Original title: "Garden Cherry Gully in the Park"
Cherry Gully, the most unique garden within a botanical garden, is named after the plant cherry tree, so it is well deserved to be included in the botanical garden. I went here in the spring of the eighties, when it was a separate landscape. From the mouth of the ditch, you can only step on stones to enter, and at the end there is a retreat pavilion, with the inscription "Walk to the water's edge, sit and watch the clouds rise". Now there are trails connected here, follow the trail and see the scenery all the way, leisurely.
The name Cherry Gully is a later name, and there was no name here, just a mountain ravine. If it is not inhabited, it may always be a ravine, and no matter what trees grow in the ravine, it cannot become a landscape. If no one lives in, there is no view. Such a scenic area, from the Chinese tradition, one is that many people live here, so people will give a name according to the relationship between the place and the people, which is convenient for people to remember. Another case is that there is a famous person who built a room and lived here, and then the name of the person's room, alias, etc. became the name of the place.
The name here can now be seen directly from the historical documents of the capital. There is a "retreat" article in the "Tianfu Guangji", which specifically records the founding traces of "Cherry Gou". The book first describes the geographical location of "Cherry Gou", the mountain range west of Beijing, the "eighth mountain" of the Taihang Mountain Range, the mountain winds from the southwest, and enters the boundary of Beijing to form the Xiangshan Mountains. Mountain to mountain, stretching northeast, to a source of water, this source is the deepest, the retreat valley (cherry gully) is here, behind it is surrounded by high ridges as its barrier, and in front of it there are reclining pho temples and other surrounding shelter. "Oka Fu round, Zhushu Shenwei." When Sun Chengze was 61 years old, he built the "Retired Weng Pavilion" and its private residence here. Since then, this ravine has gained popularity, humanities, and poetry. The Qing people have a poem describing it here: "The reclining Buddha corridor goes west, and the deep rock path is flat." The land was deserted, and the pavilion had to retire. The wilderness comes out by the bar, and the ghost spring grows around the valley. Kakibayashi cultivates bamboo and makes autumn sounds everywhere. ”
Sun Chengze also wrote an article on the valley as a commemoration. "The valley mouth is very narrow, the trees are shaded, and there are retreats from the valley. The small pavilion in the valley is winged, the retreat pavilion, the water in front of the pavilion can flow... Wan Mu Sensen, the small room counts, and its west sanyang is a retreat bookhouse, a furnace and a gall, dozens of books, Xiao Ran walking foot. "Poetry jumps into sight. Retreat, in ancient times, means retreat, and the doctors are unwilling and often choose to live a life of retreat.
For example, the well-known Tao Yuanming. However, not all doctors are like Tao Yuanming. Retreat actually reflects another characteristic of traditional Chinese culture, taking retreat as progress and hiding as conspicuity. When the scholar is not willing to go far and without a trace, he chooses a mountain forest closest to Jingshi to live in seclusion, and retreat is not a person alone in the seclusion place "under the eastern fence of picking chrysanthemums, leisurely seeing the South Mountain". Instead, other doctors must always be invited to a party, or to talk about poetry, or papers, or to bring wine, or to taste tea. Gradually, fame spreads to the imperial court, and perhaps it will be reused. Sun Chengze often invited other officials and scholars to gather here in the valley, which inadvertently created the cultural landscape and cultural legends here.
Sun Chengze (1592-1676), character Er Bei, Yi Zuo Erbo, also known as Beihai, also known as Retired Valley, No. 1 Retired Valley Yi Er, Retired Valley Old Man, Retired Weng and Retreater; A native of Beijing, born in the Ming Dynasty, Jin Shi at the end of the Ming Dynasty, surrendered to the Qing Dynasty after the Qing army entered Beijing, became an official, and then retired because he could not be reused, engaged in writing, and liked to collect calligraphy and painting. From the perspective of writing books, Sun Chengze can be described as a work, especially his classics, although he has not received due attention and research from later generations, but the two works on the history of Beijing written by him have always been valued and cited by people, and some people even think that to understand the history and history of Beijing in the late Ming Dynasty, Sun Shu is a must-read. Died eighty-five. Sun can be regarded as the old Beijing, and everyone who deals with Beijing's past knows him, and they all love to read his books, and they love to take some legends from his books.
If Sun Chengze is really just a literati in old Beijing, how I hope that he is just a literati, a literati in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties who made a living by selling literature, so that no matter which dynasty or generation in the future, no one will talk about him while using the words he left behind, and at the same time criticize him as a person. Unfortunately, he was an official in the Chongzhen Dynasty at the end of the Ming Dynasty, Li Zicheng came, the emperor hanged himself, and died on the crooked neck tree on Jingshan Mountain, while Sun became Li's top manager, probably even Li Zicheng himself did not expect to spend many days in Beijing. The Sun family really didn't have any benefits.
Later, when the Qing Dynasty people came, Sun himself felt that it was not a taste, and Sun also had a heart, knowing that being a courtier was the most uncomfortable, and simply died. So he got a rope in the study and learned to hang himself in Chongzhen, thinking that this time he was dead and clean, and followed the emperor. Unexpectedly, when the family saw that the old man hanged himself, they quickly came over and divided by two and saved him. Sun Shi slapped his thigh, his heart said no, he had to die, taking advantage of the family's unpreparedness, Sun Shi came to the palace again, stunned to pull his eldest son, tilted his body and went down the well, the family did not go far, and he still wondered in his heart, what happened to this old man today, and the well was dry again, and there was a hectic, and the Sun family was rescued again. He looked up to the sky and sighed, that's it! It seems that it is no longer possible to be an unworthy courtier. So he worked for the Qing Dynasty.
Sun Chengze wrote two well-known books on the history of the Ming and Qing dynasties in Beijing, one called "Jinghua Mengyu Lu", and the other is the aforementioned "Tianfu Guangji". In the earliest days, it is said that Sun Chengze inscribed two characters here called "retreat valley", which is regarded as naming. Later, these two words somehow disappeared, which is a pity. There are many scenery in Cherry Ditch, "Zhou Family Garden", "Luyan Essence House", "Wuhua Temple Ruins", "Valley Pavilion", "Water Source", "12.9 Movement Memorial Pavilion", "Stone Pine", "Yuan Gem", etc., the legendary "Cao Xueqin Trail" is also here, adding a lot of magical colors to Cherry Ditch.
Legend has it that when Cao Xueqin wrote "Dream of Red Mansions", she often came here to walk, and the concept of "Stone Notes" and the characters in it were inspired by the chaotic stones and pines here, so she had the inspiration of "wood and stone marriage". There are "pines on the stone" here, pine trees grow on the stones, isn't this a godsend? This kind of wood and stone strange relationship, Sun saw it with his own eyes when he was alive, and recorded it in the "Spring Ming Dream Yulu", "A single ancient cypress plant in Duyankou, rooted in two stones, spiraling horizontally, hanging upside down outside, can be hundreds of circles." The color is as red as dansand, and the lady cannot slander the dragon and slander it, so that the truth should be so despised. It is also the wonder of the rock. ”
The most striking thing in Cherry Ditch are the four large bright red characters on a huge stone, "Defend North China". During the Anti-Japanese War, the "Pingxi Cherry Gou Anti-Japanese National Salvation Military Summer Camp" was opened here. If in terms of the richness of the park's historical connotation, Cherry Gully is among the leaders.
After getting the name of the valley, probably in the time of Kangxi, people named this place with "cherry" because there were mainly cherry trees here, and since then "Cherry Gou" has been famous all over the world. Now it is a unique garden within the botanical garden.
Text | Yuan Shang
[Source: Beijing Chronicle March issue]