Yang Yuchun has experienced hundreds of battles
Niangnianggang, a magnificent and mysterious hill in the rootless mountains northwest of Chongzhou.
In the counties under the jurisdiction of Chengdu, Chongzhou is like an inverted saddle, the terrain is high in the north and low in the east, hundreds of mountains sandwich a large river called Wenjing River, from the northern terrace that is rubbed against the tibetan and Qiang regions where cow dung is smoking, all the way down the rock wall, the trees are knotted, and in the morning and dusk, the fog is like smoke, the more the four seasons and the grass and trees are withered, to the river outlet at a place called Harrier Rock, the wolf rushes to the mountain ridge but suddenly stops, and the remaining river of white water clings to the cliff wall and whimpers, turning over the foot of the mountain, and rushing to the Pingchuan River.
The river rushed forward, and the willows on both sides gradually piled up smoke and miscellaneous peanuts. Under the canopy, independent peaks and hills stood out of thin air, like mushrooms growing on the ground after the rain, and the trees were lush and green. For thousands of years, the locals have guarded the hill in front of their own doors, lifted their legs uphill, bowed their heads and hoes, but they could not distinguish the ins and outs of the blessed land under their feet. Some people were curious, carrying a few pieces of boiled potatoes in their arms, shaking off the footboard, and measuring a total of seventy-two hills of all sizes around them, all of which seemed to fly from the sky and have no roots. Returning to the village, the crowd simply named it after the shape, calling this hill a rootless mountain.
Locals say that there are few blue clouds and white clouds in the middle of the year, and it is common for the air to rush. If viewed from a higher place, this majestic hill is just like an iron lock, firmly clamping the rootless mountain piece of Taoyuan behind its own tiger's back and bear's waist, this heavenly graben is called Niangnianggang.
A famous general in the middle of the Qing Dynasty, Yang Yuchun, the first-class Marquis of Zhaoyong and the governor of Shaanxi and Gansu, who went through the three dynasties of Qianlong, Jiaqing and Daoguang, was buried under Niangniang's post.
One
Known as the "Blessed General"
Hundreds of battles were fought unscathed
Yang Yuchun, word Shi Zhai. Born in 1761 in Bainian Village, Ximenwai, Chongqing Prefecture. In the forty-fourth year of Qianlong (1779), the eighteen-year-old Yang Yuchun took the Wuju Examination, and the following year he was selected to join the army, following Fu Kang'an to suppress the uprisings of Tian Wu in Gansu, Lin Shuangwen in Taiwan, and miao people in Guizhou and Hunan, and was deeply appreciated by Fu Kang'an. In the second year of Jiaqing (1797), he began to participate in the suppression of the Sichuan Chu Bailian Rebellion, which was highly relied on by the minister of economics, Erle Dengbao. Jiaqing for five years, led by the Admiral to fight independently. The famous leaders of the rebel army, such as Qin Jiayao, Luo Qiqing, Leng Tianlu, Ruan Zhenglong, and Wang Tingzhao, were killed or captured by him. In June of the eleventh year of Jiaqing, the garrison in Ningshan Town, Shaanxi Province, mutinied due to the reduction of silver and silver, and the army attacked the city and robbed the prison, killing officials, and growing to more than 10,000 people. The Qing court sent Delentai and Yang Yuchun to lead the army to pacify. In the eighteenth year of Jiaqing, after suppressing the Tianli Sect uprising with the troops led by the Counselor General, he also suppressed the Uprising of the Fan Workers in Nanshan, Shaanxi. In the fifth year of Daoguang (1825), he acted as the governor of Shaanxi and Gansu. Previously, the position was rarely held by Han Chinese. In six years, the Zhang Ge rebellion in Xinjiang was quelled. In the eighth year of Daoguang, he was appointed governor of Shaanxi and Gansu. Daoguang fifteen years, to the first rank of Zhao Yong Marquis Zhishi (retired).
Although the above records are concise and concise, the three legends of a generation of Marquis are permeated between the lines.
This legend is first embodied in his birth. According to local legend in Chongzhou, on the night of Yang Yuchun's birth, his mother Li Shi dreamed that there was a lot of water around the house. The water rushed and floated a red wooden box. Li Shi opened it and saw that there were two carp lying in the box. One is golden and the other is red. Li Shi was surprised, and with a gentle flick of his hand, the two fish suddenly fought each other head to tail, swimming in a relaxed state.
This legend can make the people at that time sigh: the prince will certainly not be an ordinary person. However, legends for celebrities often belong to the after-the-fact smear. Yang Yuchun's two brothers, in addition to his marquis, his brother Yang Fengchun was also awarded the medal for battle merit. Perhaps, this is the origin of the legend of pisces.
The legend of Yang Yuchun is also reflected in his Lu Shou Shuangquan. As the saying goes: If the crock pot is not broken from the well, the general will inevitably die before the battle. Yang Yuchun was a fu general (Huang Ding, a fellow chongzhou native who was born later than him and who was also promoted to envoy by military merit, died in the war in Gansu).
