Source: People's Daily
Top right: Sleeping Tiger Di Qin Jian (partial).
Courtesy of Hubei Provincial Museum
Below: Mengze Lake, Yunmeng County.
Photo by Chen Zhiyong
View of wooden buildings in Yunmeng County.
Mao Feng photo
Core reading
Sleeping Tiger Di Qin Jian, Family Letter "Heifu MuMu", Chu Wangcheng Ruins... Yunmeng, the smallest county in Hubei, is a large county that has unearthed national treasure-level cultural relics and collected more than 5,000 cultural relics. Nowadays, relying on rich historical and cultural resources, Yunmeng has established a scientific research workstation for the protection of cultural relics, innovated and inherited traditional arts such as shadow puppetry, and built cultural tourism projects such as the Chuwangcheng Ruins Park, and explored a new path to promote cultural tourism with culture and culture. This thousand-year-old town, which combines the romance of Chu and the heroism of Qin, is taking on a new look.
Cloud dreamer, fang nine hundred miles, there are mountains in it. Its mountains are lush and longchong; Cen Kun is uneven, the sun and the moon cover the loss; Staggered disputes, shanggan Qingyun; Strike Pond Pituo, subordinate to the river.
—— Sima Xiangru in "Zi Fei Fu"
The sonorous sound of hoes passed through the soil layer, getting closer and closer, clearer and clearer. Immediately after, there was a muffled sound, and the sunlight that was thousands of years apart shone into the ground...
Several piles of bamboo caught the attention of the archaeologists.
More than 1,000 pieces of bamboo were collected one by one and numbered cleaned. Soon after, cultural relics experts from Beijing identified that the historical moment from the Seven Heroes of the Warring States to the unification of the Qin State was recorded by an official named "Xi" with more than 40,000 neat Qin Li.
Where is this? The farmers involved in the excavation answered: Sleeping Tiger Land.
The place where the tiger snoozed silently collected the jingo iron horse in the long river of history. In 1975, due to the excavation of a batch of precious Qin Jian, this small village with a landform shaped like a Crouching Tiger has been called since then.
Decades later, here the white wall of Dewa, the cornices are angled, and the reproduction of Qin Jian, magnified several times, stands in the memorial garden of the original site of Qin Jian in Xiaogan City, Hubei Province.
In the garden, an old man with gray hair reached out his hand to gently stroke Bamboo Jane. He is Chen Kangsheng, a retired professor at Wuhan University.
In Yunmeng, the smallest county in Hubei Province, such a rare treasure was unearthed — Chen Kangsheng, who was a history teacher at Yunmeng County No. 1 Middle School at the time, couldn't believe it.
Soon after, he was selected by the county to escort Qin Jian to Beijing for scientific and technological protection, becoming one of the very few scholars who personally experienced qin Jian's excavation, protection, interpretation and follow-up research process.
Blog
36 first-class cultural relics such as Qin Jian of sleeping tiger land were unearthed, which is a "big county of cultural relics" frequented by archaeologists.
After retirement, Chen Kangsheng still can't let go of Yunmeng. Every time he came back, he always liked to go to the Yunmeng County Museum and chat with the curator Zhang Hongkui.
Sleeping Tiger Di Qin Jian, Qin Soldier Heifu and Shock's family letter "Heifu Mumu", many precious wood carvings, wood lacquerware... Yunmeng unearthed a total of 36 first-class cultural relics, which is a "cultural relics county" often visited by archaeologists. Yunmeng County Museum has a collection of more than 5,000 cultural relics and 18 first-class cultural relics, which is a leader in the national county-level museums.
Among them, Zhang Hongkui's favorite is the wood carving "Lying Deer Standing Bird". The winged bird stands on the body of a reclining deer, and "the antlers are boldly transplanted to the bird's head, reflecting the chu people's innovative spirit of innovation." ”
"Vapor Cloud Mengze", the ancient Yunmeng Daze, is much more vast than today's Yunmeng County. The king of Chu came to hunt, and Yun dreamed of a place, thus becoming the capital of the Chu kingdom. After the Qin and Han Dynasties, Yun Mengze continued to accept the sediment brought by the Yangtze River and the Han River, and gradually silted up into land, dividing into scattered rivers and sandbars.
A large number of excavated wooden lacquerware confirm the prosperity of Yunmeng in the past.
The raw material of wood lacquerware is expensive, and the production process is more complicated. The lacquer on the wooden tire is 1 mm thick, and the hair is formed more than 20 times. The ancients said that to make a lacquer ear cup, it takes hundreds of people; A paint screen, it takes thousands of labor.
Li Lan, a research librarian at the Hubei Provincial Museum, felt particularly deeply.
Freshly unearthed wooden lacquerware, covered in mud. Pick up the lacquer, put it in a tray filled with water, scrape off the mud with a bamboo skewer, and then gently sweep it with a small pen... Li Lan's job is to dehydrate and stabilize the wooden lacquerware, and then repair the disease.
Wood lacquerware is soaked in groundwater, and although it can maintain its appearance, it cannot prevent decay and paint removal. After excavation, let it dry on its own, it will shrink and deform, and even crack.
