Editor's note: Chen Zhengxiang (1922-2003), internationally renowned geographer and ecologist. From 1932 to 1992, he wrote a total of 624 works in Four languages, including Chinese, English, German and Japanese, including 256 monographs and special issues, and 368 papers, which is unique in the international geographical community. Carl Troll, the former president of the International Geographical Union, called him "the first person in Chinese geography" and praised him as "alexander von Humboldt of the East.".
In the water town of Zeguo, when the land was first developed, small hills or low-lying gangfu were often regarded as priority objects for the construction of cities. The Wu culture and the Hushu culture that preceded it were first developed on the small hills in the lowest reaches of the Yangtze River. The early cities of Yangzhou were built in the shugang area in the northwest, because this area was a gangfu with an altitude of only tens of meters. The name Guangling must be related to the similarity of "vast hills".
As far as the historical name of Guangling is concerned, there have been many large and small figures who have performed on the political, economic and cultural stages, and their bones have long been decayed, but many precious cultural relics have been left behind, among which the unique and significant national treasure-level cultural relics are a golden seal called "Guangling King's Seal".
Guangling Wang Xi
Liu Xiu, the founder of the Later Han Dynasty, died in the second year of the Middle Yuan Dynasty (57) after being emperor for 33 years, and the Ming Emperor Liu Zhuang succeeded to the throne and changed his name to Yuan Yongping. According to the Later Han Dynasty Book of Guangwu Ten Kings and other documents, Liu Jing, the ninth son of Emperor Guangwu, was born to Empress Yin as Emperor Ming. Resembling his father, he was very favored by his father, and in the fifteenth year (39) of Jianwu he was made the Duke of Shanyang, and in the seventeenth year he was knighted as the King of Shanyang. This man was very ambitious and wanted to seize his brother's throne. As soon as Emperor Guangwu died, he wrote a letter to the deposed former crown prince Liu Qiang of Donghai (born to Empress Guo, who was deposed and made Liu Zhuang crown prince), plotting to rebel with him. Emperor Ming then made his younger brother Liu Jingyi the Prince of Guangling and sent him to Yangzhou to take up the throne, so as not to make a fuss in the court. But after Liu Jing arrived at the fiefdom, his political ambitions did not relent, and once he actually told the fortune teller that his appearance was the same as that of the former emperor; the former emperor was thirty years old to become an emperor, and he was also thirty years old this year, whether he could also become an emperor. The fortune teller was horrified and denounced the matter again. Emperor Ming had always been friendly with his brother and remembered his motherly love, but still did not investigate deeply. Spoiled, Liu Jing never repented, and his power was full of desires, and he repeatedly rebelled, and he must usurp the emperor's throne, and finally he was given suicide. The Book of the Later Han Dynasty, Volume II, Records of the Ming Emperor, contains the following two records:
In the first year of Yongping (58), in August, King Jing of Shanyang was made the King of Guangling and sent to the kingdom.
(Yongping) In the spring and February of the tenth year, King Jing of Guangling was guilty, committed suicide, and the country was removed.
After the death of king Guangling, the golden seal of the "Seal of Guangling King" was buried in the ground with him. In 1914, that is, on February 24, 1981, Tao Xiuhua, an honest peasant woman in Hanjiang County, Yangzhou City, excavated and cleaned up the site near the Han Tomb (Ganquan No. 2 Han Tomb, located thirteen kilometers northwest of Yangzhou City, north of Ganquan Town), and found this pure gold carved, exquisite and brilliant "Guangling Wang Seal" and handed it over to the relevant authorities. This is a rare Han Dynasty prince seal, which was awarded by emperor Ming to Liu Jing, the king of Guangling, in the first year of Yongping, and the golden seal of "King of Han Weinu" issued by Emperor Guangwu, which is only one year apart in time. As soon as the news was published, major Japanese newspapers immediately reported the matter in large print. Then experts and scholars wrote articles and discussed, and it was really lively for a while. At that time, I was lecturing in Japan, and I had accepted the invitation of my alma mater to return to Nanjing to give a lecture for forty days, and I thought that I would soon see this golden seal, and I was very happy.
