Overall planning / Yangcheng Evening News all-media reporter Chen Xiaopeng Ma Yong
Text/Liu Che Wang Jie
Photo/ Wang Jie (except by signature)
Yangcheng Evening News "Huizhou Context" January 14 page map
【Editor's Note】
The ancient city of Pinghai has been suitable for trade and commerce since ancient times, and has undergone historical changes from a "military town" to a "bustling commercial port" over the centuries. As one of the rare ancient cities in the Dongjiang River Basin, Pinghai Ancient City still retains many historical relics and cultural relics, which provides a strong basis for posterity to trace the historical and cultural context of ancient construction and social and economic forms in the coastal areas of Huizhou. The complicated history precipitates the moving elegance of the ancient city, what historical achievements has Hua Mao, the "father of the founding of the city", left for future generations? What is the allusion to the origin of the name "Pinghai"? What are the elaborate layouts and scales of the ancient city? This issue of Huizhou literature relies on the relevant research of literary and historical experts to trace the historical past behind the ancient city. At the same time, through field visits, expert interviews and other ways, to understand the changes of Pinghai Ancient City. (Chen Liyuan)
Qing Dynasty Pinghai Situ (partial)
Huamao Chuangcheng: Personally design the blueprint of the city and supervise the construction
The ancient city of Pinghai was built during the Ming Hongwu period, the military structure was a thousand households, 1120 troops were stationed, and there were "ten views of the city" in history. Inside and outside the city pool, "three steps and a small temple, ten steps and a big temple", there are city god temples, Tianhou Temple, etc., and the presiding officer is the commander of Guangdong Capital, Si Huamao.
According to Kao, the ancient city of Pinghai was a desolate place before the construction of the city, and it was rarely inhabited, and it was "named" as "Pinghai" at the time of the construction of the city. Tracing the origin of the "Pinghai" place name, there are many theories in the historical, historical, and academic circles, three of which are reasonable and well-founded, all of which are proved by books, and are often cited by current treatises related to Pinghai. The first theory is that Pinghai is named after "Pinghai Mountain"; the second theory is that the ground in Pinghai City is "highly consistent" with the sea level, hence the name. The most widely circulated is the third theory - the purpose of the Ming Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang's setting up wei and the institute was to quell the troubles, so he put forward the slogan of "Hai Never Wave", and "Pinghai" was named after Zhu Yuanzhang's slogan.
Hua Mao, the "founder of the city" in the ancient city of Pinghai, was Zhu Yuanzhang's hometown in Anhui, who had followed Zhu Yuanzhang in his conquests for many years, and had accumulated officials to the rank of Zhengerpin commander and the highest military commander of a province, and his intentions must have been deeply understood. Therefore, when Hua Mao requested the imperial court to allocate funds for the construction of the city and send city-building craftsmen, he named the proposed city located on the coast of Guishan County "Pinghai", and at the same time played the cities of Guanghai, Jieshi, and Shendian. Ming Taizu watched Hua Mao's recital and understood. As a result, this city on the coast of Guishan County has the name of "Pinghai".
Since Pinghai is built in a desolate place, unlike other health centers that have a nearby town or village as a support, presumably the process of building a city will be more difficult, so HuaMao is particularly concerned about building Pinghai City. He took his family and led the generals and three architects of the Tang, Yuan, and Lü clans, as well as a group of skilled craftsmen, to Pinghai to personally design the blueprints of the city and supervise the construction... Hua Mao can be described as the "father of the creation of the city" of Pinghai City, and his contribution is great. To this end, the "Huidong County Historical and Cultural Resources" lists Hua Mao as a "master builder" and passes it on.
Pinghai Ancient City also has an alias called "Bell City", because Pinghai Ancient City is shaped like a giant bell. It is said that the design of "Zhongcheng" is the creativity of Huamao. The bell was a symbol of status in ancient times, and the more bells, the more exquisite, the more magnificent, the higher the status. The giant bells in the temple are used for prayer, enlightenment, and transcendence of sentient beings. Pinghai is a shubian city, which is designed in the shape of a giant bell, on the one hand, from the military perspective of defending the city, on the other hand, it means "the alarm bell is always sounding" and "ringing the bell to shock the thief".
