□ Guanwen
In the south of Weiji Village, Huimin County, Binzhou City, there is a famous Wei manor on the north side of the Yellow River. It was built during the Guangxu dynasty of the Qing Dynasty and is known in Chinese history as the "Three Great Manors of Ancient China" along with the Mou Manor in Yantai, Shandong Province, and the Landlord Manor of Liu Wencai in Dayu, Sichuan. The entire Wei manor house is a traditional northern courtyard, and the periphery is a traditional city wall city defense system, which is composed of a city gate, a city tower, and a corner tower, which interprets the defensiveness of the castle-style house to the extreme.
A defensive castle
The Wei family is originally from Zaoqiang, Hebei. In the last years of the Yuan Dynasty, after the fierce sweep of large-scale peasant wars, the north "in previous years, there were no big surnames, and there were no eight or nine survivors", and most of the territory in Shandong, especially in Lubei, Lu southwest and other places, once appeared a desolate scene of "white bones exposed in the wild, and no chickens chirping for thousands of miles".
Zhu Yuanzhang, the ancestor of the Ming Dynasty, knew that the combination of labor force and land was the prerequisite for the restoration and development of agricultural production, so at the beginning of the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, he vigorously promoted the policy of reclamation of tuntian land. In this context, the Wei family moved from Zaoqiang in Hebei to Shandong. In the nearly three hundred years since then, the Wei family has multiplied and gradually prospered, becoming a very powerful local family, and Yong'an Town has been renamed Weiji Town.
From the first to the fourth generation, the People of the Wei clan were diligent and earnest, and they ran the family with diligence and frugality in cultivating the fields. By the time of its fifth Wei Jianshi, the Wei family had accumulated a large amount of economic capital. By the seventh century, Wei Yushan's business success led to a rapid increase in Wei's financial resources.
When it passed into the hands of the tenth Wei Zhaoqing, the Wei family had become a famous family on the rich side. During the Sino-Japanese War, as a large local household, Wei Zhaoqing donated a large amount of silver as a military salary. As a result, he was appointed by the imperial court to the title of Tongzhi of Zhengwupin and transformed into a "red-top merchant", which the Wei family used to further expand.
In order to protect the life and property safety of his family, Wei Zhaoqing specially went to the capital to hire a palace designer to elaborately design it, and spent a huge amount of money to build a castle-style manor with strict defense and exquisite design, which is the Wei Manor that has been passed down to this day.
The interior design of Wei's Manor is divided into four parts, namely the residential area, the garden area, the square area, and the pond area, which covers an area of 24,000 square meters and is composed of three layers of defensive walls: the outer courtyard wall, the city wall and the inner courtyard wall.
After hundreds of years of wind and rain, the outer courtyard wall of the manor has ceased to exist, and now all we can see is the towering residential wall and the inner courtyard wall. Among them, the residential city wall is about 80 meters long from north to south, 45 meters wide from east to west, and the wall is about 10 meters high, which is strong and tall. The outer side of the top is the battlement, the inner side is masonry daughter wall, and the middle is the runway. There are two walls on the west and north sides, the inner side is high and the outer side is low, the outer city arch guards the inner city, and there is a more road for the family to patrol and guard in the middle.
The residential area has only one gate in the northeast for people to enter and exit. There is a watchtower above the gate of the castle, and there are more than ten shooting covers built on the waist of the surrounding wall, four on the east and west walls, and three on the north and south walls, which are evenly and symmetrically distributed. The firing holes in the cover are divided into upper and lower parts, which are used to hide ammunition guns and defend against foreign enemies. The southeast corner and the northwest corner have a prominent circular arch blockhouse, which is divided into three layers: upper, middle and lower, each layer has a shooting hole, and after encountering special circumstances, it can be supported in the direction of east, west, south and north, forming a cooperative attack trend. The bunker in the southeast corner has a lookout hole on the upper level, and the top of the bunker in the northwest corner has an open-air installation to allow the guards to better observe and defend against foreign enemies.
The inner courtyard and the room are connected by a ring, forming a pattern of secret passage secret rooms and internal and external links. The interior walls of the Wei Manor are very high, higher than the outer walls, so the internal situation cannot be seen above the outer wall, but the external situation can be seen in the inner courtyard. In this way, when danger comes, the master can quickly escape through the secret room mechanism. There is also a suspension bridge in the courtyard, which connects the inner house with the outer city wall, and when the enemy invades, the suspension bridge is pulled up, which can slow down the enemy's pace. In addition, there are many false doors, trap doors, and trap pits in the courtyard.
