Located in the east of Shantou City, Guangdong Province, at the junction of the South China Sea and the East China Sea, Nan'ao Island has attracted people for another important reason in addition to the beautiful scenery, that is, the treasure hidden on the island for hundreds of years and has never been discovered.
Legend has it that Nan'ao Island holds a huge treasure of the rich and invincible country, and the gold and silver jewelry are innumerable. The claim of treasure began to spread on Nan'ao Island from the last years of the Song Dynasty, and in the Ming Dynasty, the legend of pirates hiding treasures was presented. As a result, groups of treasure hunters continued to flow, but the results were nothing. Is there any treasure on Nan'ao Island? If there is treasure, where will so much treasure be hidden on this small island with an area of only more than 100 square kilometers?
Huang Yingtao, director of the Nan'ao County Museum, told us that the legend of the treasures of the Song Dynasty is related to the escape of the little emperors at the end of the Southern Song Dynasty. More than 700 years ago, the young emperor Zhao Yu and his younger brother Zhao Fu were pursued and killed by the Yuan soldiers and fled south from Lin'an all the way to today's Nan'ao Island. Generally speaking, the emperor will carry a large amount of gold and silver treasures when he flees, so will the treasure in the legend of Nan'ao Island be left behind by the little emperor who fled?
There is a group of statues in Yun'ao Bay in the southeast of Nan'ao Island, which shows the scene of the southern Song Dynasty's young emperor Zhao Xing and the minister Lu Xiufu living on Nan'ao Island. Not long ago, while cleaning the foundations for this group of statues, the local travel department accidentally found the remains of an ancient building.
According to the "Nan'ao Chronicle", the Southern Song Dynasty little emperor Zhao Xing and his brother Prince Zhao, he once lived in Nan'ao Island for fifteen days, if the place in front of him is the prince building where the little emperor lived, this coincides with the folklore, because the legendary treasure place is in a pile of boulders tens of meters away from the prince building, but in order to obtain the treasure in the boulder, you must crack the words on this set of cliff stones.
Due to the long years, the stone wall has been severely eroded, and at this moment, only 35 words have been left on the boulder, and the handwriting is incomplete, difficult to identify, and almost impossible to read. According to locals, the young emperor who fled to Nan'ao Island at the end of the Southern Song Dynasty saw that the pursuing soldiers were approaching step by step, and decided to leave some of the gold and silver jewelry he carried with him on Nan'ao Island before leaving. In order to be able to retrieve these treasures in the future, words were carved on the nearby stone walls, which were both marks and tips for obtaining treasures. However, soon after the little emperor broke away from Nan'ao Island, he committed suicide by throwing himself into the sea under the pursuit of the Yuan army, so the treasure became a mystery for eternity.
Just 200 meters from the stone carvings and the ruins of the Prince Tower, there is an ancient well, which is said to have been dug by the young emperors of the Southern Song Dynasty when they fled to Nan'ao Island, and later people called it "Song Well". Although the ancient well is separated from the seawater, it is sweet fresh water that gushes out of the well. At this point the well has become a local tourist attraction. The management staff of Songjing told us that all visitors who come here will taste this cold well water, because this well water can clear the mind and eyes. In fact, when cleaning up the Song Well, the cultural relics department found many Song Dynasty porcelain fragments and Song Dynasty copper coins. Archaeology proves that this area is the place where the small emperors of the Southern Song Dynasty who fled south took shelter and moved.
So, can the mysterious words on the stone wall lead us to open the door of the treasure like Alibaba's "sesame door"? Many experts and scholars have made various speculations about the cliff stone carvings. Mr. Zhang Yixin, a history teacher at Nan'ao Secondary School, believes that the stone carvings are the inscriptions of Zheng Cheng's successful anti-Qing restoration in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. Professor Guo Weichuan of Chongsheng University in Thailand believes that the text of the stone carving is "not poetry and no text" and "should be the words of Wei Wei and the words of Fu Qi".
