Wang Xiantang and the Ancient City of Wulian Dantu

Text | Lin Yi

Wang Xiantang's name may be unfamiliar to most people today, but in The Chinese historical community, his status is very important, some people call it "a rare scholar in China in the past 300 years." Mr. Wang Xiantang is best known for the past when he went to Sichuan during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and sacrificed his life to protect the treasure. Wang Xiantang, then director of the National Library of Shandong Province, once said in a letter to his colleague Qu Wanli: "In any case, the hat of the slave of the subjugated country will be rotten to the sea, and the brother will never wear it..." (I will not repeat it here)

Wang Xiantang (1896-1960) Character Dedication Hall, initially named Jiaju, later renamed Wang Xiantang, wang Fengsheng (王凤笙), in character lines. Rizhao Donggang District Rizhao Street Office Dahanjia Village people. Renowned scholar. Today I want to talk about the ancient city of Dantu, the earliest ancient city site found in the Haidai area in Wulian County. In 1934, at the suggestion of Wang Xiantang, Wang Xiang and Qi Yanpei of the Institute of History and Linguistics of the Academia Sinica conducted a cultural relics survey of the eastern coastal area of Shandong and officially confirmed the Dantu site.

Wang Xiantang's father, Wang Tinglin, practiced medicine in the local area and loved Jinshi. In 1900, Wang Tinglin, who was obsessed with gold stones, passed by Dantu Village, found many stone tools, and brought home to give his son Wang Xiantang a jade pendant, and the four-year-old Wang Xiantang remembered this scene in his heart, and an ancient city was awakened by him after thousands of years of sleep.

Wang Xiantang entered a private school at the age of 7 and liked to draw, write, and read poetry. At the age of 8, he entered the higher primary school, and at the age of 10, he was able to recite the "Three Hundred Poems of Tang Dynasty" and became a famous small calligrapher and painter in the village. However, his grandfather was not satisfied with this, in order to cultivate his ability to live independently, he sent him to Qingdao Lixian Academy to study at the age of 11, and he was a full-fledged young talent.

In order to write this article, I specifically consulted my friends in my hometown, how far it is from Rizhao Dahanjia Village to Wulian Dantu Village, and my friend said that the straight-line distance is only fifty miles. It is credible to say that Wang Xiantang's father went to Dantu Village. Dantu Village is located in the southwest of Chaohe Town, Wulian County, because there is a large amount of laterite in the northeast corner of the village, so it is named "Dantu Village".

According to research, 4800 years ago, Dantu was an important city, when human civilization had developed to a certain stage, life was relatively standardized, and aquaculture and animal husbandry had initially formed a scale. The Dantu site is the largest number of jade artifacts unearthed among all the cultural sites of the same period. According to different historical periods, it can be divided into three city circles: Late Dawenkou Culture City, Early Longshan Culture City, and Mid-Longshan Culture City, which are the earliest ancient city sites discovered by scientific excavations in Haidai area.

As the population grew and the economy grew, the city expanded on the site twice. A sketch of the city map of the late Dawenkou culture shows that 4800 years ago, with the joint efforts of people, an oval-shaped town appeared. The small city is more than 400 meters long from east to west, more than 300 meters wide from north to south, and has an area of 95,000 square meters. In the early days of the Yongsan culture, on top of the original ancient city moat, a new oval site appeared. It is 450 meters long from east to west, 300 meters wide from north to south, and the area of the city is 110,000 square meters. As the population multiplied, the ancient city was repeatedly expanded. By the middle of the Longshan culture, the small city was 500 meters long from east to west and 400 meters wide from north to south, and the first ancient city of Haidai revealed its authentic deeds, with living areas and workshop areas. After the ancient city experienced countless vicissitudes and storms, people gradually migrated, and the ancient city was buried by yellow sand.