Wei's manor went from "point" to "line" to "surface", and the defensive measures were done without leaks.
In turbulent times
If you don't understand Wei Zhaoqing's experience, it is difficult to understand the almost "perverted" design of Wei's manor.
Wei Zhaoqing was born in the third year of Qing Xianfeng (1853), this year the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement was in full swing, and the Taiping Army in the north stirred up "the river Shuo shook, and the residents of the counties and counties established forts for self-defense."
The following year, the Northern Expeditionary Army of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom withdrew to Zhili (present-day Hebei) for assistance, Northern Lubei was shaken, Martial Law was imposed in Wuding Province (present-day Huimin), and the local regiments were in urgent need of pay and weapons. Wei Zhaoqing's heir apparent, Wei Jing, "initiated the exhortation of the gentry" and was rewarded by the Qing government afterwards. In the fifth year of Qing Xianfeng (1855), in order to welcome reinforcements, Li Kaifang, the general of the Northern Expedition of the Taiping Army, led a horse team from Zhili into Dezhou, Andi Pingdi, Wuding Province was once again under martial law, and the rich families were panicked, but fortunately, the Taiping Army was quickly suppressed.
However, as soon as the Taiping Army left, the Twist Army came again, and in the eleventh year of Xianfeng (1861), "the Twister Bandits harassed the South of the Qing River", and Wei Jing "urgently donated gold to repair the embankment and control the weapons, correct the crowd to prevent the river, and curb its northward crossing". The fundamental reason why Wei was so generous and repeatedly contributed money to help the Qing government suppress the peasant rebel army was to protect its own industry.
If it is said that the Northern Expedition of the Taiping Army and the North Coming of the Twist army did not pose a direct threat to the Wei industry, then the activities of the Twist Army in Huimin County in the seventh year of Tongzhi (1868) made the Wei clan even more painful. In the summer of that year, Zhang Zongyu, the leader of the Western Twister Army, led more than 100,000 troops from Shaanxi to cross the river to the east, and was subject to Li Hongzhang's strategy of "strangling the ground and suppressing the land", "sneaking into the seashore and trapping Qingyun, Yanshan, Haifeng and other counties." Offense wuding county town".
In July, Zhang Zongyu's men were besieged by Qing forces at Hongfu Temple (洪福寺) on the banks of the Yellow River (north of present-day Yulin Village, Da Nian Chen Township, Huimin County). The generals of the Twister Army braved the rain and fought a bloody battle, thousands of people were killed, and the rest of the army broke through the siege. This was the largest battle between the peasant rebel army of the Qing Dynasty and the Qing army in the territory of Huimin, known in history as the "Blood Battle of Hongfu Temple".
In just one year, Zhang Zongyu led his army to attack the county seat of Huimin Eight times, but because there was a wall and more than a hundred cannons outside Weiji Village, and it could produce gunpowder, it was not conquered. Wei Jing hurriedly "donated more than 10,000 yuan of money, built a polder to gather guards, residents near and far, ants attached to beehives, and relied on to be safe", at this time, although Wei Zhaoqing was young, he must be unforgettable for a lifetime.
Subsequently, the Twister Rebellion was suppressed, but the rule of the Qing Dynasty did not settle down. In the rural areas of Lubei, the landlord regiments that were set up in the past to suppress the peasant uprising were mostly controlled by "unscrupulous people", and instead of playing the role of "protecting the people in peace", they colluded with the local salt lords and tukou to rob their homes and houses and harm the people.
With the years of famine and the rise of thieves from all walks of life, the "fat meat" of the Wei clan was quickly targeted by forces from all sides. According to the "Genealogy of the Wei Family", before the construction of the manor, the Wei family encountered thieves in the original residence late at night, although the Good Name of the Wei Clan was spread far and wide, and Wei Zhaoqing's mother did not repel the thieves in danger, but it was enough to make the family sleep and eat.
It is inevitable to "paint the ground as a prison"
In addition to defending against man-made disasters, Wei Manor also had to fight against natural disasters.
Weiji is located on the north bank of the Yellow River, and the Tufa River passes not far to its west, and the locals have long been plagued by floods. In 1855, when Wei Zhaoqing was only three years old, the Yellow River collapsed in the Lankao Copper Tile Box in Henan, crossing the canal to seize the Daqing River to Lijin and flow into the Bohai Sea. At first, the Daqing River was narrow and narrow, and the Yellow River expanded and flooded the beach, overflowing on both sides of the river, and disasters were everywhere.