Although experts and scholars have different opinions on the meaning of the cliff carvings, today's South Australians are more willing to believe that this is the trick to open the treasure. Just when many scholars are trying their best to do everything possible to the words on the stone carvings, another riddle about treasure hunting on Nan'ao Island also makes experts and scholars rack their brains: "The water cannot rise and flood, the water floods three feet, the arrow is three branches, the silver plate is three plates, and the golden altar is eighteen." "I heard that whoever can crack this riddle can find the treasure of Wu Ping, the great pirate of the Ming Dynasty."
Shantou Nan'ao Island has a small island with an area of less than 1,000 square meters, which people call "Treasure Island". I heard that it was the place where the pirate Wu Ping hid gold and silver during the Ming Dynasty. Where is the gold and silver hidden? There is a local treasure trick: "The water cannot rise and flood, the water will flood three feet." "When the tide is high, the water cannot be soaked, and the low tide is flooded three feet. Some people speculate that this should be a place with fresh water. But where is the fresh water on the island to flood? After Wu Ping's death, no one has found gold and silver so far. This is still a mystery for eternity.
Why did the pirate Wu Ping bury the gold and silver treasure on this small island? There is a history of this: according to legend, during the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, the government was festering, the people were not happy, and there was a big pirate Wu Ping along the coast of Fujian and Guangdong, who was a native of Meiling, Zhao'an County, Fujian Province. This small, but alert and agile man haunts the waters around Nan'ao Island and Kinmen Island, and his influence has spread to Taiwan and Southeast Asia. Legend has it that he was good at diving and was able to dive from South Australia to Seamount Island, seven or eight miles away. Later, he took a fancy to Nan'ao Island, set up camp here, and built camp in present-day Shenzhen. There are alpine cliffs behind that side, the beach in front of the beach is wide, and there are two small islands of Tiger Island and Hunting Island as a natural barrier, which is indeed a good place that is easy to defend and difficult to attack. At that time, There was no general army in South Australia, and this area became Wu Ping's sphere of influence, which was where Wu Ping camped.
In order to wipe out this sea force, the Ming court appointed Yu Dayu, the general of Chaozhou, to suppress it. Yu Da You then led 30,000 troops to besiege Nan'ao. Wu Ping attached himself to the cover of the wooden castle and the water village, and the negative corner resisted, and the officers and men were caught off guard by the imminent arrival of the official ships and the wooden and stone bows and bullets. When it collapsed, the rudder of the official ship was stuck by the stone fence built by Wu Ping under the water of the bay, and it was difficult to ride the tiger, and even the soldiers were damaged, and they failed to win. After insisting on this for 3 months, the imperial court sent Qi Jiguang, the general of Zhejiang, to assist in the battle. Qi Jiguang is a native of Penglai, Shandong Province, who has a general's lineage, wisdom and courage, and is familiar with the art of war. He fought in Fujian and Zhejiang and achieved outstanding results. This time he received the Holy Will, which was to lead five thousand troops to help. In the spring of the forty-fourth year of Jiajing (1565), the Qi family army arrived in Nan'ao and set up camp in the area of Yungai Temple in the southeast of present-day Nan'ao. Qi Jiguang probed the terrain while contacting Yu Dayu. One night he dreamed of Guan Yu, the duke of beautiful hair, and was instructed: "The general breaks the enemy, only in the wisdom of the enemy, if you attack from the rear, you will inevitably be victorious." "Originally, Wu Pingtun soldiers camped on the seashore, behind which was the Golden Mountain, the mountain was saga, the thorns were overgrown, there was no way to pass, and the security was neglected. After Qi Jiguang contacted Yu Dayu, Yu Sui led his troops to attack from the front, while Qi himself personally led three thousand elite soldiers, stopped the drum, cut through thorns and thorns, and took the road back of the mountain. After the deployment of military strength, the artillery was fired in unison, and the front and rear attacks were sandwiched, Wu Ping panicked, abandoned the village and fled, killing and capturing 3,000 people, and the officers and troops won a complete victory. At that time, Wu Ping saw that the situation had gone, and remembered the treasures that had been looted for more than ten years, so he and his sister divided the gold and silver treasures into 18 cans and transported them in small boats to the island called Treasure Island at this moment to be buried, so that they would be dug up again in the next day. After arriving at the island, the officers and soldiers chased and shouted killing, and perhaps Wu Ping thought that his sister would cause adverse consequences after being captured by the officers and soldiers, so he killed his sister and buried her with gold and silver.
