If you come to the thousand-year-old city of Hai'an City, Jiangsu Province, then you must go to the Qingdun ruins in Nanmo Town to have a look, and not far from the Qingdun ruins, we saw a grand temple, which is the ancient temple of Hai'an City.
Although this temple is called an ancient temple, the first impression I had was very new, but when I looked at its history, I suddenly realized that it was indeed an ancient temple.
Back in the early years of the Tang Dynasty, in order to avoid the flood, the people of Qingdun at that time gathered to pile up soil into posts and dig up land into rivers, forming the East Tang River, the West Tang River, the South Tang River and the North Tang River. Later, in order to seek the protection of the gods, people built the Guandi Temple on the southeast highland of Zhuangzi, enshrined the statue of Guan Yu, also known as the Wumiao. During the reign of Emperor Lizong of the Southern Song Dynasty (1241-1250), the temple was expanded into a quadrangle, and Yue Fei was added to the main hall, thus renamed Huguo Temple.
We all know that at the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, Jianghuai was an area repeatedly contested by Song Jin and Song Yuan, and because Song Lizong was incompetent, the people were greatly disappointed, so it was natural to remember Guan Yu, Yue Fei and other loyal and righteous generals, which can be regarded as a kind of vent and spiritual sustenance.
Later, Huguo Temple went through more than a thousand years of ups and downs, and by the thirties of the twentieth century, it had developed into a local temple with more than 150 acres of temple production and more than 100 large and small temples. However, it is a pity that when the Anti-Japanese War broke out, this temple was not able to escape the devastation of war.
On January 1, 1943, the Japanese army rushed from Yancheng to Qingdun, they saw anti-Japanese slogans on the ground, and found that the temple was covered with reeds, and suspected that there was Chinese hidden in the Huguo Temple, so they lit fires everywhere, and thus turned a thousand-year-old temple into ashes.
When I walked into this temple today, the Tennoden Hall was being restored. Coming to the gate of the temple, there are two horses that are very eye-catching, on the left is Yue Fei's white dragon horse, and on the right is the Guan Di Baoju Red Rabbit Horse. It can be seen that the horses are holding their heads high, their tails up, and their hooves jumping, galloping, and in the clouds and mist, they seem to be about to soar away.
Walking into the Heavenly King Hall, the Buddha statues in sight have not yet been golden, but they have a sense of simplicity and elegance. I chatted with the staff, and they said that the hall was donated by a local tycoon, and it is said that 5 million yuan was donated. Whenever I hear that the rich gentry donated money to build a temple, I always feel like I have gone back in time and felt like I had returned to ancient times. I didn't expect that in the 21st century, people who made money and made a fortune would still follow the example of the ancients and scatter money in temples, perhaps this is also a kind of spiritual sustenance. We all know that many entrepreneurs have original sin, and maybe spending money to build a monastery can make them calm their hearts.
The whole temple gives me the impression of being resplendent and splendorous, and although it is small, it is very exquisite. The Buddha in the Daxiong Hall is dignified and kind, and the mottled copper smell carries the memories of the years. There are not many people here, so it is a wonderful feeling to walk quietly here and pour out your heart to the Buddha.
We see that in the current China, all over the country are building a lot of construction, crazy construction of various monasteries, maybe many people are confused, what they seek is a kind of inner relief, this feeling always reminds me of Du Mu's sentence "four hundred and eighty temples in the southern dynasty, how many buildings are in the smoke and rain", I don't know how many of these monasteries can be preserved in another thousand years?