The construction of the city to explain the doubts: The ancestral house of the Lü clan corroborates the completion time of the castle
When did Pinghai City start to build? And when will it be completed? There are different records and interpretations of chronicles, genealogies, and contemporary treatises. According to the "Records of Huidong County", in 1385 (the eighteenth year of Ming Hongwu), Yang Xun and others were ordered to build a city in Pinghai, Guishan County, to defend against pirates, which lasted for nine years, until the twenty-seventh year of Hongwu (1394) to build the Pinghai City Pool; and in 1388 (ming Hongwu twenty-one years), the Pinghai Shou Imperial Thousand Household Office was set up, with 442 soldiers stationed, subordinate to Huizhou Wei (one said to belong to Jie ShiWei). Jiajing Thirty-five Years of "Huizhou Fu Zhi" Volume 10 "Military Defense Chronicle" (I) contains, Pinghai Shou Yu Qianhu in Guishan County inside and outside the seaside, Hongwu twenty-seven years (1394) began to build...
Check the "Interpretation of the Imperial Official System and military system": "In the twenty-sixth year of Hongwu (1393), it was stipulated that the whole country should set up a capital division seventeen, the left guard division one, the internal and external guards three hundred and twenty-nine, and the guard of the thousand households sixty-five. Since then, there have been additional additions. Zhu Yuanzhang only pacified the whole country in 1393 and shifted the "focus of work" to governing the country, and it was at this time that the unified system of division and military system was promulgated. However, before that, was there no health center? Non also.
According to Jiajing's 35th year "Huizhou Fu Zhi", "(Huizhou Fu) Hongwu established a thousand household offices in the second year (1369), and in the twenty-first year (1388) it was reorganized into Huizhou Wei, which was subordinate to the Guangdong Capital Command and Envoy Division..." Before the unification of the national guard and the system in 1393, some places set up thousand household offices. The military structure was subject to the arrangements of the imperial court, but as the supreme military commander of Guangdong, Hua Mao should have a certain discretion over the setting of military facilities, including the construction of the city. Therefore, as one of the military facilities of Guangdong Coastal Defense, Pinghai City may have been built before the "Huamao Songli". According to Qianlong's "Chronicle of Haifeng County", "In August of the twenty-sixth year of Hongwu (1393), the imperial court ordered Wu Jie, the Marquis of Anle, and Zhang Quan, the Marquis of Yongding, to lead the military to train troops at the coastal guard stations in Guangdong to prepare for the Wokou. This shows that before the "huamao was standing", the guardhouses along the coast of Guangdong began to train their troops for war. As for the "founding of Hongwu in the Twenty-seventh Year (1394)" of the Huizhou Fuzhi, the author understands that the "construction" of "founding" here refers to the "establishment", that is, the unified military structure of the whole country, rather than "building a city". "Therefore, the establishment of the bureau set up officials, and the beginning was customized" means that from then on, the official office and officials were set up to determine the establishment of the garrison in the city.
Pinghai Ancient City North Gate Chen Liyuan photo
The Huidong County Chronicle records that the city of Pinghai was built over a period of nine years, most likely based on "Ming Hongwu Eighteenth Year (1385) Guishan County Pinghai Fortification" and "Hongwu Twenty-seventh Year (1394) Lipinghai Shou YuQianhushou". Although the conditions for the construction of Pinghai City are relatively poor, in terms of the size of its city, it will not take 9 years to complete. According to the "Chronicle of Haifeng County", "In the twenty-second year of Hongwu (1389), a guard station was set up in Jieshi on the east bank of Jieshi Bay in Haifeng County, and he was in charge of the thousand households of Jiazi, Jiesheng, Pinghai and Haifeng, and the South China Sea Guard and the Dongsha Islands. "If Pinghai City was only built in 1394, how could it have been put under the control of Jie Shiwei in 1389 as a thousand households?"
