Huojing Ancient Town was founded in the Northern Zhou Dynasty (557-581 AD) during the Southern and Northern Dynasties.
In the twelfth year of the Sui Dynasty (616 AD), Huojing County was set up, and Yuan Tiangang, a famous mathematician and astronomer of the Tang Dynasty, served as the first county commander, with a history of 689 years, and is an ancient civilized town with a long history of nearly 1500 years.
It is recognized as the first place in the world to discover and use natural gas, and is also the hometown of Huang Chongga, the first female leader of China. The "fire" of the most "fire" ancient town represents three meanings.
Qionglai Huojing Town The river in the town is very clean, and the local residents will wash clothes and vegetables inside.
The Magic of "Fire"
Legend has it that in the Eastern Han Dynasty, the fire well people found the underground fire, deeply magical, called "divine fire", after the Shu Han Dynasty Minister Zhuge Liang once came here to guide people to use the "divine fire" to boil salt, "fire well" is named after it, here is the world's earliest use of the first natural gas well, according to the world's scientific and technological history data, the earliest use of natural gas abroad is the United Kingdom, but the fire well is more than 1600 years earlier than it. Because of its use of natural gas ranked first in the world, it was the first in the world to lead the world in boiling salt, and was praised by posterity as "the world's first well".
1 km west of Huojing Town, you can reach the earliest surviving fire well ruins, which is an ancient well, just at the foot of the mountain. The well platform is about half a meter high, and it is actually a gray-black Han brick base, and the pattern of the brick wall is still clear.
The inner diameter of the ancient well is 1 meter, the wellhead is hexagonal, looking down, there is a pool of clear water in the well to see the figure. Next to the well, a stone stele made of red sand and stone stands majestically, the stele is 6 meters high, and the sculpture at the top is a flame rising. On the front of the monument, facing the road, you can see the 5 characters of "Han Dynasty Ancient Fire Well" in the distance, and the side is written "The World's First Well". On the other side is engraved in small characters, recording the historical facts about ancient fire wells in the past dynasties since the Han Dynasty. This is the site of the ancient fire well in Linqiong in the Han Dynasty, which is the origin of the name of today's "Huojing Town", in the Han Dynasty, people uniformly called the natural gas well "Huojing", hence the name Huojing Town.
According to records, in ancient times, this place was originally a desert beach, and some people found that there was salt water leaching out of the ground, so they dug a well on the spot to boil salt. The deeper the well was dug, the more salt came out, so the crowd followed suit, and a total of six wells were dug in a hexagonal arrangement, collectively known as the "hexagonal well". Late one night, lightning and thunder, a thunderbolt fell down, the deepest well suddenly burst out of flames, soaring several feet high, the folk revered as "divine fire", the initial fire well appeared.
In the oil-pressed village where the salt is boiled in Huojing Town, you can still see the ancient pottery natural gas pipeline buried more than a meter deep underground. The diameter of the pipe is 12 cm, the wall thickness is 1 cm, and the ancient local methods used to transport natural gas and brine include bamboo tubes and fire troughs made of stone.
The natural gas and well salt industry in Huojing Town has brought unprecedented prosperity to the local economy, and its momentum has gone through the three dynasties of Tang, Song and Yuan.
The "Fire" of Prosperity
In the old days, the fire well, the eight merchants gathered, and the business was booming since ancient times. On the field, there is the Jiangxi Pavilion called "Wanshou Palace"; the Middle Street has the Fujian Pavilion, named "Tianhou Temple"; and the next scene has the Huguang Pavilion, called "YuWangGong". In addition, there are the City God Temple, the Fire Temple, the Chuanwang Palace, the Yansheng Hall, and the Kong Ming Temple at the east end of Wollongong on the street side (built to commemorate Zhuge Liang's inspection of the fire well), and the ancient opera stage of Taiziba.
The ancient town now has an ancient street In Hebei Street in the late Qing Dynasty and early Minchu, about 1500 meters long, more than half of the ancient houses on the street are well preserved, important old buildings include Qiu Zhai "HaiWu", Chen's former residence, girls' school ruins (built in 1913, is the first girls' school in qionglai countryside), Jintai Mountain, Jiulong Bridge, Tenglong Bridge, Huilong Bridge, Wenwu Bridge ruins, Laoxian Ya ruins, Qingqianlong opera stage ruins, fire temple ruins, etc. and the ancient banyan trees that witness Huojing Ancient Town.
On both sides of the quiet street, there are small wooden tile houses common in The old Sichuan, the paving on the side of the street can be flexibly assembled or disassembled, the paving board is removed in the morning, and the paving board is closed in the evening.
As a people with a long history, the Qiang people lived in the Huojing and Gaohe areas of Qionglai as early as the ancient Shu period, and their time can be extended to at least the beginning of the Qing Dynasty. There are still many relics left today, and the ruins of Tusi Yamen and Diaolou are fully supported. Therefore, the location of the Erma Folk Museum in Huojing Town is of far-reaching significance.
The museum is located in Hebei Street, Huojing Town, Qionglai City, "Sea House" in Huojingchang Town, with an exhibition hall area of about 700 square meters, divided into 10 exhibition halls such as bronze, pottery, Qiang embroidery, clothing, folklore, etc., mainly including pottery, porcelain, bronze, ethnic costumes, living utensils, ethnic musical instruments, hunting tools and so on used by the Qiang people during the Han Dynasty.
Xingfu Temple is located in the southwest of Huojing Town, only 5 kilometers away from Tiantai Mountain, a national key scenic spot, and is a representative of architectural culture and art in western Sichuan and a provincial key cultural relics protection unit. Xingfu Temple was built in The 30th year of Jiaqing, covering an area of 14,674 square meters, the temple is full of ancient trees, majestic construction, incense is exuberant, and pilgrims are endless. Inside the temple, there is a thousand-year-old ginkgo tree, which is a rare treasure in the southwest.
The Rekindled "Fire"
After the "4.20" Lushan earthquake, Huojing Town, as a tourist town in the core area of the south wing of the Longmen Mountain Tourism Comprehensive Functional Zone, has completed the transformation of the Hantang style style in the town area, walking the Huojing block, and the Hantang wind is blowing in the face; complete the transformation of the ancient Huojing Square and Chonggao Square, enjoy the wisdom of the predecessors with fire, and see and hear the legend of the female Champions; it has built the Qionglai Western Tourism Distribution Center, which undertakes the tourist distribution of the Qionglai Western Tiantai Mountain Scenic Area and the Nanbaoshan Deep Forest Park The Erma Museum, which has a total collection value of more than 300 million, has been built to appreciate the weapons of the Cold Weapon Era and the handicrafts of the Qiang people;
Today, the town of Huojing will reopen the fire well and rekindle the holy fire to show the great achievements of the ancestors and promote the civilization of the fire well.
(Note: Some image source network)