Yanque Lake and Xuanwu Lake are the two major lakes in ancient Nanjing, and the two lakes are bounded by Zhongshan Mountain. Xuanwu Lake is in the north of Zhongshan, called HouHu; Yanque Lake is in the south of Zhongshan, called Qianhu. Xuanwu Lake has gone through vicissitudes, known as the "Pearl of Jinling" and has become a landmark in Nanjing, while the once famous Yanque Lake is little known, and after thousands of years, let us approach her story, to open, to encounter.
Birds and finches leave traces, the legend of Southern Liang
Why was the former lake renamed Yanque Lake in the Southern Dynasty? It has to do with one person. Xiao Tong, the eldest son of Emperor Wu of Liang in the Southern Dynasty, was intelligent and studious, knowledgeable, able to write poetry, and had a wide range of literary sages, and the Book of Liang said that he "read several lines and went down, and all eyes remembered". He was filial piety and good, concerned about the people's livelihood and suffering, once when his mother was seriously ill, he was "desperate to be miserable, and his diet was wasted"; when he encountered a famine, he made the Eastern Palace shrink his clothes and food to relieve refugees; he loved landscapes and rivers, and once said that "mountains and rivers have a clear sound", and he also gathered many literary scholars to collect the 60 volumes of "Selected Writings" since the Qin and Han Dynasties in China, also known as "Selected Writings of Zhaoming", which had a lot of influence on future generations.
The most perfect prince in history died of falling into the water at the age of 31. It was in March of the third year of Zhongda Tong (531), Xiao Tongxing went to Houhu (Xuanwu Lake) to pick lotus flowers, and the palace maid swung a boat, but unfortunately fell into the water, although he was rescued, but because he was injured in the thigh, he died before he took the throne.
Emperor Wu of Liang was very saddened by the early death of Prince Zhaoming, and buried him in the Tomb of Tranquility by the Qianhu Lake, and buried the glass bowl and purple jade cup that the prince loved during his lifetime. The glass bowl is equivalent to today's glass bowl, which is a tribute to the Western Regions and was regarded as a treasure at that time. A eunuch went so far as to dig up the Tomb of Tranquility in order to obtain this rare treasure. When the eunuch snatched the treasure and fled, suddenly tens of thousands of birds flew to pounce on him. This strange phenomenon aroused the vigilance of the guards, who ordered the eunuch to be tied up and the stolen treasures were retrieved from him. The news of the Yanque Guardian Tomb surprised Emperor Wu of Liang, and later renovated Xiao Tong's tomb, and when the tomb was sealed, tens of thousands of Yanque came to the mud, built a large tomb bag, and circled around day and night, as if guarding the tomb of the prince. Because the Anning Mausoleum is on the shore of the front lake, posterity will call the front lake "Yanque Lake", also known as "Prince Lake". The famous poet Yang Xiuzhi once had a poem:
On the side of the shore of Pinghu Lake, there are high graves, and ten thousand earths come to the flock of swallows and finches.
There is no wave in the sky, and this Chinese algae resembles a prince.
Move three mountains to fill the Swallow Lake
How did Yanque Lake become smaller? This is what it means to talk about Zhu Yuanzhang repairing the imperial palace. In 1366, two years before the founding of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang ordered the construction of the palace castle, and the site of the palace was selected in Yanque Lake according to the principles of Chinese feng shui. One is because Nanjing Purple Mountain is in the east of the city, from a distance, like a creeping dragon, the dragon head is in Yanque Lake, and from the perspective of Bagua, the east of Nanjing City belongs to the Zhengua direction, and the emperor lives in the east in line with the meaning of "Zhou Yi" "Emperor out of shock". Kan public opinion believes that the Yangtze River flowing from the north of Nanjing turns to the east, and a cave is formed in Nanjing, and after Liu Ji re-settled, it is believed that the cave should be knotted in Yanque Lake, south of the Fugui Mountain.