In fact, the best evidence of the completion time of Pinghai Castle is the Lü ancestral house in Dongshang Village. The Lü clan, the Yuan clan, and the Tang clan were ordered to build a city in Pinghai, and they all moved out of the city to live after completing their mission to build the city. The Lü ancestral house was built in the twentieth year of Ming Hongwu (1387), that is to say, in 1387, Pinghai City had been built, or was close to completion, otherwise, Lü Shi would not have built a private house on the cave at this time.
Based on the above identification and records of related information, the following conclusions can be drawn: Pinghai City was built in 1385, completed in 1387, garrisons began in 1388, and when Huizhou Qianhu was upgraded to Huizhou Wei, Pinghai Qianhu belonged to Huizhou Wei. In 1389, Jieshiwei was established, and pinghai Qianhu was changed to Jieshiwei. In the following years, Pinghai Shoucheng continued to improve military and civilian facilities, build beacon towers and sentry posts, and reclaim wasteland. In 1394, after the "Hua Mao Song Li", the Pinghai Qianhu Institute was officially incorporated into the national unified wei and su military system, becoming one of the "Sixty-five Shou Yu QianhuShou", still belonging to jieshi wei, and the garrison was 1120 people at that time. At this time, the city of Pinghai was standardized in structure and complete in facilities, "with the system of pond offices, the front and back halls, the town fusi, the officials' hall, the flag (dào) temple, the ordnance bureau, and the west of the city as the teaching field", and was preparing to strike at the enemy at any time.
Photo by Chen Liyuan at the West Gate of Pinghai Ancient City
Construction changes: After the abolition of the Thousand Households in the Qing Dynasty, the role of "military town" was downplayed
Due to the change of construction, pinghai has appeared a variety of titles: Pinghai Shou Yuqianhushou, Pinghai Zuoying, Pinghai Camp, Pinghai Inspection Department, Pinghai District, Pinghai People's Commune, Pinghai Town. Among them, the "Shouyu Thousand Households' Office" and "Battalion" are military establishments; the "Inspection and Inspection Department" is a local administrative agency responsible for managing local public security affairs, equivalent to the current police station or armed police squadron, which can be regarded as an administrative establishment; districts, communes, and towns are all administrative establishments.
The "Pinghai Shou Yu Qianhusho" was established as a military structure from 1388 to its abolition in 1731, spanning the Ming and Qing dynasties and continuing for 343 years (abolished during the Kangxi period and re-established, interrupted for 5 years). Among them, from the establishment of the Pinghai Left Camp in 1623 to 108 years in 1731, the "Pinghai Sho" and the "Pinghai Camp" coexisted, why is this so? To answer this question, it is necessary to have some understanding of the military construction of the Ming and Qing dynasties.
At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the military organization was called the Weishou system, and the highest command organ was the Governor's Office of the Five Armies, followed by the Capital Command and Envoy Division of each province, referred to as the Dusi, which had jurisdiction over the Wei and Wei thousand households, and under the thousand households were the Hundred Households, the General Banner, and the Small Banner. The soldiers of the Guard house were hereditary, so all the soldiers of Pinghai Soo City in this period were hereditary. In the late Ming Dynasty, in addition to the Weishou system, there was a battalion system, and the soldiers of the battalion system were recruited mercenaries and did not need to be hereditary. During this period, Pinghai City was both a post and a battalion, and the soldiers were both hereditary and hired.
Entering the Qing Dynasty, the army was divided into bannermen (Manchu), Green Camp (Han) and Xiangyong (local armed). The organization of the Green Camp basically follows the Ming Dynasty's battalion system, but there are also changes. Starting from the Kangxi Emperor, in order to prevent the Han army in the Green Camp from supporting the army and respecting itself, all the generals were under the command of the military department, and the generals could not directly command the troops. Soldiers are assigned to various places as errands in peacetime, and only assigned to generals in wartime, resulting in generals not knowing the soldiers and soldiers not knowing the generals. In 1731, Pinghai Castle abolished the Senjuso and retained only the Pinghai Camp, and the hereditary system of guards no longer existed. In the late Qing Dynasty, the Green Battalion only practiced conscription.