I know the name of the village, Dantu, after high school. At that time, there were many Chaohe classmates in our class, and when they talked about Dantu Village, they all had pride on their faces. They said that since the end of the 1950s, a stone stele of "Dantu Ruins" has been erected at the mouth of Dantu Village, and in order to protect the site, cameras have been installed in front of the village and behind the village. Later, the village strictly controlled the villagers to dig up soil and build houses, and for many years they did not allocate homesteads, most of which were built in the 1960s. The village looks ordinary, there are not many new houses, and the entire Dantu village and the 1500 acres of cultivated land in the village are on the Dantu site.

Liu Xiaowen, whose home is Dantu, said that when he was a child, he heard his grandfather say that he could often dig out some crock pots in the village, and the villagers did not know that they were cultural relics, some of them took home and became children's toys, some felt useless and directly threw them away, smashed them, and some did the guys who fed chickens and dogs. Since 1958, more and more strangers have come to the village, and they are full of interest in the crock pots in the hands of the villagers. They dug up the soil in the village, dug out a lot of crock pots, and later many people came to the village to investigate, and some people also exchanged biscuits for pottery and jade, biscuits were rare in that era, and everyone rushed to change them. Later, when the county had cultural relics management personnel, the villagers learned that the crock pots they did not look at were actually cultural relics. Since then, villagers have been told that the construction of new houses and the construction of additional vegetable greenhouses must be declared to the Cultural Relics Department of Wulian County.

In the autumn of 1989, the Weifang Municipal Cultural Relics Management Committee conducted a small-scale trial excavation of the site (at that time, Wulian was under the jurisdiction of Weifang), and unearthed a small number of artifacts, one of which was the Big Jade Knife. The big jade knife is a typical ceremonial vessel of the Neolithic Longshan culture, with a length of 51 cm, a width of 22 cm, a thickness of 0.3 cm, and a weight of 1180 grams. Light grey jade, polished double-sided edge throughout, two round holes drilled in the opposite tube on the back, and two single-sided drilled round holes in the middle and lower part of one end. Because this large jade knife is the earliest and largest jade knife found in archaeological excavations, it is known as "the first jade knife in China" and is a national first-class cultural relic.

The excavation of cultural relics such as the Great Jade Knife has unveiled the mysterious veil of the ancient Dantu City. The Dantu site is famous for the excavation of many jade artifacts, ranking first among the sites of the same period, and is characterized by large, flat, inlaid turquoise, drilling double holes, etc., and its fine workmanship and the beauty of the shape of the instrument are amazing. This is enough to prove that our ancestors lived here more than 4,800 years ago, and over thousands of years they have created splendid cultures of different periods. Archaeologists deduce from this that the Dantu site is not only the earliest ancient city site scientifically excavated in the Haidai area, but also the only ancient city site of dawenkou culture in China that can be determined; and Dantu City is not only the oldest ancient city found in our province, but also one of the oldest cities in Asia. Since then, the ancient city of Dantu has also become a cultural business card of Wulian.

Mr. Wang Xiantang died of illness in Jinan in 1960, although most of his life was not in Qingdao, but in his later years he left a last word, hoping to be buried in Qingdao after his death. It was not until 1994 that he fulfilled his long-cherished wish with the efforts of his family and moved the cemetery from Jinan to the foot of Qingdao's Fushan Mountain, close to the tomb of Kang Youwei, a master of traditional Chinese studies. I wondered, does sir also want to be closer to the ancient city of Dantu?

Recently, the relevant departments of Wulian collected tourism slogans for the society, I based on the Wulian ancient city of Dantu more than 4800 years ago, wulian mountain Jiuxian mountain has the largest wild Yingshan red garden north of the Yangtze River, capriciously thought of such a sentence, wulian, a blooming in the ancient city of Dantu Yingshan red.

(Some of the pictures are selected from the Internet, invaded and deleted)

About author:Lin Yi, a member of the Shandong Provincial Writers Association, is a contracted author of the Qilu Evening News Qingwei Supplement. One Point "Shandong Financial Literature" subscribers 122,000.

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