When I returned to Nanjing, I inquired almost immediately about the whereabouts of this golden seal, but most of my old classmates, including those with high positions, did not know about it; later, when I found a friend in the history department, I learned that it was stored in the Nanjing Museum. I asked the University Foreign Affairs Office to contact me, but the response was disappointing; it was said that the golden seal was so important that it had been handed over to Beijing. Of course I couldn't do anything about it. Later, when I was passing through Beijing, I mentioned the matter to my old friend Xia Nai, who said that the golden seal existed in the Nanjing Museum and was not open to the public, so I had to go to the dean myself.
The following year, I was invited to attend the commemorative meeting for the 80th anniversary of the founding of my alma mater and returned to Nanjing. I personally went to see the director of the museum, Yao, and he finally showed me this treasure; he also talked with me for more than an hour, indicating that he didn't know that I had called, and asked me to take a souvenir photo!
The Seal of Guangling Is 2.3 cm long and 2.3 cm wide, 0.9 cm thick and weighs 123 grams; Yin carved seal text, the font is dignified and dignified, and the knife technique is vigorous and sophisticated. Xu Guang's note in the Book of Continuing Han and the Chronicle of Public Opinion: "The Prince and the Kings of Jinyin, Gui Niu, Zhu Shou. "Silk is a ribbon tied to a button. Wei Hong's "Han Old Yi" also said: "The seal of the princes and kings, the golden camel button, and the seal of Wen Yue." "The Seal of the King of Guangling" is the golden seal of Gui Niu, which is in line with the literature. The Ganquan No. 2 Han Tomb where Liu Jing is buried, the scale is very large, the diameter of the sealed mound is 60 meters, the height is 13 meters, all rammed; the grand brick burial chamber is located in the middle of the sealed mound, the plane is nearly square, the tomb door is about 4 meters high, the top of the coupon is about 6 meters high, and the top is a multi-coupon structure, which is very majestic. However, because it has been excavated in the early years, most of the funerary items in the tomb have been lost; it may be that the burial chamber collapsed during the excavation, so some relics have been preserved. From April to May 1980, when the Nanjing Museum cleaned up, it also obtained more than 90 relics, including gold, silver, copper, iron, jade, agate, pearls, amber, lacquer, pottery, porcelain, etc., such as the beautiful and vivid shape, intricate and elaborate decoration of the wrong silver copper ox lamp, the splendid gilded Boshan furnace, the warm and crystalline tiger new agate seal (uncut, may also be temporarily ground off, because it is usurped), gilded copper buckle inlaid with crystal and amber square lacquer, making exquisite dragon-shaped and crown-shaped gold ornaments. As well as the earliest celadon jars and glassware fragments in China that have been examined so far. On the edge of the plate under a copper goose foot lamp, there is an inscription of "Shanyang Di Copper Goose Foot Long Stirrup Construction Wu 28 Years Of Manufacture", which confirms that the owner of this large tomb is Liu Jing. The question is how could this extremely precious gold seal not be found among these remnants of funerary objects, but how could it be scattered near the cemetery and found by peasant women? Dean Yao Qian explained that it may have been dug up by early tomb robbers and lost on the ground outside the tomb, which seems to be unconvincing, I do not agree. I also asked Xia Nai what was going on, and he shook his head and said he couldn't figure it out.
Golden Seal of the King of Han Dynasty
I looked at this golden seal and immediately thought of another golden seal. And I saw the golden seal, but it was far earlier than this one. In the early han dynasty, China saw great prosperity again, and Japan came back to pay tribute, so the Guangwu Emperor crowned his king and issued a golden seal, called the "Han WeiNu King" seal, "Wei" and "Wei", "Wei Nu" that is, the Wu slave country. Book 85 of the Book of the Later Han Dynasty, "The Biography of Dongyi Lie": "In the sea southeast of Han, the Wu lived on the mountain island, and more than a hundred countries were born. Since Emperor Wu destroyed Korea, he made yitong in the Thirty Kingdoms of the Han Dynasty, and all the kingdoms were called kings, which was a tradition in the world. His great vassal king resided in the evil Matai kingdom. ...... In the second year of the Jianwu Dynasty (57), the Uighur state paid tribute to the pilgrimage... Guangwu gave it a seal. In the first year of Emperor An's reign (107), King Shuai of The Wu Dynasty offered one hundred and sixty people, and he would like to see him. ”
Most of the accounts in ancient Chinese history books are serious and credible. Japanese readers of the past were good at ancient Chinese books, but they always had a "skeptical" attitude towards what was said about Japan, especially the undignified things. Because according to the records of ancient Chinese books, Japan was really outdated in ancient times, and most of the Chinese imperial dynasties were very obedient, and they have always been enshrined as a superior country, which has greatly lost face to the Japanese who have always been arrogant.