Since the abolition of the Thousand Households during the Yongzheng period of the Qing Dynasty, Pinghai City gradually faded from its role as a military town and became an administrative construction unit, subordinate to Guishan County, which was an important time node in Pinghai's socio-economic transformation.
Exquisite scale: During the Ming and Qing dynasties, it was already a densely populated and prosperous place
Regarding the layout, setup and scale of Pinghai Castle, the historical records are relatively consistent: "On Friday, one hundred and twenty zhang, one zhang eight feet high, eight hundred and seventy-one pheasant, four city gates, four enemy tower corners on the door, and seven nest shops." "According to the current unit of measurement, the length of the city will be multiplied by 3.33 meters, which translates to: the circumference of the city wall is 1731.6 meters, and the height is 5.99 meters. There are 871 stacks of pheasant mounds, four gates of east, south, west and north, four gates with pavilions, and seven nests.
The walls of the east gate of Pinghai Ancient City are all mottled
The pheasant is the battlement on the city wall, which is one of the main offensive and defensive facilities in the city wall defense system. The nest was a place for the soldiers who guarded the city to rest, that is, the soldiers' rest room set up on the city wall.
The layout of Pinghai City can be summarized as "four walls, five earths, six societies, seven wells, nine city gates, and cross streets". Four Walls: Four Walls: Four Walls, referring to the four gates outside the east, west, south, and north, which have been demolished due to unfavorable traffic; Wutu: five land lords sitting south to north; Six Societies: six gods of the society sitting east to west, the gods of the shrine have no Gaiwa, and the meaning of the top of the sky and the earth; Seven wells: that is, the seven wells on both sides of the Cross Street; the Nine City Gates: In addition to the four main gates of the southeast, south, and northwest, it also includes the east gate "bell ear", and the four false doors with gate shape and impermeability on both sides of the south gate; Cross Street: the main passage of the city that runs through the east, west, south and north gates.
From the perspective of scale, pinghai suocheng 'Friday hundred and twenty zhang, one zhang eight feet high' is obviously smaller than the fucheng, county seat, and acropolis, but because it is a military facility used to defend the family and defend the country, it is more valued by the imperial court than the "mincheng". When Pinghai was built, there was no city in Guishan County, and the construction of the city in Guishan County took ten years from "please build" to "start".
Let's take a look at the size of the population of Pinghai City. According to the requirements of the Weishou Juntun in the early Ming Dynasty, 70% or more than 780 of the 1,120 soldiers who guarded the Imperial Thousand Households in Pinghai were to cultivate the fields. Since you want to farm and join the army hereditary, you can naturally "bring your family". Based on the family of four soldiers in each "Tuntian", at least 3,500 people lived in and around Pinghai City at that time, which was equivalent to the population size of a county-level political district at that time.
There is a large well on the street of The Ancient Commercial Street
The Ming dynasty government vigorously advocated Shangtun and lured merchants to the border areas to fund and raise people's tun fields, hand over the harvested grain to the government, and receive the profits from "salt introduction" and trafficking. Therefore, there must be many businessmen who come to Pinghai to raise people's tuntian. Although it is impossible to verify the scale of Pinghai's commercial tun at that time, it can be concluded that this will bring a large number of people to Pinghai, so the population of Pinghai City in the early Ming Dynasty should have exceeded 3500 people, and Pinghai City at that time can be regarded as a "densely populated" prosperous place.
By the Qing Dynasty, Pinghai City developed into an "economic town" in Guishan County and even Huizhou Province. According to Qianlong's "Guishan County Chronicle" volume VII "Office", in the ninth year of Qing Yongzheng (1731), when Pinghai abolished the Thousand Households Institute and changed it into an inspection department, Guishan County had 20 "administrative organs", four of which were located in Pinghai City.
According to Kao, during the Yongzheng period of the Qing Dynasty, half of the "administrative organs" in Guishan County were located in the county seat (present-day Huizhou), and the rest were located in Pinghai City, with the "Pinghai Inspection Department Office", "Freshwater Field Salt Ambassador Office", "Pinghai Camp Gong General Office" and "Pinghai Cang". After the famine subsided, the military function of Pinghai City weakened, and after more than 300 years of changes, Pinghai City has developed from a pure military camp to an economic town, salt production base and bustling commercial port in Guishan County.
