Pictured: Tongcheng Longmian River Covered Bridge. Photo: Tongcheng Confucian Temple. Pictured: Schematic diagram of the Temple of Literature and Six Foot Lane in the historical district of Tongcheng. Pictured: Tongcheng Six Foot Lane. Pictured: The technician performs a secondary spot blue on the cloisonné artwork. The pictures, pictures, pictures, and pictures were provided by the Propaganda Department of the Tongcheng City CPC Committee, and the picture was taken by Li Xin, a reporter from Xinhua News Agency.
Tongcheng Kongcheng Old Street overlooks. With a total length of 2.2 kilometers, Kongcheng Old Street is one of the longest and best-preserved ancient streets in Anhui. Photo courtesy of the Publicity Department of the Tongcheng City Cpc Committee
On November 12, 2021, the State Council approved the listing of Tongcheng City in Anhui Province as a national historical and cultural city. Tongcheng has become the 138th national historical and cultural city in China.
Tongcheng is not large, but commercial culture and education flourished for a while. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, many outstanding figures emerged in Tongcheng, and their academic achievements and cultural ideas had a great influence, and Tongcheng was known as the "Wendu". "Tongcheng School" and "Six Feet Alley" are the distinctive labels of this ancient city.
Tongcheng, named "Yitong in the place", was changed to Tongcheng County in the second year of the Tang Dynasty (757), and the name has not changed for more than 1200 years.
The center of the ancient city of Tongcheng is the Temple of Literature.
The Tongcheng Confucian Temple, built during the Yuan Yanyou period, was destroyed by war at the end of the Yuan Dynasty. Ming Hongwu was relocated to the north end of Tongcheng Square in the early years, with a history of more than 600 years.
Tongcheng has a profound cultural heritage, especially in the Ming and Qing dynasties, talents gathered, and had brilliant achievements in many fields such as philosophy, prose, poetry, painting, education and so on.
At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, the Tongcheng people Fang Bao, Liu Daxun and Yao Nai established their own theoretical system in the field of literary creation, and a number of influential works came out, the Tongcheng School gradually formed, and Fang, Liu and Yao were revered as the three ancestors of the Tongcheng School.
"Tongcheng is located in the Anhui River cultural circle between Jianghuai and Huaijiang, although the building is partially influenced by Huipai architecture, it has unique characteristics in terms of plane pattern, frame form, detail decoration, etc., and generally presents simple and concise features." Li Lixin, deputy director of the Office of the Protection and Management Committee of Tongcheng Historical and Cultural City, introduced.
Traditional neighborhoods such as East Avenue, North Street, Shengli Street and South Street in the ancient city fully reflect this feature. These main streets and alleys run through the historic city, and the buildings on both sides are mostly in the form of front shops and back-to-houses. Inside the main streets and alleys, there are family houses with main residences, which together with traditional commercial streets constitute the traditional urban style of Tongcheng from the Ming and Qing dynasties to the Republic of China. Among them, the most representative are East Avenue and North Avenue.
East Avenue is located on the eastern outskirts of the county town, running east-west, with a street paved with hemp strips of stone. The street surface is slightly curved, and there are 11 streets and alleys in the block, with different lengths and lengths, crisscrossing and crisscrossing. There are 34 ancient residential and historical buildings on both sides of East Avenue.
North Avenue was originally the main street from Dongzuomen to Xichengmen in the ancient city. There are historical streets and alleys in the neighborhood, such as North Street and North Back Street, which serve as the eastern section of the horizontal axis of the ancient city. At present, North Avenue has 23 historical buildings such as provincial cultural relics protection units and municipal cultural relics protection units, with rich categories and grand volume.
To Tongcheng, you can't cross the "six-foot alley".
According to legend, during the Kangxi Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty, the mansion of the university scholar Zhang Ying was adjacent to the Wu family, and the Wu surname built a house to occupy the land of the Zhang family, and the two sides had a dispute, because the two families were high-ranking officials and noble families, and the county officials were difficult to decide. The family then wrote a letter to Zhang Ying, who was an official in the capital, asking for help, and Zhang Ying replied with the sentence "A piece of paper is only for the wall, let him be three feet and why bother". Zhang Ying's family suddenly opened up and took the initiative to give up three feet of land, and after the Wu family learned about it, they also gave up three feet of land, achieving the legend of "Six Feet Lane".
Zhang Ying's second son was Zhang Tingyu. Zhang Tingyu lived in three dynasties and lived as an official for fifty years. Zhang's father and son are tired of officials and scholars, and the world calls them "father and son double prime ministers", which was once rumored to be a beautiful talk.
Protecting traditional neighborhoods, protecting ancient buildings, and protecting cultural relics is to preserve the history and context of the city, and Li Lixin is deeply aware of this. "We have marked the landscape pattern and historical environment elements that embody Tongcheng culture by erecting signs, signs, maps of the ancient city, etc., and strictly controlled the construction height of the core protection area and the historical landscape area of the ancient city and the direction of the historical street."
In recent years, in order to do a good job in the protection of historical and cultural blocks, Tongcheng has completed the delineation of 4 provincial-level historical and cultural blocks, set up 8 historical and cultural block protection plates; 206 historical buildings that have been announced, archived and listed, and implemented protection measures; and 19 full-time grid administrators have been equipped with stronger, improving the inspection and protection mechanism, and the management tentacles are more refined.
In order to further protect the history and culture of Tongcheng, in recent years, Tongcheng has focused on combing the development history of the "Tongcheng School", excavating the corresponding time and space nodes, telling the "Tongcheng School" culture through sculptures, sketches, street parks and museums, highlighting the important historical and cultural memory of the "Tongcheng School"; restoring a number of historical landmark buildings such as "TongquFang of Seven Provinces" and "Fengyi Fang" at the original site; investing 15 million yuan to concentrate on rectifying the surrounding scenery of the Temple of Literature; raising 400 million yuan for the restoration of the style of The Six-Foot Alley in the historical area The national tertiary museum "Anhui Tongcheng Culture Museum" was built and opened as a centralized display area for Tongcheng's excellent traditional culture.
"In the future, we will continue to tell the story of Tongcheng, innovate the development model, and enhance the vitality of the city." Activate and utilize the material relics of cultural protection units, historical buildings and other material relics, gradually expand the scope of utilization of cultural relics and historical buildings, design a variety of activation and transformation paths, expand the use of functions, innovate the use of models, and meet social needs. Li Lixin said.
Tongcheng Intangible Cultural Heritage
Tongcheng city culture flourishes, and there are many intangible cultural heritages.
Tongcheng Song is a local folk song of Tongcheng, which has a strong literary and artistic nature, and has played a role in modeling reference for folk songs in many regions. Tongcheng Song has influenced the formation and development of Huangmei opera, and has also had a great influence on the creation of Tongcheng literati. In 2008, Tongcheng Song was included in the second batch of national intangible cultural heritage list.
The production technology of casting tire filigree enamel takes the copper casting tire as the body, and goes through the processes of filigree, point enamel, grinding enamel, gilding and so on, and finally forms an elegant and exquisitely decorated artwork. However, after the end of the Ming Dynasty, the cast tire filigree enamelware has basically disappeared. Tongcheng's casting tire filigree enamel making technology has been restored on the basis of inheriting the cloisonné production process, which has high artistic value, and was included in the fourth batch of provincial intangible cultural heritage list in Anhui Province in 2014.
Typography: Cai Huawei
People's Daily ( 2022-01-03 06 edition)