these rafts along the Jinsha River, crossed Yibin, went down to Chongqing, left the Three Gorges , crossed Hubei, Jiangxi, and Anhui, until the intersection of the Yangtze River in Yangzhou and the Grand Canal , turned north along the canal, arrived at Zhangjiawan, Jingdong, and moved to Chongwenmen Shenmu Processing Factory.
New City, surrounded by mountains and rivers, has both the golden waterway of the Jinsha River, and also the land reaches Pingshan and Yibin by land, to Mabian and Jianwei in the north, to Leibo in the south, and to Liangshan in the west, so it has always been a military center. During the Yuan Dynasty, Mahu Road and Road Management was once located here. Later, the Barbarian Department, one of the six major lawsuits in Mahu Mansion, was also established here. The Ming Dynasty established the Barbarian Ma Yi, the Qing Dynasty established the Inspection Office, and there were troops stationed after the founding of New China. Before the Chengdu-Kunming Railway and Yaxi Expressway were connected, a large amount of materials entering and leaving Liangshan, especially Meigu in Xiaoliangshan, were transported to Xinshi through the Jinsha River channel and then transferred ashore. The Le (Shan) West (Chang) Highway built in the 1940s is like a white streamer floating on a steep mountain. Xinshi is an important link in the streamer.
The new ancient city
0 The name of the Jinsha River is derived from the fact that the water contains a lot of mud and sand, so the river water is yellow. However, if you come to the Jinsha River section in Pingshan today, you will find that this name is not true - the river water is not yellow, but is as dark green as the Zhongdu River originating deep in Wuzhi Mountain or the Xining River deep in Xiaoliang Mountain.
What makes Jinsha River no longer like the "Jinsha" River is the third largest hydropower station in Pingshan in the country.
Standing on the mountain on the riverside, looking out, a dam cut off the Jinsha River in half. The dam is like a giant comb. From the gap between the comb teeth, bright white water flows downwards. The misty air often forms a faint rainbow above the water flow. The upstream of the dam is filled with quiet water. The Jinsha River not only does not have the violent past, but also shows a kind of peace, which makes people want to rename the Jinsha River Glass River.
On October 10, 2012, after four years of construction, the last level hydropower station on the main stream of the Jinsha River was officially shut down to store water. The river water that flows day and night is blocked by the dam, forming a return flow of more than 160 kilometers. As a result, the old paths, old villages, old post stations, old temples, and even Nixi, which have been roads, prefectures, counties and chief officials' surrenders for more than 600 years, have all sunk into the water one by one. Because of the new county town, people call the Nixi, which is not in the water, the old county town.
Human activities not only changed the natural appearance, but also changed the historical appearance they created - Qin went to Han, Ming Dynasty destroyed Qing Dynasty, and in the dynasty like a lantern, the remains of the predecessors were intentionally or unintentionally destroyed by future generations, and the difficulty in resisting the erosion of time and gradually annihilated. In modern times, large-scale projects—especially hydropower projects with huge flooding areas—have changed the appearance of the earth quickly and beyond recognition.
If the city towers, temples, yamen, archways, stone carvings, and many deep houses and courtyards are swallowed up with the flowing water, then it can be said that Mahu, which has a history of hundreds of years, is only left with a few lines of cold and boring words in historical materials - without the history of real objects and real scenes, it will become empty and empty, and gradually move away from the perspective of future generations.
Fortunately, when the Xiangjiaba Power Station was just established, Pingshan people carried out a far-reaching work: relocation and reconstruction.
For seven years, cultural relics workers first surveyed and surveyed the cultural relics in the flooded area, took photos, and then numbered bricks, tiles, wood and stones on the original building; then carefully dismantled them. After dismantling, 44 ancient buildings became piled up parts.
Pingshan is a typical mountainous area, with precious flat land and large flat land more precious. Where are these ancient monuments rebuilt? At that time, some people proposed to be built in a new county town - the new county town was selected on the territory of the former Xinfa Township and Zhenxi Township, located in the lower reaches of the Minjiang River, and is a small flat dam alluvialized from the Minjiang River. However, the area of the new county town is also limited, and it is inevitable that it is a bit difficult to resettle so many historical sites.
At this time, Shulou Town, which is only 15 kilometers away from Xiangjiaba Dam, entered the field of view. The name Shulou Town faintly reveals a bookish atmosphere. This is indeed the case. During the Yongle period of the Ming Dynasty, the father of the thinker and founder of the Hedong School, Xue Xuan, served as an official in the Pingyi Chief of Mahu Prefecture, and Xue Xuan lived here with his father and gave lectures. During the Jiajing period, in order to commemorate Xue Xuan, who had already worshipped the Confucius Temple, Loushan Academy and Library were built locally. This is also the origin of the name of Shulou Town.
Shulou Town, this ancient land is fortunate to become a resettlement site for the ancient city of Mahu. As a result, countless ancient building parts were transported to the open space outside Shulou Town one by one. Then, in the next few years, professional ancient building workers and cultural relics workers assembled parts one by one like embroidery. Therefore, the archways, palaces, temples, yamen, houses, Taoist temples and business names that originally stood in various parts of Pingshan County, Mahu Prefecture today were transplanted to the Shulou Town, which was surrounded by mountains on three sides and faced by water on one side. So, a new ancient city was born like this, and the historical mist and clouds experienced by the real ancient city also remained there.
In real life, it is generally impossible for several arches to connect from the beginning to the end, and it is unlikely that another temple will be built between a wall of Taoist temples. The rich and deep house with a deep courtyard is even more impossible for living next to each other like the houses in the community. But because they are all rebuilt, they have this illusion of time and space transformation. Yes, cultural relics that are preserved in the original place are of course more valuable, but when they are facing the danger of being destroyed from now on, rebuilding them together is also a perfect choice. What's more, when these ancient buildings and cultural relics gather together, an ancient city where we can imagine the sermons and iron horses and boats and chariots mingle with the past was born.
When the sun is at its peak, I walk among the pavilions and pavilions of the ancient city of Mahu. One place of land and water nourishes one person, and the other place of land and water nourishes another culture. When Nixi Town, which has accumulated many past events, sank into the bottom of the river, Pingshan County moved to the banks of the Minjiang River on the other side of the mountain, in the bookstore and through the Mahu Ancient Town, we may still feel the collision and symphony between ancient history and real life in this transformed land. (Nie Zuoping)
Editor in charge: Zhao Wenhan