At that time, the Qing government focused its main energy on suppressing the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, coupled with the failure of foreign wars, the indemnity of land cuts, resulting in an empty treasury, and could only allow the Yellow River to flood the northwestern Lu Plain.
According to statistics, from the first year of Guangxu (1875) to the 30th year of Guangxu (1904), the Yellow River often had disasters. Before Wei Zhaoqing built the manor, during the Guangxu period alone, the Yellow River had seven breaches in huimin territory. The reasons for the breach are the flooding of the river embankment, the collapse of the embankment, the leakage of the embankment, etc., in addition to the rainy period of the flood, in the autumn flood, the flood, the peach flood and other water is small, the water is also constantly broken, the coastal embankment is simply to the extent of the slight rise in the water and collapse.
Before the construction of the Wei manor, the Yellow River broke for four years; during the construction of the manor, the Yellow River broke through twice. In order to protect the field industry, Wei Zhaoqing and his fathers had to repeatedly contribute funds to block the mouth and restore the embankment, and repeatedly donated money and grain to help the victims of the disaster. In the design and construction of the manor, the soil was deliberately dug from the east into a pond and the western part was raised by three meters, in order to prevent the flooding of the Yellow River.
In addition to floods, Wei Zhaoqing had seen natural disasters such as earthquakes. Two years before the construction of the manor, on May 4, the fourteenth year of Guangxu (1888), Huimin and the nearby counties of Wudi, Zouping, Binxian and Zhanhua suffered a serious earthquake disaster, and the ground in the northern part of Wudi County, which was the hardest hit, was shattered, black water gushed out, and half of the Dajue Temple was destroyed. According to local county records, in this earthquake, Huimin "most of the houses were destroyed." Therefore, building a fortified castle-like manor became Wei Zhaoqing's almost paranoid dream.
▲Floor heating in the manor
Of course, as a family comfort nest, Wei's Manor also has a livable side. Because the designer was a master architect of the Qing court and adopted an official approach, many of the buildings and functional facilities in the Wei manor were similar to the imperial palace. The main building of the manor maintains strict axial symmetry, imposing and majestic.
The heating facilities of the inner house also followed the practice of the court, connecting the ground kang with the underground passage. In this way, in the winter, the outdoor fire is burned, and the house can enjoy heating, which is both comfortable and safe, and this more advanced heating method later affected the wintering and cold protection habits of residents in Lubei.
Due to the owner's strong sense of guard, the manor also imitated the strict system of the court in daily management. In addition to the owner, even the servants in the inner courtyard are not allowed to trespass, so there is a "tribute window" on the wall of the small south room for the servants to deliver meals. In the eyes of the master, this is a manifestation of his own aristocracy, but if you change your perspective, it is tantamount to painting your own ground as a prison.
Unfortunately, in the second year after the construction of the core building of Wei's manor, "Shude Hall", the 49-year-old Wei Zhaoqing died of overwork, which led to a recurrence of rheumatism. People have praised and deprecated him, some people have denounced him as a large landlord who squandered wildly, and some people have expressed his praise for his charity and enthusiasm for public welfare.
As the old saying goes, "No more than three generations of wealth", the Wei family seems to be unable to escape this spell, and after Wei Zhaoqing's death, it began to gradually decline. Wei Zhaoqing adhered to monogamy, so he had fewer children, only two sons and two daughters. The eldest son was not good at business, and smoked a lot of cigarettes, almost destroying the family property; the second son died early and had no descendants; the younger daughter was beautiful and arrogant, and never married.
The only water point on the estate
Since then, as the Qing Dynasty's rule is on the verge of collapse, various disasters have occurred frequently. With the reform of salt affairs in Shandong, salt was changed to an official camp, and the main industries that supported Wei's prosperity disappeared. At the same time, Wei's other economic pillar, the pawn industry, is also declining, and the family is gradually unable to make ends meet.
Unable to change their lives against the sky, the descendants of the Wei clan could only survive by selling their property. People in nearby villages rushed to buy building materials and utensils, and Wei's manor became a flea market, eventually becoming an empty castle.
This luxurious landlord manor in Lubei prevented thieves and natural disasters, carried the rain of guns and bullets, but could not resist the decline of the family after all.