In the "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty" compiled by Zhao Ersun, it is said that Yang Yuchun went through the three dynasties of Qianlong, Jiaqing, and Daoguang, and whenever he encountered military affairs, he did not follow Wu Chi. In his lifetime, he experienced hundreds of battles, large and small, all of which were trapped, and all of them were caught in battle, or their crowns and feathers were broken, or their robes were worn, and they were not injured at all, and they were called "Lucky Generals"; their troops would display black flags in every battle, and they were called Yang Jiajun.
The Great Qing, rising between the white mountains and black waters, iron riding crossbows, the generals are like clouds. It was not until the rise of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the corruption of the Eight Banners, and the fatigue of the Green Battalion soldiers that its generals in charge of the military gradually shifted from a group dominated by the sons of Manchu and Mongolian military nobles to a group of Han generals dominated by Confucian intellectuals.
Yu Chun is in the middle of this transition. Before him, the eight banners of the eight banners such as Duoduo, Nian Qianyao, and Fukang'an were famous; after him, it was Zeng Guofan, Zuo Zongtang, Hu Linyi and other Han elites who tried to turn the tide.
Yang Yuchun Cemetery. Photo by the author
Two
Lady under the post
Yang Yuchun's tomb lay quietly for 130 years
Through the fog of time, we can see more clearly that in the era in which Yang Yuchun lived, the Qing Dynasty was at a historical inflection point that began to decline from the prosperous qianlong dynasty.
Only three years after Yang Yuchun's death, the First Opium War broke out, and China suffered "unprecedented changes in three thousand years" as a result. Yang Yuchun, dressed in cloth, went through the posts of general, thousand general, garrison, capital division, guerrilla, staff general, deputy general, general soldier, admiral, acting governor, and finally became a feudal governor, the governor of the two northwestern provinces, in the era when Han generals were suspected and excluded, and the twists and turns were profound.
The "Chronicle of Chongqing County", compiled in 1926, is not only a historian, but also a remarkable literary style. However, regarding Yang Yuchun's tomb, the location is not entirely accurate, only two strokes: "Niangnianggang Chonglin Maofa." The ancestral tomb of Yang Zhongwu and the tomb of Zhongwu are both in Yan. ”
In fact, Yang Yuchun was buried on the longhua mountainside next to Niangnianggang.
Longhua Mountain is shaped like a Crouching Tiger. At the bottom of the mountain stretches a small mountain village, a few strange roads, and several wisps of cooking smoke wafting away. Whenever the sunset is still shining, the wheatgrass-covered roof of the villagers seems to be sprinkled with a layer of gold sand, which is dazzling to the eye, which is for the Xieyang Village.
In the late spring of 1999, cauliflowers bloomed around Niangnianggang. I went deep into the area of Xieyang Village to find the exact point of Yang Yuchun's tomb, and after running for several days, in front of a house fenced with hibiscus flowers, a white-haired old man surnamed Li recounted the poignant power of Yang Yuchun's tomb in that year: The tomb of Marquis Yang covers an area of more than thirty acres, and is surrounded by a hillside, consisting of archways, Shinto, mausoleums, and stele pavilions. The Shinto shrine leading to the tomb is built on a mountain, flanked by five pairs of stone-carved animals and figures (full name stone statues), followed by stone sheep, stone tigers, stone horses, military generals, and civil officials. In front of the tomb, there is a pair of stone candlesticks and a treasure vase, and in the middle is an incense burner (collectively known as the Five Offerings of Stone).
This is in line with the provisions of the Great Qing Law: only officials with three or more products can enjoy the five offerings of stone and the life of stone statues. Yang Yuchun was a marquis, and in addition to the stone beasts, he could be equipped with a stone statue (commonly known as Weng Zhong) of a civilian official and military general.
In the spring rain, the old man pointed out to me that behind the hill where the tomb was located, there stood a dark blue hill. The head of the post is towering, and it looks like a tiger's head. Throughout the year, the forest is lush, and the ancestral hall of the Houye family once stood on it, with cornices and angles, and green bricks. On the hillside on the right, there are more than a dozen tombs with thick seals, and in front of the tombs are all poorly shaped stone tablets. After a rain, the moss on the stele turned black, which was the ancestral tomb of the Yang family.
From a distance, the hill where the ancestral hall is located resembles a tiger's head. The two mountains separated in front of the tiger's head resemble two tiger paws. The tiger's head looks around, and the tiger's palm stretches out, forming the image of a crouching tiger after a full meal, quietly resting under the iron lock of the copper wall.
From the description of the old man to the retrospective of the county chronicle, it is certain that from 1837, Yang Yuchun, a famous general of a generation who had experienced hundreds of battles, quietly rested on the left tiger paw of Longhua Mountain, until 1967, when Yang Yuchun's tomb disappeared from the land of Chongzhou.
