Leifeng Pagoda in the West Lake District of Zhejiang Province, also known as Huangfei Pagoda, Huifeng Pagoda, is one of the ten scenic spots of the West Lake. The scenery of West Lake has been praised by literati since ancient times, and it is a famous ornamental lake on the mainland and a World Heritage Site preserved today.
Many of Su Dongpo's poems are written in the West Lake, "The west lake is under the sky, and the tourists are not fools." The depth depends on the gain, who can see the whole "The scenery of the West Lake is not complete.
The history of the construction of Leifeng Tower
Leifeng Pagoda was built during the Northern Song Dynasty, was built by King Qian Of Wuyue to enshrine the Buddha's conch hair relics and pray for the safety of the people of Guotai, for more than a thousand years, Leifeng Pagoda has been eroded by years and destroyed by war. During the Southern Song Dynasty, the Wokou invaded and set fire to it, which was the most serious destruction.
During the Qing Dynasty, the beauty of the West Lake was widely rumored, and the story and mutilated scenery of leifeng Pagoda were also famous at that time, and all generations of emperors went to visit.
On September 25, 1924, the brick tower of Leifeng Pagoda, which had fallen into disrepair, finally collapsed, which caused a lot of repercussions at that time, just in the period of the mainland revolution, Mr. Lu Xun wrote a famous work "On the Fall of Leifeng Pagoda" with this title, which exposed the essence of the feudal forces oppressing the working people and praised the people's unyielding spirit of resistance for freedom and happiness.
The current leifeng pagoda landscape was built on the site of the Leifeng Pagoda in 1999 by a reconstruction team established by the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee and the Provincial Government. It retains the pavilion-style structure before the old tower was burned down, and completely adopts the style, design and size of the reconstruction in the early years of the Southern Song Dynasty, and in addition to the ornamental function, it also has the function of protecting the relics of the site.
The new tower is nearly two kilometers high, and the design of the tower follows the flat octagonal pavilion style before the Leifeng Pagoda was burned down, and the appearance is an eight-sided, five-story pavilion-style tower, retaining the usual style of the Song Pagoda. Each layer is covered with copper tiles, a copper bucket arch is set at the corner, and a copper wind chime is hung under the corner of the cornice, which is beautiful and antique. The new pagoda uses colored copper as the material for the tower's outsourcing, and "drapes" the ancient pagoda with colorful new bronze clothing, which is the first bronze carved colored pagoda in China.
Folk tales Tales of the White Snake
Regarding the folktale related to Leifeng Pagoda, the Legend of the White Snake is the most widely spread.
The legend of the White Snake has been circulated in the folk during the Song Dynasty, and in the Ming Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty author Feng Menglong was sorted out and adapted, and wrote "White Lady Yongzhen Leifeng Pagoda", and then later everyone adapted this work into an opera, a commentary, and was known by more people, and in the Qing Dynasty, a unified name was gradually formed, "The Legend of the White Snake", also known as "The Book of the Golden Bowl".
The Legend of the White Snake is a mythical story that tells a tragic love story based on the love of people, demons, and men and women.
Xu Xian is a scholar, after the death of his parents, he and his sister and brother-in-law live together, the sister is kind-hearted, the brother-in-law is kind, they opened a medicine shop, Xu Xian helped his sister and brother-in-law in the medicine shop, and the little life was still relatively plain.
One day Xu Xian went to visit his parents' graves, and when he passed the West Lake, he encountered white snakes and green snakes. The white snake recognized Xu Xian at a glance as the one who had bought her from the fisherman and put her back into the water to save her.
Therefore, the white snake transformed into a woman, dressed in white, with a unique face, graceful and colorful, she named herself Bai Suzhen, and was later called the White Lady. The green snake transforms into the sister of the white snake, named Xiao Qing.
The sisters sang and created an accident with Xu Xian, Xu Xian fell in love with the white lady at first sight, and the white snake had a secret promise to Xu Xian, wanting to repay Xu Xian's life-saving grace with a lifetime.
The two people interacted for a period of time, and under the mediation of Xiao Qing, Xu Xian and Bai Niangzi finally got married. Lang has a concubine intention, and this marriage will be happy and perfect no matter how it looks. But there are many good things, and there are always some shackles to destroy the beauty of the world.
Just a few days before Xu Xian and the White Lady became intimate, the monk Fahai of the Golden Mountain Temple saw the whereabouts of the White Snake through mana. He also came to the human world, under the banner of eliminating violence and recovering demons and ghosts, and waved around in the street, and when he met Xu Xian, he told him that the lady he was about to marry was a snake demon, and if he did not believe it, he could let her drink Xionghuang wine on the night of marriage.