The second is that the qi of the old city was discharged by the Qinhuai River, which was changed by Qin Shi Huang, and the new palace city replanned the river channel, diverting the water of the Qinhuai River into the new city and retaining the vented qi, and the water name of the new palace city, the Jinshui River, flowed from the front of Yanque Lake, forming the trend of the Golden City, thus retaining the Jinling King's Qi. At the same time, the water of the Yangtze River flows from the north of Nanjing, from the perspective of feng shui, Nanjing is located in the south of the water belongs to the yin, the king's qi is yin and yang, if you want to overcome this drawback, you must build the new palace city in the south of the mountain, so it is set in the south of the Bell Mountain, the purpose is to take the yang to win the yin, so that the new palace city becomes the yang of the yin.
Combined with the above reasons, Zhu Yuanzhang decided to build a new palace castle in the east of the old city and introduce zhongshan aura into the palace, so he ordered the filling of Yanque Lake to build a palace. "Shangyuan Jiangning Rural Hezhi": "The site of the new palace is in the east of the capital, and it is built by filling in the front lake." The former lake is Prince Lake, a bird's nest lake. It mobilized hundreds of thousands of migrant workers to fill the lake, but due to the low size of the lake, the lake filling project is very large, requiring a large amount of soil and stones, so Nanjing folk have the legend of "moving three mountains to fill in the birds".
Three Hills Street
At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, when the Ming City Wall of Nanjing was built, three nameless hills south of the city were surrounded in the city. These three mountains blocked the way from the north of the city to Jubaomen (present-day ZhonghuaMen). At that time, the east of the city filled in the lake to build the city, so the three mountains were filled into the Yanque Lake, and a street was built at the base of the mountain, which is now Sanshan Street.
After most of the Lake was filled in, in order to prevent the foundation from sinking, countless dense wooden stakes were drilled under the foundation of the temple, covered with huge strips of stone, and then the palace was built on it, and a large waterway with masonry structures was laid. In order to clarify the water source of the inner palace, a large number of rain stones were laid on the bottom of the remaining lake, so that the lake water penetrated through the city wall and was curved around the inner palace. Standing by the lake today, the ruins of the nest of the city wall are still clear.
However, in Zhu Yuanzhang's later years, there was still a phenomenon of sinking foundations, which made him regret it. In the feudal era, the construction of imperial palaces was built on the terrain of low south and north high, which means step by step, and the country and mountains have been passed down from generation to generation. The three major halls of the Ming Palace - Fengtian Hall, Huagai Hall, Jingsheng Hall and other tall palaces were built in the original Yanque Lake, gravity was too large and uneven, resulting in a serious front and back low of the Ming Palace.
Ruins of the Ming Palace
This is extremely unlucky in feng shui, and Zhu Yuanzhang is also quite remorseful about it, once saying: "I have been running the world for decades, and everything is as good as ever." Only the front and back of Miyagi Castle, the situation is not called. I wanted to move the capital, but now I am old and tired of energy. And the world is newly determined, and it does not want to work for the people. And there are a lot of wastes, only to listen to the sky. But may this heart be appreciated and blessed to its children and grandchildren. At that time, Zhu Yuanzhang had realized that the rise and fall of the dynasty had its own destiny, and he only hoped that the heavens could read in his sincere heart and benefit his descendants.
In Nanjing, the ancient capital of the Six Dynasties, there are too many landscapes and too many stories to see, listen to, and yearn for. Su Dongpo said, "The wind and moon of the jiangshan mountains, the impermanent lord, the idler is the master", go to Yanque Lake, sit by the lake to see the city wall that has gone through vicissitudes, listen to the legend of Prince Lake again, or feel the water from Zhongshan - "The yin of the mountain, the entrance of Baiwu, there is water from the belly of the mountain." Another number of martial arts, over the stone path, over the steep mountain peaks, the rapid pearl leap ..." ("Jinling Characteristics"), this water is so spectacular, surging forward, the south of the mountain into the Yanque Lake, the north of the mountain into the Xuanwu Lake, together nourishing the millennium dragon qi of Nanjing.
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Source: Jiangsu Local History
Author: Ma Li
Review, Release: Zhang Yizhe