Qianjiang Evening News hourly news reporter Guo Wen
Built during the Jiading period of the Southern Song Dynasty, Hangzhou's Jiande Xinye Ancient Village has many titles and praises: the open-air museum of Chinese Ming and Qing architecture, the perfect living specimen of Ancient Chinese Village, the largest Ye's Settlement Village in China...
Mr. Ye Zhiheng, a professor at the School of Humanities of Hangzhou Normal University and a researcher in Xinye Village who participated in the Zhejiang Cultural Research Project, commented: "It is a living specimen of farming clan culture. As a scholar who went out of Xinye Village, Mr. Ye's evaluation is obviously pertinent and appropriate.
In Xinye Village, there are ancestral halls, academies and fields, which are the basis for the survival of large-scale village settlements in ancient China, and also the three elements that constitute the culture of farming clans. And they constitute the most core and solid social foundation of ancient China.
Therefore, if you understand Xinye Village, you will also understand the traditional Chinese culture and understand ancient China.
800 years of heritage, 13 ancestral halls
To understand Xinye Village, we must start from its architecture, which is also the most shocking place for tourists at first glance.
The ancient buildings of Xinye Village are very well preserved and almost fragmented, unlike some ancient villages, where the old buildings exist only as embellishments. In the early 1990s, Chen Zhihua, a professor in the Department of Architecture of Tsinghua University, was deeply attracted by the vernacular architecture and culture here, and after intensive research, he wrote the first Chinese vernacular architecture research work "Xinye Village".
Why has the ancient buildings of Xinye Village been preserved intact over 800 years? This is obviously not something that individual strength can do, but the overall belief of the entire Ye clan of the entire village. This brings us to the 13 most conspicuous buildings in the village, the Ye Ancestral Hall.
It is not uncommon for one or two ancestral halls to exist in ancient villages, but it is very strange that a village preserves 13 ancestral halls with the same surname.
Xinye Village is the settlement of the Ye clan, at the earliest, it was the Xia clan who was joined by a generation of ancestors Ye Kun, and later the Xia clan abandoned the barren land and relocated as a whole, and the Ye clan people stayed here.
Xinye Village was built during the Jiading period of the Southern Song Dynasty, and because the village is dominated by Yuhua Mountain behind the village, the Xinye village system is called Yuhua Ye Clan. The general pattern and architectural order of Xinye Village was laid by Ye Kecheng, the grandson of the ancestor Ye Kun. He built the ancestral temple of the Yuhua Ye clan, the Xishan Ancestral Hall, on the Xishan Hill outside the village, and built the General Ancestral Hall. After that, the Ye clan gradually built a house courtyard centered on the Orderly Hall, which became the prototype of Xinye Village.
For more than 800 years, the Ye clan has branched out many times, and each tribe generally has to establish its own ancestral hall to worship the ancestors of its own tribe. This is the reason why there are so many ancestral halls in Xinye Village. Yongmu Hall, Chongren Hall, Chongzhi Hall, Rongshou Hall, Xuanqing Hall, Chongyi Hall... It is the tribal ancestral halls that have been built and preserved in different periods. Among them, the Chongren Hall of the Chongren Sect is the largest ancestral hall. The whole building sits south and faces north, and was built during the Ming Xuande period, with a total of four entrances.
If you want to study the history of the circulation and change of a surname and a family, Xinye Village is also an excellent research sample. Here, there is a complete genealogy to verify, and there are physical buildings with recorded history that can be observed.
After 2000, the retention and protection of the old buildings in Xinye Village has always been a major concern for the villagers. At that time, under the four directions of the villagers, the protection dilemma of xinye village buildings was repeatedly reported. Professor Chen Zhihua, who has done a long-term inspection in Xinye Village, is also very concerned about the protection of Xinye Village's residential areas and has made several appeals. Eventually, the old buildings of Xinye Village were repaired and protected.
In 2007, the Jiande Municipal Government launched the Xinye Ancient Village Comprehensive Protection Project.
Mountain wild grass hall, do not forget the fragrance of books
Although Xinye Village was once a closed clan society, the cultural traditions of the clan were not closed, just like many clan families in Jiangnan, the Ye people from the establishment of the clan to the present, have attached great importance to the reading of their children, in order to cultivate and read.
This tradition begins with Ye Kecheng, who made a major decision for the development of the village, which later proved to be the right decision – to study.
At that time, there were only more than 50 people in Xinye Village, but he spent a lot of money to build a "Chongle Academy" under the Daofeng Mountain next to the village. Even bigger, Ye Kecheng also invited Jin Luxiang, a famous theologian at that time and the backbone of the Zhejiang Eastern School, to hold a grand opening ceremony for the new students of the college. The current shape of Xinye Village is also the handwriting of Jin Luxiang, who designed the architectural pattern of "mountains rising in the northwest and water gathering in the southeast" according to the location of the village and the layout of the five elements and nine palaces.