In May 1566, Qi Jiguang's general Fu Yingjia discovered that Wu Ping had fled to Hainan Island and gathered several thousand men and horses to resume his old business, so the officers and soldiers again requisitioned. In this battle, Wu Ping was defeated again, and he committed suicide by throwing himself into the sea. Since Wu Ping is dead, no one knows about the gold and silver buried in Treasure Island.
Hundreds of years have passed, the human world has gone through several vicissitudes, but this small treasure island but because of the above historical background reasons, but also has the legend of hiding gold, coupled with the island rock towering, stone cave twists and turns, high and low; the island outside the white waves surging, seagulls fly low, the scenery is charming, there are more Wu Ping sister's stone sculptures and "Treasure Island Chronicle", "South Australia Wuping Causeway" and other monuments, the beauty of the pavilion small bridge, stone cave spring attracted many tourists to the island to hunt for the strange range rover.
In the town of Shen'ao on Nan'ao Island there is a Village of Wupingzhai, which was the first village named after pirates. Wu Ping hid the treasure in the village with great generality because it was easy to take care of. But the fishermen who live here tell us that today's WupingZhai is no longer the village of that year. When they built a new house, they once saw some remnants of the wall and the ruins of the stone foundation, but never found any trace of the treasure.
Kui Fu, a former professor at Shantou University's Faculty of Letters, passed through a twenty-year study and put forward his own views on Nan'ao Island's treasure whisper that "the water cannot rise and flood, and the water dries up and floods three feet." The island's Deep Ao Bay is where the pirate Wu Ping practiced sailors, and when expanding the ship port a few years ago, people once found the underwater stone forest built by Wu Ping at that time. Therefore, some experts thought that the treasure was probably hidden in the nearby seabed, so people immediately expanded the scope of the search and decided to go to the bottom of the sea to have a look. With the financial support of the local travel department, professional divers were hired, and the address was chosen at the seabed around Treasure Island, the most concentrated treasure place in the legend. After a few days of underwater groping, nothing was found. But Professor Kui has always believed that treasure exists. If there is indeed treasure on the island, what is it hidden? According to Professor Kui's speculation, the hidden phrase "the water cannot rise and flood, the water cannot be flooded for three feet" should be preceded by two other sentences, because it is lost, so people in the future will not be able to determine the location of the treasure.
According to local villagers, a few years ago, someone once dug up treasures on Hunting Island. So, will Wu Ping's treasure be hidden on Hunting Island? Lieyu Island is just opposite Wuping Village, which is a natural barrier for the open sea to enter Shen'ao Bay. I heard that in order to search for treasures on Nan'ao Island, a treasure thief made a lot of preparations a few years ago, and he chose the location of the treasure theft on the top of The Hunt Island through the analysis of local legends. The cultural relics department took some photos at the scene in those days, and today it is already a patch of bushes and weeds. Director Huang thought that there was indeed a treasure on Hunting Island, but this treasure was not the treasure he imagined Wu Pingzang, but a valuable cultural relic, built in the Ming Dynasty's Fort of Yongcheng. Because it is a cultural relic from the Ming Dynasty, the person who dug up the treasure here a few years ago was detained by the local public security department.
In the grass not far from the city, there is a stone stele recording the history of the city, although after many years of weathering, the handwriting on the stone stele is somewhat vague, but you can still see the five words engraved on it: "Tomorrow Kai 2nd Year". Since the founding of the city was sixty years after the Qing Dynasty suppressed Wu Ping, the Ming army had already leveled and cleaned up the city when it was built. In this way, the probability of treasure hidden on Hunting Island is also very small.
For decades, countless people have gone to Nan'ao Island to search for treasure, almost running to every corner of Nan'ao Island, still unable to solve the mystery of Nan'ao Island's treasure. However, it is precisely because of this unsolved mystery that the beautiful scenery of Nan'ao Island has added a lot of mysterious color, attracting people's more inquiring eyes.