Leaving Zhenjiang, we drove to our next destination, Wuxi. Wuxi is one of the central cities in the Yangtze River Delta region, one of the important birthplaces of Jiangnan civilization, and a national scenic tourism city. Wuxi, since ancient times, is the hometown of fish and rice, known as the cloth wharf, money wharf, kiln wharf, silk capital, rice market, but also the cradle of China's national industry and township industry.
Coming to Wuxi reminds me of such an ancient famous association: "The sound of the wind and rain reading is in the ears, and the family affairs and state affairs are concerned about everything in the world", which has inspired many intellectuals and played a great role in promoting the development of traditional cultural thought in our country. Influenced by this famous link, when we went to Wuxi, we first came to the "Donglin Academy" located at the east gate of Wuxi.
Wuxi Donglin Academy was founded in the first year of the Northern Song Dynasty (1111), was the northern Song Dynasty theorist Cheng Hao, Cheng Yichuan's disciple, the well-known scholar Yang Shi came to Wuxi to see here before the Qingliu, backed by ancient trees and towering gardens, very similar to the Donglin Temple in Lushan, is an ideal place for research and teaching, so he settled here to open a lecture hall, named "Donglin".
18 years later, Yang Shi died, and Yang Shi's students built an ancestral hall for him at the location of the academy, the Daonan Ancestral Hall, and Yang Shi's teacher Cheng Yi said a praise to him: "Wu Dao Nan Yi!" ”。 After Yang Shi's death, the academy gradually collapsed. In the Yuan Dynasty, some monks built the Donglin Nunnery on the original site and turned the school building into the Donglin Nunnery. In the thirty-second year of the Ming Dynasty (1604), the Donglin scholar Gu Xiancheng and others rebuilt and began to lecture here, and the spirit of "reading, lecturing, and patriotism" advocated by them aroused a universal response from scholars across the country and became famous for a while. Donglin Academy has also become a place where humanities gather in Jiangnan and the main center of public opinion to discuss state affairs.
In addition to lecturing at Donglin Academy, he advocated "reading without forgetting to save the country" and often commented on the government and politics. Because the teaching activities of Donglin Academy aroused strong jealousy and opposition from the castration party at the end of the Ming Dynasty, in the fifth year of the Apocalypse (1625), wei Zhongxian, the castration party, listed the charges, destroyed the Tianxia Academy, and published a "List of Donglin Party Members" of 309 people to the whole country, and carried out public arrests throughout the country, resulting in the brutal killing of a large number of upright officials. At that time, Donglin Academy, except for the Daonan Ancestral Hall, was forcibly demolished. By the Chongzhen period, the castration party had lost power, the Donglin unjust case was zhaoxue, and Chongzhen issued an edict to restore the academy.
Wuxi underwent a comprehensive restoration of Donglin Academy in 1981 and 2002. The main buildings of the Shipaifang, Panchi, Donglin Jingshe, Lize Hall, Yiyong Hall, Yanju Temple, Sangong Ancestral Hall, East and West Corridor, Laifu Zhai, Xin Jian Zhai, Shi Yu Zhai, Daonan Ancestral Hall, Donglin Gong Ancestral Hall and other major buildings at that time are preserved, and these buildings also show the layout of the ming and qing dynasties and the style of the heyday of the academy.
Widely recited, "The sound of wind and rain, the sound of reading, the sound of reading, family affairs, state affairs, and the world are concerned about everything", this famous picture still has positive significance to this day, and is the common voice and motto of scholars and volunteers, we must have lofty ambitions, and we must serve the motherland when we read.