The Buried Chamber has clouds:
"The mountain is not high, there are immortals with names." The water is not deep, there are dragons and spirits. ”
Xinghua Village was originally an unknown settlement, but it became a world-famous cultural relic because of a great literary hero's "Shepherd Boy Remote Fingering Xinghua Village". Influenced by Du Mu's "Qingming", dozens of apricot blossom villages in different regions appeared out of thin air in China, and every villager in the apricot blossom village will proudly say that his village is "authentic".
What is the standard of the so-called "authentic apricot blossom village"?
Naturally, it was the small village that Du Mu saw after he met the shepherd boy. However, time has passed, and it has been a thousand years since Du Mu visited Xinghua Village, and it is really difficult to examine where du Wenhao's Xinghua Village was.
A few years ago, the "Jinling Evening News" published a large page of the original site of The Apricot Blossom Village, arguing that the Nanjing Apricot Blossom Village was not the Apricot Blossom Village that Du Mu met by chance, but the "Northwest Goods" that appeared only after the Ming Dynasty.
For this point, the author really does not dare to agree, and now puts forward some of his own inferences for the benefit of the reader.
The oldest surviving local chronicle in the Nanjing area is the Jingding Jiankangzhi, which was co-authored by the local Taishou Ma Guangzu and Zhou Ying during the Southern Song Dynasty, and the twenty-third volume of this chronicle records in black and white:
"There are two military villages, one in Hutou Mountain outside the south gate of the city, and one in the apricot blossom village in the city."
This conclusive evidence is enough to prove that at least before the Southern Song Dynasty, the village of "Xinghua Village" had already appeared in the Jiankang area.
Unfortunately, the records of the Zhishu are relatively vague, and although the name of "Apricot Blossom Village" is mentioned, it does not say where the specific location of this small village is.
In fact, regarding the original site of Xinghua Village, we can also deduce it through some information included in "Jingding Jiankangzhi".
For example, in the section of the book's twenty-two volumes, "Phoenix Terrace", a poem by Yang Wanli is included:
"A thousand-year-old phoenix platform, sending the tide back to the phoenix."
The egret north head river grass merges, and the apricot blossoms bloom on the west side of wuyi.
The dragon and the tiger are in the mountains and rivers, and the drums and horns have been mourning in the past and the present.
Only who immortals left sentences, and the spring wind was in charge of the spider coal. ”
Yang Wanli, the author of this poem, stood on the phoenix platform, looking in the direction of Wuyi Lane, and a large forest of apricot blossoms came into view. At present, Xinghua Village in Nanjing is located in Hualugang on the south side of Jiqingmen inner Jianye District. Opening the map, it is not difficult to find that the location of Xinghua Village is just on the west side of Wuyi Lane.
Therefore, we have every reason to believe that the apricot blossom forest that Yang Wanli saw when he stood on the Phoenix Terrace was most likely the location of the apricot blossom village in the Southern Song Dynasty.
Let's take a look at Wan Qianshao's work "Jinling Suburban Trip" in the "All Song Poems":
"Quickly Tijinle walked to the outskirts, and woke up the drunken soul with the east wind blowing."
The good scenery lingers in the day and night, and comes to the apricot blossom village. ”
This poem further confirms that during the Song Dynasty, Xinghua Village was no longer an unknown settlement, but a landmark building full of cultural heritage. When poets come to Nanjing, they often take this as a theme and imitate the style and elegance of Du Mu in that year.
The Zhizheng Jinling Xinzhi is a local chronicle of the Yuan Dynasty, and in the eleventh volume of this book, the following text appears:
"Odori Temple, also known as Odori-an Temple, was built in the first year of the Song Dynasty, and the Gunshou Ma Guangzu Standing Stone. In the south corner of the Royal Street, Liu observed the tiger woman Xiuyan falling into a nun and moved the nunnery to build a temple in the village of Xinghua in the south of Qinhuai. ”
The old things recorded in this text are not important, the key is that the landmark "Xinghua Village" appears in the book again, which is enough to show that the Xinghua Village in Jinling City also existed during the Yuan Dynasty.
From the above books and poetry collections, it is not difficult to find that Xinghua Village already existed in the Song and Yuan Dynasties, and its popularity is quite high. Therefore, the content of the Jinling Evening News is untrue, and the credibility of saying that Xinghua Village appeared after the Ming Dynasty is very low. In fact, the controversy over the original site of Xinghua Village did not begin in modern times.
For example, in the "Guangyu Ji" published during the Kangxi Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty, the second volume of the Chizhou chapter appears with the following text: "Xinghua Village, outside the Xiushan Gate of Fucheng, Du Mushi refers to xinghua village as this." However, in the Jiangning chapter, which is also the second volume, there is also such a record: "Xinghua Village, Jiangning County zhixi, according to legend, Du Mu's gu liquor place." ”
Both passages are from the same work. This is enough to prove that in the Ming and Qing dynasties, there was also a "dispute over the original site of Xinghua Village", and the more popular competition places at that time were Jiangning Xinghua Village and Chizhou Xinghua Village.
We know that the phrase "shepherd boy remotely refers to the apricot blossom village" comes from the Tang Dynasty. If you want to analyze where the apricot blossom village that Du Mu encountered in that year is, you need to study it in conjunction with the historical data of the Tang Dynasty.
But unfortunately, it seems that the reputation of Xinghua Village during the Tang Dynasty was limited, and few documents from the same period were included in the village, so we could not dig deeper into where the Xinghua Village that Du Mu saw was.
It is believed that in the near future, with the advancement of archaeological work, more Tang Dynasty historical evidence will be unearthed, and these historical evidences will guide us to the location of Xinghua Village a thousand years ago.
Resources:
【"Guangyu Zhi", "Jingding Jiankangzhi", "Zhizheng Jinling New Zhi"】