History is a layer of time, and it takes time to reproduce history. Dehydration alone takes at least a year or two, and the more well-preserved large-piece type takes more than 5 years.
Only by being able to resist the temperament can we see the final appearance. Li Lan feels that this is the charm of wood lacquer restoration.
Li Lan's laboratory is located next to the county museum. The humble gray-roofed house is not only the museum cultural relics restoration center, but also the Yunmeng Workstation of the key scientific research base of the State Administration of Cultural Relics for the protection of excavated wood lacquerware. Today, Li Lan spends a lot of time training local cultural relics restoration technicians.
Previously, museums had to transport cultural relics that needed to be restored to places that were eligible, such as Wuhan and Jingzhou. Long-distance bumps, a little carelessness, may cause damage, which once made Zhang Hongkui feel distressed.
After the workstation was listed, the warehouse keepers Liu Lu and Zhang Dan became Li Lan's apprentices. After more than a year of study, they are now proficient in the pretreatment of wood lacquerware before dehydration.
The dehydrated wooden lacquerware that the reporter saw in the laboratory was handled by Liu Lu and Zhang Dan. This batch of wooden lacquerware was excavated from the Yunmeng Zhengjiahu Cemetery, which was selected as one of the top ten archaeological discoveries in the country in 2021, with a rough pattern.
Literature
The protection of traditional art, the more novel and grounded, the more people remember; What is remembered can be passed on
The historical context emerging from Qin Jian is superimposed with the cultural genes of Yunmeng people.
Last year, Qin Jian, a sleeping tiger in the Hubei Provincial Museum, appeared on the TV show "National Treasure"; This year, I walked into the "Why China" exhibition of the Palace Museum.
When the news came, Li Shenghua, president of the Happy Community Sports Association of Chengguan Town, Yunmeng County, was full of joy. Why not "dance" the story of the Qin officials "Hi"? The crowd of applicants.
Dressed in a Chinese costume, holding bamboo in his hand, water sleeves for the pen, enjoy the ink. After more than two months of polishing, Li Shenghua led the community dance team to create the work "Ink Dance Qin Jian" for the first time, which won awards in the city competition and was invited to perform overseas. The performance was very popular and was called "Qin Jian Dance" by the locals.
Historically, along with the Qin people, there was also a unique skill - shadow puppetry. Cloud dream shadow puppet, singing voice is different from the northwest region. True and false sounds are intertwined, sometimes melodious and gentle, sometimes swinging back to the intestines.
Near noon, in the Mengze Film Theater, the drums are clicking. The staged shadow puppet play is based on the "Eighteen Kinds of Qin Laws and Field Laws" in the Sleeping Tiger Di Qin Jian.
The official in charge of the law painstakingly persuaded the father of the family not to burn straw, and brought the "village bully" who destroyed the ecological environment to justice, and the witty lines caused the audience to laugh. The culture contained in QinJian has lasted for thousands of years and is still closely related to people's daily lives.
"For example, in the "Law of the Fields", 'In the spring and February, do not dare to cut down timber and mountains... If it is not summer, do not dare to turn the grass into ash at night', which is the same as the law prohibiting deforestation and straw burning. Yunmeng County CPPCC member Liu Junming said.
Liu Junming loves literature and art and hopes to inherit culture through shadow puppetry. He found a partner Fang Dingmin and a shadow puppet artist Qin Ligang, and the three of them hit it off and jointly created the shadow puppet sketch "Qin Law Play within a Play".
Qin Ligang is a national non-hereditary inheritor of Yunmeng shadow puppetry, and studied under The Shadow Puppet Artist Lu Chunyuan of Yunmeng. In the 1950s, Lu Chunyuan boldly innovated, imitating opera in shadow puppet paintings, using Peking opera faces and costumes; The singing voice incorporates the characteristics of Chu opera, Han tune and flower drum opera. Shadow puppet characters can be nodded, eyes can be blinked, laughing and angry, vivid.
Today, Qin Ligang is also committed to the innovative development of shadow puppetry. When the brass drum was struck, the hands were quickly crossed, and the two characters who were wrestling together instantly "changed their heads", which was Qin Ligang's shadow puppet stunt. Not obsessed with a fixed score, Qin Ligang is very good at integrating news hotspots into the play. Make a story outline, how to sing is all based on free play. Slang that is distilled from real life combines novel meanings.
"It's not easy to play shadow puppetry, a play from beginning to end, men, women and children are all played by one person." Qin Ligang said that writing scripts, drawing drawings, carving and making, and learning to sing, everything must be able to be done.
In recent years, Qin Ligang has just discovered that local young people are less close to shadow puppetry. To this end, he was already old, not only brought many apprentices, but also passed on the art to his grandson Qin Lang. "Not only must we learn old plays, but we must also have new plays that catch the attention of young people." Qin Ligang often told Qin Lang.
Qin Ligang lamented that the protection of traditional art is a rescue of "forgetting": the more novel and grounded, the more people remember, "what is remembered can be passed on." ”
Inheritance is not only passed on by word of mouth.
