The Summer Palace was the imperial garden of the Qing Dynasty and is now a famous historical and cultural tourist attraction. It is worth mentioning that in the Summer Palace, there is a little-known cultivated map scenic spot, which contains a strange Kunlun stone stele, and there are two mysterious stone nests on its base. For a long time, cultural relics experts have been puzzled about the role of the stone nest, until they found an old photo and suddenly realized, what is the stone nest for? If you are also curious, the following Xiaobian will reveal the secret to you from the beginning.
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In the northwest of the Summer Palace, the Cultivated Weaving Map Scenic Area covers an area of about 0.25 square kilometers, and it was not very well-known at the beginning, so that many people did not know that there was such a place in the Summer Palace. According to historical records, the scenic spot of the cultivated weaving map was built in the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, but at that time, as the seat of the weaving and dyeing bureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, it was named "cultivating weaving", that is, male cultivator and female weaving. By the end of the Qing Dynasty, the Anglo-French coalition army entered the Summer Palace to wantonly loot, and at the same time burned the Cultivating and Weaving Map Scenic Area, and all the buildings were reduced to ashes, but later when Empress Dowager Cixi repaired the Summer Palace, she also changed the Cultivating and Weaving Map Scenic Area into a Water Teacher's School, so it has been preserved to this day... In 2004, experts rebuilt the Cultivated Map Scenic Area, not only restoring the garden scenery of the Qianlong period, but also restoring a large number of architectural monuments, such as the Yanxiang Zhai, the Silkworm Temple and the Long Corridor, as well as the Water Teacher School.
In the cultivated map scenic spot, the only Qianlong relic is a stone stele - Kunlun Stone Stele. The stone stele is about 2.3 meters high, the whole is carved from Han white jade, the top is a circular arc symbolizing "Heavenly Circle", the bottom is square symbolizing "place", in addition to the sea-wave pattern stone carving, so this unique stone stele is called "Kunlun Stone Stele", indicating that it is as majestic as Kunlun. According to the written records on the Kunlun stone stele, the stone stele was carved in the sixteenth year of Qianlong (1751 AD), and the three large characters on the front are the Qianlong Emperor's imperial pen "Cultivation and Weaving Map", and on the back is the Qianlong Emperor's poem, that is, "Jade Belt Bridge West Cultivation and Weaving Map, Weaving Cloud Cultivation Rain Learning Eastern Wu." Every time I passed, I left Qing Qing to ask, for the more ordinary scenery is special", and finally dropped the "Qianlong Deca Unitary Xia Imperial Question".
A closer look reveals that the Kunlun Stele sits on a pedestal, and on either side of the pedestal there are two square stone nests, with a diameter of about 25 cm and a depth of about 40 cm. In the beginning, when people saw the stone nest, they wondered what the two stone nests did, and they did not find similar situations on other stone tablets. Therefore, some people speculate that the stone nest was used to hold water, but in fact it was empty at the bottom and could not hold water; others speculated that there were originally two small Kunlun stone tablets at the stone nest, which may have been stolen later, but experts said that it was impossible to have three stone tablets standing together. For a long time, experts actually did not have a reasonable explanation, and the historical materials of the Qing Dynasty were found.
Many years later, when an expert was checking the materials in the archives, he accidentally saw some old photos of the Summer Palace in the Republic of China period, so a closer look found that there was a Kunlun stone stele in a photo, and there was a tree on each side of the stele, of which the left was a cypress tree, but unfortunately it had withered, and the right side was a pine tree, which looked like it was growing vigorously. It is worth noting that both trees grow right inside the stone nests on either side of the stele. In this way, experts are overjoyed, did not expect that the old photos can crack the role of the stone nest is actually a tree pit, perhaps this is "majestic Kunlun, pine evergreen".
The role of the stone nest was thus discovered, but later some people questioned it, saying that the photo was from the Republic of China period, could it be that some farmer accidentally planted it? Therefore, other evidence needs to be found, and it is enough to prove that it is not an isolated case. Later, after many searches, experts found that there was also a Kunlun stone stele in the Yong'an Temple in Beihai, which was about the same size as in the Summer Palace, and there were also two stone nests on both sides, one of which was just a pine tree, while the other stone nest was empty, the monks of the temple said that it was originally a cypress tree, but then the insects withered and were taken down, and the new cypress tree had not yet had time to plant. In addition, in Nanhaizi Park in Beijing's Daxing District, there is also a replica of the Kunlun Stone Stele of the Qing Dynasty. Local villagers said that the original stele had been destroyed, and local villagers also mentioned that there were pines and cypresses on both sides of the Kunlun Stone Stele, and they were also growing happily.
It can be seen that the planting of pine cypress on both sides of kunlun stone in the Qing Dynasty is not an isolated case, but a "standard", but with the passage of time, the pine and cypress wither, so two stone nests are left. Nowadays, some experts want to plant pine and cypress on the Kunlun Stone Stele of the Cultivating Map, but they are opposed by many citizens, saying that it is better to keep the historical relics as they are, and can also add some mystery...
Resources:
"The Horns of the Summer Palace" by [Mei] Zhang Kequn, Publisher: China Machine Press
Wenlan Hairun Studio Editor-in-Chief Wen Xiucai, this article is written by: Special History Writer: Liu Lijiang's