Yunfeng Mountain, inscription recorded for a thousand years

According to Yantai Cultural Tourism:

Yangyang Huaxia, Wangu River. Generation after generation of dynasties, round after round of personnel rotation, how many stories dissipate with the wind, how many characters are short-lived, and how many bamboo books are burned and destroyed. In order to preserve history as much as possible in the ever-changing time, the inscription of stones in the mountains and forests has become one of the ways used by the ancients to remember things.

When I first arrived in Laizhou, I heard people say that Yunfeng Mountain was necessary to visit. It is not because this mountain has some strange natural landscape, but precisely because the Wei stele stone carvings on the mountain hide many ancient anecdotes that are difficult for the world to know.

More than 300 meters of Yunfeng Mountain does not have a towering mountain, but for some reason, there are often clouds and mist between the mountains, hence the name. I remember that when I entered the mountain that day, the sky would be twilight, the evening breeze was accustomed, it seemed particularly cloudy and cool, and there was really some interest in cloud covering the fog. Many locals prefer to call Yunfeng Mountain a beacon mountain, only because when looking at the mountain in the distance, they see three peaks facing each other, resembling a beacon. This is the magic of nature's creation, and it also lays the foundation for Yunfeng Mountain to become the second famous Chinese calligraphy mountain after Mount Tai.

Photography / Canterson

The mountain is not high, there are immortals and spirits. The immortal qi on Yunfeng Mountain comes from the calligraphy inscriptions in the mountain. In the chinese calligraphy art world, there has always been a saying of "Southern Thepical and Northern Monuments". Theology is prevalent in the southern region, and there are many inscriptions in the north, and among the inscriptions of the past dynasties, the Wei stele is the peak period. However, although the Wei Monument was produced in a hundred schools and had very different styles, there were not many treasures passed down to later generations. The rocks between Yunfeng Mountains are abrupt and have different forms, and the ancients chiseled and carved stones according to the mountain's terrain, distributed from the mountainside to the peak, casting a natural forest of steles. The dozens of Wei stele preserved here, whether it is the number of carved stones or the achievement of calligraphy, are enough to make them famous at home and abroad. Ancient and modern literati and scholars came to Yunfeng Mountain with a pilgrimage mood, and the first thing they wanted to pay homage to was the famous "Xingyang Zhengwen Gong Monument".

The Xingyang Zhengwen Gongbei (荥陽郑文公 Monument) is the history of the Gwangju Assassination in the fourth year (511 AD) of Emperor Xuanwu of the Northern Wei Dynasty, and was also engraved by Zheng Daozhao, a calligrapher at the time, and the inscription records the history of the Xingyang Zheng family and the life of his father Zheng Xi. Although Zheng Daozhao's article is full of praise and many inaccuracies, the majestic and rounded, wide and stretched italic calligraphy makes everyone standing in front of the monument feel admired.

Walk through the small courtyard where the Zheng Daozhao Memorial Hall is located, and climb up the steps to Yunfeng Mountain, and in a few moments you will see a hexagonal double-eaves ancient pavilion. The foundations of the Han white jade platform under the pavilion have been mottled with moss, and the plaque of "Zheng Wen Gong Monument Pavilion" inscribed by the contemporary calligraphy master Zhao Puchu has also faded, and everywhere is permeated with a quiet and cold atmosphere, but as soon as you see the stele standing in the pavilion, your heart will not feel shaken. Despite more than 2,500 years of wind and rain erosion, the words on the stele are still clear and recognizable, and the round and comfortable gestures seem to be able to eliminate the panting sounds that come all the way up, and can only look slowly with the sharp and sought-after strokes, holding their breath and looking slowly, the state of mind is like the one depicted on the pavilion outside the pavilion: looking around the sky, the clouds outside the sky and the sea; a monument is abrupt, and the people in the painting are drunk and paint zhongshan.