Along with Jin Luxiang came twenty or thirty literati and scholars, who settled near the academy, and the descendants of these readers gradually formed villages such as Lichen Village.
To this day, when the old people in the village mention Ye Kecheng as an ancestor, their voices are full of pride.
After several generations of breeding, during the Ming Dynasty, in order to further encourage the villagers to study, Xinye Village built a cloud pagoda at the mouth of the village. Its name is taken from the "Zhuangzi" in the "Ninety Thousand Miles of the One Who Shakes the Rock" to encourage people to study hard and go straight up. After the completion of the pagoda, Ye Yuanxi became a jinshi, and he wrote his learning experience as "Mian Er Cao" for his descendants to learn from and inherit the style of writing.
During the Tongzhi period of the Qing Dynasty, in order to cultivate the cultural movement, the village built a Wenchang Pavilion on the side of the tower, which enshrined the Wenchang Emperor and Wenqu Xing, which is one of the most gorgeous buildings in the village. Until today, every year at the beginning of the new semester in September, an opening ceremony will be held in Wenchang Pavilion, and children will recite "Mian Er Cao": "It is advisable to encourage oneself to learn strongly and youngly." ”
After chongle academy, in order to facilitate the children of the Ye family in the village to study, the village also opened a righteous school, a private school, an official school, etc., and even vacated the ancestral temple of the earliest ancestral hall, Yuhua Ye's ancestral temple, the Xishan Ancestral Hall, as a primary school. "I distinctly remember returning home in 2009 to see that there were still rewards for children who had been admitted to college, and their names were written on a large red paper and posted on the door of the Orderly Hall." Mr. Ip Chi Heng said that the tradition of re-learning can be seen from this.
New leaf grass Kun, mountain fragrant orchid
If the ancient dwellings are the "shape" of the new leaf ancient village, then the rich intangible cultural heritage adds a unique "charm" to the new leaf ancient village.
Zhejiang is the hometown of southern opera, is a major theater province, the so-called "a drama history, half in Zhejiang", there are 56 traditional dramas listed in the provincial intangible cultural heritage. However, the sound cavity named after a village in a kind of drama is only the New Leaf Kunqu (also known as the New Leaf Grass Kunqu) in the whole country.
With the decline of Kunqu opera in the scholar class during the Qing Dynasty, it also gained vitality at the bottom. Kunqu opera has developed a unique branch - caokun. New leaf grass Kun formed in the Light Years of the Qing Dynasty, there is a Kun cavity sitting choir in the village, called "Yiqinghui", using Kunqu tunes, but using the local dialect singing, so that local villagers can understand, often performed in the countryside of Jiande and Lanxi and other places, the performance repertoire is mostly "Journey to the West" and other lively martial arts, quite popular with the people. At its peak, within a radius of forty or fifty miles, as long as there was a temple fair, the drama class would be rushed to invite. New Leaf Grass Kun has the reputation of "Mountain Fragrant Orchid".
In the 1960s, the non-hereditary heirs who could sing New Leaf Grass Kun were withering away. In 2009, Xinye Kunqu was included in the "Intangible Cultural Heritage" of Zhejiang Province, and rescue excavation and resurrection work also began. With the rediscovery of old scripts, the artistic cultivation of the younger generation also began.
In 2009, the "Xinye Kunqu Junior Class" was established at the Daciyan Central Primary School in Jiande Daciyan Town, where Xinye Village is located, the "Xinye Xiaoxinxing Kunqu Opera Society" was established in 2010, and in 2012, it was included in the second batch of non-genetic teaching bases in Zhejiang Province.
Just last month, Da CiYan Central Primary School was identified as the third batch of national primary and secondary school Chinese excellent traditional culture inheritance schools for inheriting new leaf Kunqu opera.
"There is drama in the text, there is literature in the play, those who know the text watch the play, those who do not know the play read the text; the tone is hidden in the tone, the tone is hidden in the tone, the person who understands the tone listens to the tune, and the person who does not understand the tune listens to the sound", the yanglian hanging in the new leaf village is the best portrayal of the new leaf grass Kun.
Ancient village business card
Xinye Ancient Village is located in Jiande City, with a history of 800 years, is one of the most complete preserved ancient blood settlement buildings in Zhejiang Province, which has been based on farming for generations, and is a typical farming culture village in western Zhejiang.
Research achievements of Zhejiang Cultural Research Project
● "The Ideal Model of Clan Politics: A Study on the History of Ancient Villages in Xinye, Jiande" (An Xu)
● "Research on The Ancient Village of Xinye" (Ye Zhiheng)
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