Yantai, where the Lingshan Mountains and rivers are beautiful and talented, and the wonderland of mountains and seas, has also given birth to countless heroic figures: Chun Yu, the elder of Minoru, who was listed at the top of the "Chronicle of History and Funny Columns" with the allusion of "a blockbuster"; Xu Fu, an alchemist who created a history of friendly exchanges and cultural exchanges between China and Japan and became a pioneer of Japan's ancient civilization; Xu Yue, the founder of abacus who assisted his teacher Liu Hong in calculating solar and lunar eclipses for the first time with the Dingshuo method; Song Wan, a literati who was worried about the country and the people and became famous for his poetry; and Hao Yixing, a scholar who was honest and self-disciplined throughout his life and wrote books and lectures There is also Xu Jingxin, the main ally of the Shandong Allies of the Chinese League, and Xu Jingxin, a revolutionary giant who was sometimes known as the "Southern Song Dynasty (Jiaoren) Northern Xu"... One by one, like the twinkling stars in the night sky, marked in the long river of history. However, if you ask the famous one in Yantai's history, I am afraid that it is still the national hero and changsheng general Qi Jiguang.
For Qi Jiguang, I have too many expectations and yearnings. "A generation of gods of war", "national heroes", "all-round talents in literature and martial arts", these are his well-deserved titles. His hometown was in Penglai, he died of illness in Penglai, and many brilliant moments in his life also occurred in Penglai. And in Penglai to follow the footsteps of Qi Jiguang, it is undoubtedly a long-cherished wish of mine.
Probably because Qi Jiguang's record is too dazzling, many people ignore that his start is actually a blessing from zu Shangyinde. Qi Xiang, the ancestor of the Qi family, once followed Zhu Yuanzhang on his eastern expedition to the west and was loyal. Zhu Yuanzhang remembered his merits and issued a far-reaching holy decree: "Qi Bin, the son of Qi Xiang, was appointed as a general of Mingwei, and served as the commander of Dengzhou Wei, and was hereditary!" That is to say, as long as the Ming Dynasty can be thousands of generations, the military and political positions in Dengzhou will belong to the Qi family for generations.
More than a hundred years later, the position of general Of Zheng Sipin and commander of Dengzhou Wei passed to Qi Jiguang, who was seventeen years old. If you change into a character with an ordinary mind and such a family background, I am afraid that you will lie on the family's merit book and eat and wait for death, becoming a stupid child. Fortunately, Qi Jiguang's father, Qi Jingtong, taught his son the spiritual principle of taking the world as his duty before his death. Although he was poor all his life, the spiritual wealth he left to his son was the most abundant.
When Qi Jiguang was more than ten years old, he once wrote a poem "The Depths of TaoZhao": "Xiaozhu temporarily sits high, and there is an old alliance when you are worried." Hu Zhun came to the guests, waving and sitting and talking about the soldiers. The cloud guard toothpick is full, and the star contains a sword. The title is not my intention, but I hope that Hai Boping. It can be seen that since then, he has had the ambition and pride of pacifying the sea frontier, and looking at his life, he has indeed practiced this sentence perfectly.
Looking east from Penglai Pavilion, there is a majestic water city. The city is wide from south to north, with irregular rectangles, strong breakwaters and walls surrounding a vast body of water, docks, lighthouses, enemy platforms, forts, moats and other coastal defense buildings are well preserved, full of simple and thick atmosphere. This is the most complete ancient water army base in China, which is where Qi Jiguang's water division training camp is located, and when he first served as the commander of Dengzhou Wei, Qi Jiguang was here to train the water army and first show his sharp edge.
Thinking back to that year, the young and vigorous Qi Jiguang looked at the group of soldiers under his command who were disciplined and passive, and they couldn't help but be angry. Therefore, he drastically straightened out military discipline and solemnly attended attendance, but found that the shortcomings of the army were already accumulated and difficult to return. But Qi Jiguang was not discouraged, he began to sum up the experience and think of ways to change. The road of a generation of military gods also began from here.
Qi Jiguang's Dengzhou Wei commander was Enyin's post, and in order to have a serious origin, he decided to go north to take the exam for martial arts. Although the test results were not very satisfactory, his "Bei Li Answer" was highly appreciated by the imperial court, and soon after, Qi Jiguang was elected to the Zhejiang region to take charge of the affairs of the Wu Dynasty.
Qi Jiguang, who took the world as his own responsibility, naturally wanted to solve the world's troubles, and the troubles of the Ming Dynasty at that time were Wokou. These Wokou were mainly Japanese samurai and ronin, colluding with profiteers and hooligans along the coast to commit crimes, attacking cities and lands, and robbing and killing the people, and the imperial court was troubled by this. Unfortunately, the ming army's combat effectiveness was too poor, and it collapsed whenever it encountered the Wokou. Qi Jiguang was deeply ashamed and vowed to change this situation.
At the age of 28, with the support of Hu Zongxian, the inspector of Zhejiang, Qi Jiguang, who was then the general of Ningshaotai in Zhejiang, dismissed the cowardly old soldiers under his command and recruited a group of brave and fierce warriors in Yiwu. Under his strict training, this new army of more than 4,000 people was strictly disciplined and extremely effective, and became the main force of the anti-Japanese war, which was called the "Qi Family Army" by later generations.
