In the summer of 1975, Zhang Daren, a teacher living at No. 173 Zhanyuan Road in Nanjing, planned to clean the ceiling, when he cleaned the wooden bucket of the skylight, he suddenly found a square wooden knot, which was not only engraved with dragon and phoenix, but also engraved with the word "will" in the middle, Zhang Daren saw these two words, admiring this thing must be related to the emperor, but because of the special age, he threw the wooden knot into the toolbox, and later used it to pad the foot of the bed.
Teacher Zhang moved, and Mother Zhang moved with her family to Nanjing, which Liu Yuxi wrote in "Wuyi Lane", "The Former Wang Xie Tang Qianyan".
In Nanjing, the Zhang family lived at No. 173 Zhanyuan Road. This 173 Zhanyuan Road was a private house before liberation, which was nationalized after liberation and later became a house that could be rented.
The Zhang family moved in, but Teacher Zhang was a little worried because it was a building during the Qing Dynasty, and many of the furniture had fallen into disrepair. The rain in Jiangnan is lingering, it has been raining for a long time, and sometimes strange sounds can even be heard in the house in the middle of the night, and Teacher Zhang has always been restless in such a room.
The cultural relics appraiser took it to an appraisal and found that this small wooden knot was actually the imperial seal of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and the wooden seal was owned by Hong Xiuquan, the Heavenly King of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and had been lost for more than 100 years.
During the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Hong Xiuquan promulgated a strict censorship system for cultural publications, and all ancient books since ancient times were tampered with according to Hong Xiuquan's will, and the Four Books and Five Classics and even the Twenty-Three Histories were all deleted and revised. The reason why this wooden seal appears at No. 173 Zhanyuan Road in Nanjing is because it was previously the location of the "Deletion Bookstore".
Experts introduced the story behind this piece of wood seal to teacher Zhang Daren, it turned out that Hong Xiuquan had a total of three pieces of jade seal, namely a wooden seal made of wood, a golden seal made of gold, and a jade seal made of jade, of which the golden seal was destroyed, the jade seal was stored in the museum, and the last piece of wood seal remained. According to legend, Muxi was the exclusive use of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's "Deleted Book Bureau" at that time, and at that time Hong Xiuquan promulgated a strict publication review, and all books had to be deleted and revised according to his ideas, and the "Deletion Bookstore" was the censorship body, and only those with a wooden seal stamp could be published. Later, according to research, the place where Teacher Zhang found Muxi was exactly where the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom once worked, when Tianjing was breached, and the officials of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom hid it on the ceiling in order to prevent the Wooden Seal from falling into the hands of the Qing army, and it was not discovered until Teacher Zhang cleaned up.
The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom historian Luo Ergang immediately rushed to Nanjing after receiving the news, and after identification, it was confirmed that this wooden knot was Hong Xiuquan's wooden seal, but why did such an important jade seal fall on the ceiling. According to the expert Luo Ergang, because Zhang Daren's residence was once the official office of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, "Deleting Books" After the fall of Tianjing in 1864, it is likely that the officials of Yamen hid the jade seal on the ceiling because they were worried that the jade seal fell into the hands of the Qing army, and the jade seal that disappeared for more than a hundred years by chance finally appeared, and the cash so the jade seal as a precious cultural relic was hidden in the Nanjing Taiping Heavenly Kingdom History Museum.
Nanjing city to carry out cultural relics census work, Zhang Daren happened to be selected to go to the cultural relics census office as an assistant, two months later the cultural relics appraiser identified a seal with collection value, Zhang Daren, who did not know much about cultural relics, was very curious, so he went home and turned the wooden knots in the toolbox out and washed them carefully and handed them to the cultural relics office, and the cultural relics appraiser took it to the appraisal and found that this wooden knot was actually the jade seal of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. It turned out that Hong Xiuquan once had three jade seals, Jin Xi had been destroyed, the jade seal was stored in the National Museum of China, and the wooden seal has been missing.