After pursuing this, I was overwhelmed and couldn't help but think of a saying about Yang Yuchun: "The general returned to Hushan in a hundred battles, and Guanyin linshui picked the string moon." ”
Guanyin Linshui refers to the "Hair Embroidery "Water Moon Guanyin" statue hidden in Chengdu Wenshu Monastery, which is a cultural relic that can be called a national treasure, 1.44 meters high, 41.2 centimeters wide, with pure silk satin as the base, and the human hair is carefully embroidered with thread. According to the relevant introduction, (this portrait) has smooth lines, rigorous stitching, and exquisite skills, which can be called the best in hair embroidery works. Together with the "Oriental Shuo Statue" now treasured in the London Museum and hand-embroidered by Princess An of the Southern Song Dynasty Gaozong Zhao, and the "Maitreya Buddha Statue" now in the Shosoin-in Temple in Japan and embroidered by Han Ximeng in the Ming Dynasty, it is called the world's three major hair embroidery masterpieces.
The author of this embroidered portrait is the eldest daughter of Yang Yuchun. It is said that this woman has been practicing Buddhism since she was a child. In the second year of Jiaqing, Yang Yuchun was ordered to pacify the White Lotus Sect. Worried that her father's killing was too heavy, she conveniently looked at each month (that is, the first and fifteenth day of the first year), each pulled out three of her own hair, and used a golden knife to divide each hair into two and two and four points, until it was cut into filaments that were difficult to detect with the naked eye, and then carefully embroidered, which lasted thirteen years, cost a total of 936 hairs, and finally embroidered into this exquisite hair embroidery Water Moon Guanyin statue.
In the past, the "Heavenly Graben" Niangnianggang. Photo by the author
Three
The brave are invincible
Qing Dynasty Emperor "Jinyong Batulu"
Above tiger mountain, the general has died.
At both ends of the past, a cold light flashed.
Yang Yuchun was heavily relied upon by the Qing court, beginning with the White Lotus Rebellion that broke out in Hunan, Sichuan and other places in the second year of Jiaqing. Prior to this, he served as a general in the Green Battalion army under the governor of Sichuan, Fu Kang'an, and was noticed by Fu Kang'an for following him to quell the Miao uprising in Guizhou. The Draft History of the Qing Dynasty records: "When the Red Miao (the Qing court's contemptuous name for the Miao) changed, Yang Zhongwu met Chunfang as a material official, and Fukang an saw it and was surprised, saying: 'This general is also'. ”
Fu Kang'an was a heavy instrument for Qianlong throughout his life. At the age of nineteen, he commanded the army to enlist in Dajinchuan as a first-class bodyguard, and since then he has served as a general of Jilin, Shengjing, Chengdu, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Gansu, Yungui, Fujian and Zhejiang, Liangguang, and Wuyingdian University. Wherever his army passed, the magistrates had to supply huge sums of money. When the front line was full of flesh and blood, the beautiful people in his tent were singing and dancing, and the afterglow was endless. After his death at the age of forty-two, he was posthumously honored as the king of the county. Folklore has it that Fu Kang'an was Qianlong's illegitimate son. In the novel "The Legend of the Flying Fox", Mr. Jin Yong fictionalized the story of Fu Kang'an's private travels, seducing the jianghu woman Ma Chunhua and then poisoning him to death, and angrily evaluated him as a pornographer.
How could such an arrogant and pro-nobleman, a low-ranking officer of the Han nationality in Yang Yuchun District, be able to enter the eyes of Fu Kang'an? In fact, Yang Yuchun won the first gold medal in military merit for himself by relying on the spirit of "narrow road meets the brave to win":
In the sixty years of Qianlong (1795, the year before Fukang's death), the Miao people in Guizhou revolted. Thirty-three-year-old Yang Yuchun was ordered to be transferred to songtao county in present-day Tongren City, Guizhou Province. Fu Kang'an ordered his generals to lead troops to support the county town of Songtao, which was besieged by the rebels. The mountain road to Songtao is high and densely forested, and the various armies and horses look at each other and dare not march easily. "Qing Barnyard Banknotes" records: "Yang Yuchun stepped forward, led forty death squads as forwards, and rode into the thief's tun from the (mountain) road, calling out: The soldiers are at the end!" Those who descend are spared death. The thieves looked at each other in amazement; (Yang Yuchun) repeatedly exclaimed, "The descender kneels!" "So thousands of kneelers went straight to the bottom of the city and the siege was lifted."
In this battle, Yang Yuchun won the first top of his life to wear a flower plume (peacock plume), after which he was rewarded by the Qing court for lifting the siege of Yongsui City, and was rewarded by the Qing court with the title of Jin yong Batulu (Manchu, meaning brave general).
Yang Yuchun's feat, which won the appreciation of FuKang'an. In the Chronicle of Chongqing County, it is said, "Bei Zi Zhuangzhi, Standing to the Peacock Plume, Jiadusi (about the equivalent of battalion commander) title." ”
This battle also won Yang Yuchun the nickname of "Yang Beard", which is recorded in the "Qing Barnyard Banknotes": "(Yang Yuchun) once chased thieves on foot, pulling his beard for hundreds of miles a day, and the army called: Yang Beard." For the slogan: beard knots, one hundred and eighteen. The thief hopes that his flag will fall, so he has done his best. ”