Although Pinghai had been changed to Pinghai Division before Qianlong, the compilers of Qianlong's Guishan County Chronicle still used to refer to it as "Pinghai Suocheng". To this day, the "Pinghai City" is still known to women and children in Pinghai.
【Context Visit】
The Seven Star Well is a reverie
Text/Figure Yangcheng Evening News all-media reporter Chen Liyuan
Entering the new era, the ancient city of Pinghai built by the sea has gradually faded the hustle and bustle of the past, and the cultural precipitation of ancient architectural relics, characteristic folk customs, folk art and other cultural relics left from the depths of history has gradually become a valuable cultural resource for Huidong County in Huizhou to promote the development of coastal cultural tourism and polish the business card of "Famous City of Culture and Tourism". The reporter recently visited and found that the ancient charm of today's Pinghai Ancient City still exists, with relics everywhere, step by step, brick by brick, and it seems that it is still telling the vicissitudes of the ancient city for more than 600 years, which makes people think.
Entering the ancient city of Pinghai, the solemn city tower comes into view, the red wall gray tiles, the quaint is still the same, highlighting the rich sense of history. Cross Street connects east and west, north and south, and the streets are bustling with traffic and bustling. According to local villagers, standing in the middle of the cross street to find the right angle, you can see the four city gates. The reporter observed and found that all kinds of buildings and houses in the ancient city of Pinghai are lined up one after another: the ancient buildings of the Ming and Qing dynasties and the modern houses are staggered, and the heights are staggered, showing a unique charm of ancient and modern integration. Walk along the laneways inside and outside the ancient city, you can also observe all kinds of ancient monuments and ancient buildings up close: ancient wells of different shapes dotted the scenery of the ancient city; quaint Ming and Qing Dynasty buildings attract people to stop and take pictures; the former bustling commercial streets retain the pattern of shops...
In Dongshang Village, hundreds of meters outside the ancient city of Pinghai, there is an ancient building complex built in the Ming Dynasty, with a building height of less than 3 meters and a quadrangle courtyard structure. According to Wang Jie, secretary of the Party Committee of Pinghai Community in Pinghai Town, Huidong County, the building complex is the village where one of the builders of Pinghai Ancient City, Lü Shi, and his descendants lived, the Lü Ancient Building Complex.
According to Kao, the ancestors of the Lü clan were appointed to stay in Zhenpinghai with the Tang clan and the Yuan clan and supervise the construction of Pinghai City. If Hua Mao is the designer of Pinghai City Pool, these three officials are the architects. There are many anecdotes circulating in the history of the founding of Pinghai: after the ancient city of Pinghai was built, some people said that the Lü clan could not hear the bells in the city, and suggested that the farther away from the ancient city of Pinghai, the more prosperous the people could be. Therefore, the Lü family moved to Dongshang Village, more than 800 meters away from the ancient city.
"To this day, the descendants of the Lü clan still live in the Ancestral House of the Lü clan in Dongshang Village, and in recent years the old buildings have been maintained." Wang Jie said that posterity carefully preserved the "Lü Clan Genealogy", which records the history of the ancestors of the Lü clan who were ordered by the emperor to "stay in the town of Pinghai and supervise the construction of the city".
At the same time, among the many ancient wells in the ancient city of Pinghai, the most popular one is the seven wells on Cross Street, which is called "Seven Star Well" by locals.
One of the "Seven Star Wells" in the ancient city
Wang Jie introduced that the pinghai folk legend that the location of the "Seven Star Well" on Cross Street is built according to the distribution of the seven stars of the Big Dipper, which is a mysterious feng shui layout color for the "Seven Star Well". However, according to Wang Jie's field research, the distribution of the seven wells is not related to the Big Dipper and the Seven Stars, and it is likely that they were simply built to facilitate the random extraction of water by non-commissioned officers and villagers.
Source | Yangcheng Evening News Yangcheng Pie
Editor-in-charge | Zhu Guangyu