The calligraphy of the Xingyang Zhengwen Gongbei combines the gentle and energetic sections of the seal book, the precision and breadth of the Lishu and the vivid flow of cursive calligraphy, which is unique in Northern Wei calligraphy. Kang Youwei once lamented his words "like a fairy roaring tree, the sea guest pancha, making people imagine endlessly", and many Japanese and Korean calligraphers have traveled thousands of miles across the sea to see the true appearance of this "extreme of the affiliation".

In the process of exploring the Zheng Wengong Monument on Yunfeng Mountain, what made me most happy was that I "met" Li Qingzhao. At this point, I realized that this eulogy was the daughter of Qilu Dadi, and that she and her husband Zhao Mingcheng lived in Hermitage, Qingzhou, which was less than three hundred miles away from Laizhou.

In the third year of Emperor Xuanhe of song (1121 AD), an edict from the imperial court ended Zhao Mingcheng and Li Qingzhao's more than ten years of retreat, and the couple's idle days of gambling books and pouring tea on the hall of return from Qingzhou ended. This time, Zhao Mingcheng went to Laizhou as a prefect. At that time, he went first with light equipment, and after doing a lot of things in Laizhou, he took Li Qingzhao from Qingzhou to live with him.

That night, Li Qingzhao's car stayed in the Changle County Inn between Qingzhou and Laizhou, xiaoxiao light rain, dim twilight, Li Qingzhao wrote a poem "Butterfly Love Flower • Late Stop Changle Pavilion Sister", one of which was "Good to rely on the music book to pass the goose, Donglai is not like Penglai Yuan", and said that the lyricist's regret was sad. Li Qingzhao was obviously a little sad: the imperial court at that time had shown its decline, the fierce Jin Dynasty was staring at the tiger, and Laizhou was an important town guarding the southern shore of Bohai Bay. Li Qingzhao may be worried that once he leaves, he will never have the opportunity to return to his hometown and have no chance to gather with his relatives and friends.

Fortunately, the time in Laizhou did not fail Li Qingzhao and Zhao Mingcheng. As a person obsessed with jinshi scholarship, Zhao Mingcheng heard about the Wei stele stone carvings on Yunfeng Mountain as soon as he entered Laizhou, so Xinxin searched and soon found the "Xingyang Zhengwen Gong Monument". However, after careful study, Zhao Mingcheng found that this square inscription was the lower stele, which was re-engraved by Zheng Daozhao because of the better stone quality of Yunfeng Mountain, and another upper stele was in the "Sun of Tianzhu Mountain in Zhinan Huili", that is, Tianzhu Mountain, forty miles south of Yunfeng Mountain. Zhao Mingcheng was very excited, so he hurried to Tianzhu Mountain to look for it, and finally visited the monument and recorded it in the book.

In Li Qingzhao's "Preface to the Golden Stone Record", it is recorded that the couple lived in Laizhou and their various harvests of inscriptions. It was in Laizhou that they also completed the first draft of the Golden Stone Record and packed it into volumes. Thinking that Li Qingzhao and Zhao Mingcheng have no children in their lives, perhaps for them, this "Golden Stone Record" is the brainchild and crystallization of their lives.

Unfortunately, with the invasion of the Jin army in the south, Hui and the Second Emperor qin were exiled to the country. Zhao Mingcheng and Li Qingzhao's treasured a lifetime of antiques and cultural relics were destroyed in the war, and the manuscript of the "Golden Stone Record" was also scattered, and the "Xingyang Zhengwen Gong Monument" recorded in the "Golden Stone Record" was also forgotten.

However, the stele has a spirit, and the ink is timeless. After hundreds of years of silent waiting in the mountains, the Xingyang Zhengwen Gong Monument finally reappeared in the middle of the Qing Dynasty. As a result, the forest of steles on Yunfeng Mountain in Laizhou has once again won the attention of the world and emitted a dazzling light.

Source: "Wonderland on Earth Number Yantai", Yantai released