Xu Xian did not believe Fahai's words, but his family opened a pharmacy, and the wine brewed at home was added with male yellow, which had the effect of energizing the meridians and nourishing the body to ward off evil spirits.
On the night of their marriage, the couple drank a cup of wine, and when the white snake drank the wine with male yellow, it appeared to scare Xu Xian to death, and the white snake rescued him by asking for a thousand years of Lingzhi from the Immortal Mountain in spite of the difficulties and obstacles. It turns out that male yellow wine does have the effect of making goblins appear in their original form.
When Xu Xian woke up, the white snake had changed back into a human form, and she was still the gentle and beautiful Bai Suzhen. Xu Xian was also lost in the memory of the scare before the White Snake used the spell.
In the human world, Fahai could not directly use mana to retrieve the white snake, and the white snake cultivation path was very high, and he was not necessarily an opponent, so he wanted to force the white snake to leave with his hands first.
Xiong Huangjiu's plan did not succeed, and Fahai had to wait for the opportunity to move and look for an opportunity.
Xu Xian and his wife were in love, and after they became relatives, the two also helped their sister's medicine shop, and White Snake used his thousand years of cultivation experience to treat people. She is superb in medical skills and humble, and gives people a diagnosis that only charges medicine fees and does not collect medical fees, which makes the business of the drug store hot. She did good deeds to save people, and in people's hearts she existed like a bodhisattva, and everyone called her the White Lady.
Soon after, Bai Suzhen became pregnant. Xu Xian went to the Golden Mountain Temple to make a wish, and Fahai detained Xu Xian, and he wanted to use Xu Xian to lure out the White Lady and receive her at the Golden Mountain Temple.
White Snake knew that Fahai had set a trap for herself at the Golden Mountain Temple, but she was worried about Xu Xian's safety and dragged her pregnant body to the Golden Mountain Temple to save Xu Xian. The Golden Mountain Temple is full of obstacles, and Fahai has cultivated many highly powerful disciples to guard the temple. The White Snake alone could not defeat everyone, but she was eager to save her husband, and used her mana to raise the water level in an attempt to flood the Golden Mountain Temple and force Fahai to release people.
The flood flooded the Temple of the Golden Mountain, drowning many young monks, and implicated the farms and people around the Temple.
Fahai saw that things were going wrong and had to release Xu Xian, and the White Snake also violated the Heavenly Rule because the water flooded the Golden Mountain and endangered the people.
Fahai got the support of the Heavenly Court and came to recover the White Snake, the White Snake had just given birth to a child, his body was very weak, and his mana weakened a lot after the water flooded the Golden Mountain, and he was no longer able to fight with Fahai. Fahai easily took the White Snake into the Divine Bowl.
Fahai pressed the white snake under the Leifeng Pagoda and announced: If you want to come out again, unless the West Lake is dry and the Leifeng Pagoda falls.
This story has been passed down for nearly a thousand years, and whenever people go to the West Lake, they will think of the story of Xu Xian and the White Lady, and they will also stop under the Leifeng Pagoda, under the towering tower, the White Lady does not know how to bear the pain of darkness. In the last century, the Leifeng Pagoda fell, and many people were speculating, wondering whether the White Lady was still there, and whether she could come out of the tower?
Archaeological Leifeng Pagoda, excavation of new discoveries
Professional archaeologists cleaned up and inspected the fallen Leifeng Pagoda. Through the writing on the broken stone tablets in the ruins, archaeologists have obtained the age of the construction of the Leifeng Pagoda and the purpose of the tower. Due to the constraints of archaeological technology, the archaeological work of Leifeng Pagoda continued until 21 years ago, when it was discovered that there was an underground palace under leifeng pagoda, and the entrance to the underground palace was in the center of the bottom of the tower. There is a large stone slab at the center of the mouth of the underground palace, which is said to weigh about 750 kilograms.
After the local palace was opened, the researchers entered the palace and saw everything inside. This underground palace, which has been preserved for more than a thousand years, has a variety of cultural treasures, including ancient coins and exquisitely carved Buddha statues with four corners of gold.
There is a magical saying that in the process of excavating cultural relics, a white centipede that is more than an inch long and alive appears. How did the white centipede survive in such an airtight environment? Is it the embodiment of the White Lady?
It is said that the researchers brought the white centipede back to the laboratory, and a few days later it disappeared. The matter of the white centipede has yet to be examined, but a large number of cultural relics found under the Leifeng Pagoda are of great research value.
The story of the White Snake has stained the Leifeng Pagoda with mysterious colors, and the discovery of the underground palace has made us have a further understanding of the past, so that we can more deeply feel the profundity of history and culture.