On February 23, the 49th year of the Qianlong Dynasty (the fourth year of the Japanese Tenmei Dynasty, 1784 in the Gregorian calendar), a farmer named ×× Bingwei (a Japanese peasant without a surname at that time) accidentally dug this golden seal while repairing the field ditch at the Oka Water Gate on Shiga Island in Hakata Bay (now part of Fukuoka City, Kyushu). Located at the mouth of the Toga River, Okazumon was one of the key points of ancient Japanese transportation to China. The ancient Japanese books "Kojiki", "Nihon Shoki", and "Chikuzen National Customs" all record this place name.
The Japanese reacted first to the fact that the lord Kuroda gave the discoverers a little grain and collected the gold seal. Subsequently, the pronunciation of the words "King of Han Weinu" was debated endlessly, and some traces were almost nonsense. The most explicit denial is to say bluntly that this gold seal is forged! I really don't understand why someone would forge this golden seal? Could it be that Chinese cast this gold seal and buried it in the land of Japan, and gave the gold to the Japanese in plain clothes? I have questioned my Japanese friends more than once, and they all shook their heads and were dumbfounded!
There was a narrow-minded "nationalist" element, Ida Keiyuki, who, after seeing the Golden Seal with his own eyes, also used the excuse to say: "However, with the sacredness of the imperial state, it must not be in the name of the Uighur kingdom, and it is not taken now." He simply denied that Japan had paid tribute or made countless tributes or offerings to China, and considered Japan to be a "sacred country." "My Emperor is the Emperor of Heavenly Destiny, so why use the seal of the false Han Emperor to think that the king of the Imperial State is evil?" Another figure of the same school, named Yoshiki Kondo, went so far as to compare the Uighur kingdom mentioned in the Book of the Later Han Dynasty to Ryukyu and did not consider it to be a native of Japan. There are many similar sophistries!
Before the fiasco in the Pacific War and the unconditional surrender, Japan had a long period of arrogance due to a series of lucky opportunities, and the imperial literati would change history arbitrarily, and the so-called "Oriental historians" were eager to write about the enlightenment of Japan before China; how could the ancient kings of "Great Japan" accept the seal letter from the emperor of "China"? Is this really the case? Now that this physical evidence has been unearthed, how did it get it? So this golden seal must be fake, it must not be true! This is precisely the logic of the absurd reasoning of the Japanese in the first place.
In the first year of the Eastern Han Dynasty (58), Emperor Ming awarded his half-brother Liu Jing the Golden Seal, also known as the "Seal of the King of Guangling"; in terms of time, it was only one year later than the golden seal of the "King of Han Weinu" awarded to Japan by his father Emperor Guangwu. I've seen both, exactly the same.
The equally beautiful "King hanweinu" gold seal, slightly square, 2.341-2.354 cm in length, 0.874 cm thick, the font is a small seal, the carving is very simple, for a long time by the Kuroda Nagari clan in Tokyo collection, I once saw it once because of a special chance, unforgettable. Now this gold seal is in the Fukuoka City Museum. These two golden seals are really too similar, the same yin carved seal text, except for the back button ("Guangling King Seal" turtle button, "Han Weinu King" seal snake button), can be said to be exactly the same, and it is likely to be carved by the same craftsman. There will always be no boring cultural ronin in Japan, and I dare to say that these two gold seals are all counterfeit.
In 1977, the Mainichi Shimbun, one of the three largest newspapers in Japan, published a set of "Primary Color Editions of National Treasures" supervised by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, consisting of twelve volumes, edited, selected, printed and bound, all of which were extremely careful and exquisite. Its first volume is the Ancients, Asuka and Nara Period, and the first national treasure is this golden seal of the "King of Han Weinu". If it weren't for the Japanese being reborn as a result of their unconditional surrender due to defeat, they would never have made such an arrangement!
Historical and Cultural Geography of China
Chen Zhengxiang
Shanxi People's Publishing House October 2021
[This article is authorized to be reprinted from part of the chapters of the book "China's Historical and Cultural Geography", the title is added by the editor]
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Source: Purple Cow News