The magic weapon for the Qi family army to defeat the enemy is the Mandarin duck array created by Qi Jiguang. This kind of formation is composed of twelve people, and the long and short weapons are combined with each other, and the two take care of each other, and the formation is flexible, and the enemy is unexpected, forming a suppressive advantage over the enemy. The second is the continuous improvement of cold weapons. In order to deal with the enemy's knife, Qi Jiguang created a wolf's sword, which was not only five or six feet long, but also carried a hook and a thorn with poison, so that the enemy did not dare to get close to him easily. At the same time, Qi Jiajun also attached great importance to the use of firearms, equipped with a large number of Flang machines, bird guns, and qi Jiguang's exclusive invention of the tiger squat cannon. This tiger squat cannon is more powerful than the bird's cannon, and it is more convenient to carry than the Flang machine, and it is the leader of the hot weapons of that era. In this way, the Qi family army became one of the highest proportion of firearms in the world at that time, which made The Wokou feel frightened.
From the thirty-eighth year of Emperor Jiajing of the Ming Dynasty (1559 AD) to the forty-fifth year of Jiajing (1566 AD), the Qi family army turned to Zhejiang, Fujian, and Guangdong, and fought more than 80 large and small battles with Wukou, such as the Battle of Taizhou, the Battle of Lindun, the Battle of Xinghua, the Battle of Xianyou, etc., each time almost completely annihilating the enemy army, and the largest casualty of his side was only sixty-nine people, which can really be described as a hundred, and the momentum was like a bamboo. Such dazzling achievements are probably extremely rare in the long river of history.
With the unremitting efforts of Qi Jiguang and others, in the first year of Ming Muzong's Longqing (1567 AD), the plague that had plagued China's coastal areas for decades was finally quelled. Qi Jiguang did not live up to his youthful ambition of "wishing for a sea wave", and Japan's sea robbers no longer dared to make waves. However, Qi Jiguang's conquest years did not end.
After quelling the plague, the imperial court sent Qi Jiguang to the northern Jizhou area to train soldiers and soldiers to defend the Tatars, and the governor of Jizhou was military affairs. During this period, Qi Jiguang repaired the Great Wall of more than 2,000 miles on the border, added his original hollow enemy platform, and greatly improved the fortifications. Under his guard, the Ming army repelled many Tatar attacks, and the northern border was impregnable. He was also awarded the title of Crown Prince Taibao by the imperial court for his merits.
However, Qi Jiguang, who had made such a meritorious achievement, could not escape the persecution of rumors in the court, especially after the death of Zhang Juzheng, the first assistant of the cabinet who had always supported him, Qi Jiguang was degraded by the imperial court. In the face of the coldness of the officialdom, Qi Jiguang, who has always looked down on honor and disgrace and fame and fortune, decided to resign from the government as ill. He returned to his hometown of Penglai, and he wanted to return to his roots.
Today's Penglai Water City can no longer see the smoke of the past, only the scenery is beautiful, close to see the weeping willows, poetry monuments lined up; far away you can see the vast sea and sky, the water sparkling; looking up, Penglai Pavilion is covered with green trees, the palace pavilion is in the sky. The infinite scenery and panoramic view can't help but make people feel relaxed. Not far north of the Penglai Pavilion Scenic Area, Qi Jiguang's hometown stood quietly in the sunset. Those houses are newly rebuilt, and the green bricks and black tiles and stone pavements are also full of ancient charm.
What really attracted me was the two archways standing at the end of the street, which were the only antiquities left in Qi Jiguang's hometown, wordlessly telling the heroic pride of this Penglai boy.
These two towering and exquisitely carved arches were built by the imperial court in the forty-fourth year of Jiajing (1565 AD) to recognize Qi Jiguang's anti-Wu meritorious service, and also to praise the Qi family. The east side of the street is the "Mother and Child Festival Filial Piety" square, which is intended to praise Qi Jiguang's mother Yan's godson, and the west side of the street is the "Father and Son Governor" square, which means that Qi Jiguang's father and son have been loyal to the country for two generations. The two arches are four-pillar, three-room, five-story three-eaves ridge stone carving workshops, which can be said to be the top specifications in ancient times. After more than 400 years of vicissitudes, the archway is still well preserved, which shows the reverence of the Penglai people for Qi Jiguang. Standing under the archway, I caressed the auspicious cloud pattern on the pedestal and observed the exquisite carvings on the forehead: double dragon play beads, Danfeng Chaoyang, phoenix cirrus clouds, fish and dragon clouds, all of which came to life.
Qi Jiguang is not only a generation of military generals and gods of war, but also a literary talent. He took advantage of the gap between his ranks to sum up the experience of training troops and fighting wars, and compiled two military books, "New Book of Ji Xiao" and "Actual Record of Military Training.", which occupied two places exclusively among the ten greatest military books in ancient China, and even have guiding significance for modern warfare. In the Qi Jiguang Arsenal, I also saw a variety of weapons he invented and improved, such as wolf wrenches, boring palladium, tiger squat cannons, etc., and I couldn't help but admire his advanced creativity, and his admiration became more and more intense.
"Three hundred and sixty days a year, most of them are crossed and immediately gone", I murmured Qi Jiguang's poems, fantasizing about his heroic and courageous figure of killing the enemy, quietly leaving the place where the life of this famous general of the ages began and ended. Although "the shadow of the sword and light has dimmed, and the drum horns have gone away", I believe that there are always some people and some things that time cannot take with them. The sun, moon, stars, mountains, rivers and seas will always remember the name Qi Jiguang.
Editor-in-Charge: Lei Wang