A few years ago, Qin Ligang accepted a "steel apprentice" - an intelligent robot with sensors all over its body. In 2017, Qin Ligang and the robot performed the classic play "Wusong Fighting Tiger" on the same stage in the Changyin Pavilion of the Palace Museum, and the robot held the shadow puppet tiger in his hand, and the actions made according to the programming came to life, arousing the attention of young people.
"With artificial intelligence in the future, coupled with our innovation, we will not be afraid of the loss of old craftsmanship." Qin Ligang said.
Culture
Extract cultural characteristics from historical accumulation and explore the relationship between cultural protection, tourism and commercial operations
Standing in the sleeping tiger land and looking east, the ancient city wall of the ruins of Chu Wang City is coiled. The Records of Yunmeng County record that during the Spring and Autumn Period, Wu and Chu were at war, and King Zhao of Chu built this city when he came to Yunmeng for refuge.
History is the annual ring of reality, writing the trajectory of civilization. Today's Yunmeng is refining cultural characteristics from historical accumulation and exploring the relationship between cultural protection, tourism and commercial operations.
In the past 5 years, Yunmeng has built a new intangible cultural heritage exhibition hall and a Qinjian Memorial Park, improved the library and cultural center, and was awarded the hometown of folk culture and art in Hubei Province. In the future, Yunmeng will vigorously promote the industrialization of cultural tourism and create a global tourism pattern of "the rise of one city, the brilliance of three museums, the ring of three circles, and the embellishment of four villages".
The ChuWangcheng Ruins Park, which is under construction, carries this beautiful vision.
Opening the park design sketch, the ruins of the ancient city wall surrounded by three sides form a circular landscape belt, and the rammed earth terrace ruins in the middle divide the entire park into two: the northern part is the tour area, and the southern part is the wetland landscape display area and the folklore experience area. Safari shows, wood lacquerware design, QinJian rubbings... Zhang Hongkui expects that well-designed cultural activities can attract more tourists.
The lights flow and light up the twilight of the town. Half of it is streets and alleys, half is river water, and in the southeast of the ruins of ChuWangcheng, the prototype of Puyang Old Street, which is under construction, has begun to appear.
Ouyang Xiangshan, the person in charge of the old street reconstruction project, left his hometown to work hard in other places before he was less than 20 years old. He hopes to restore the old street where he played as a child and revitalize it at the same time.
Ouyang Xiangshan has visited many ancient villages and ancient towns, lingering in the poetry-like green brick Tiles, Pavilions and Water Pavilions, from the traces of time, enjoying the local style and elegance. Gradually, an idea gradually took shape in his mind: to build a scenic spot, with the old street as the axis, and build classical style buildings such as Huipai and Supai along the line, which not only retained the characteristics of Yunmeng, but also integrated the terroir of various places. The inspiration for "half street and half water" came from Shantang Street in Suzhou.
As soon as the plan was proposed, it was questioned by many people - why not choose a place with a more developed economy and more tourists when investing in scenic spots?
"I am a Yunmeng person, and I am constantly cutting my hometown complex, just like the hometown sound that cannot be changed." Cloud dream is not big, but it has a deep historical background and unique humanistic customs, which is worth being seen by more people. Ouyang Xiangshan said.
Walking deeper along the old street bluestone slab road, a wooden building carved beams and paintings. Song Shengguo, an architect with more than 30 years of experience in the restoration of ancient buildings, participated in the reconstruction of the old street, and he introduced that the dome-shaped algae well above the wooden building stage was designed and carved by three wood carving masters while designing and carving, and it took more than two months to complete. One setback after another, it is both antique and new.
On the stage after the restoration, the good drama continues. Non-hereditary heirs dance two "three-knotted dragons"; Qin Ligang and Qin Lang took out shadow puppet props and performed "Wusong Fighting Tiger", and Chunjiang, who was sitting on the stage, couldn't help but applaud.
Chunjiang, who has lived in Yunmeng for 27 years, is engaged in writing in his spare time. Today, she is collecting historical materials and digging out the stories behind ancient place names. Puyang Old Street, South Gate, Good Stone Bridge, Daoren Bridge... Place names with unique Yunmeng characteristics have become vivid footnotes to local culture. "The Kodo People's Bridge has a history of more than 400 years." Chunjiang feels that place names pin people's emotions and memories, "going back to the past, we can better understand the present." ”
In the personality of Yun Mengren, it is a fusion of Chu's romance and Qin's heroism. "'Hefmu' symbolizes the desire to live in peace, wooden lacquerware and shadow puppets symbolize the mentality of happy life, and Qin Jian symbolizes strict laws." Zhang Hongkui said that this land carries the feelings of home and country in ancient and modern times.
Coming to Yunmeng, you can more intuitively feel the fusion of Chu Yun and Qin feng shui and milk, converging into an eclectic and unique culture. The passage of time is like an ancient wind through the forest, and when the season comes, it will open up the green.
A generation of archaeologists who have gone deep into history explore the deep cultural heritage of the town. It is heartening that many people are looking up from history and trying to find a new way to promote the development of cultural tourism with culture and culture, so that the millennium town can see more style.