Source: Xiangxi Prefecture Ethnic and Religious Affairs Bureau portal
Taste the corner building
When you come to Wuling Mountain, you can walk around at will, and you can see the eye-catching Tujia dwellings everywhere - corner towers.
In the green mountains and clear waters, in the dense jungle, the chic wooden buildings that have been exposed to the wind and sun are either leaning against the mountains and peaks, or by the river and the bridge, clinging to each other, crowded next to each other, and the height is staggered. The curved sill of the floor is half-hidden and half-reflected, and the gray roof is like a wide withered leaf, overlapping and paved. The house is in the mountains, the dog barks in the clouds, the poetry is particularly mellow and thick, and the painting is particularly fresh and beautiful. The stone slabs polished by the feet of the years are plain and smooth, and the vines walk leisurely through the streets and alleys, enter the doors, and connect the graceful corner buildings into a walled courtyard and a village.
Tujia corner building that is integrated with nature. (Courtesy of Longshan County Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Center)
Everything in the world is conceived by the blood of the father, the essence of the mother, and the harmony of yin and yang. Tracing the birth of the corner tower, its mother should be the environment of the Wuling Mountains. In the Wuling Mountains, there are no three feet flat on the ground, there are no three sunny days in the sky, the ditches and ditches are bumpy, the peaks and peaks are stacked, and the streams and rivers are vertical and horizontal; his father should be the Tujia people, who will use their thoughts and wisdom as seeds, plant them in the mountains, bathe in the wind and rain, absorb the spirit of the sun and the moon, and gradually grow up and take shape. Thinking of the ancestors of the Tujia family, in order to avoid the war and slaughter, the road is blue, dragging children and daughters, sowing and moving here, in order to survive, they have to take the precious flat dam as the basis for survival, make it at sunrise, rest at sunset, and choose those slopes and ridges, level it a little, and build a "nest".
According to the "Old Tang Book", Wuling "has a lot of miasma, the mountains are poisonous weeds and sand snakes, people live side by side, and climb the ladder to go up, which is a dry column". It can be seen that the dry fence form of the corner building can also prevent moisture, insects and animals. The corner tower is generally half flat and half suspended, like a light monkey sitting at the foot of the mountain, and like a temporary swallow, holding wings. It is said that the orientation and orientation of the house were not paid much attention to at first, but later they became more particular, and the best places were "the left green dragon, the right white tiger, the front red bird, and the back Xuanwu" and the sun leeward.
Stilted house style. (Photo by Yang Shaodong)
The architectural style of the corner building follows the trend of the mountain and gives shape with the object. The most basic is the three "one-word houses", which are called "main houses" when they are enclosed into a well courtyard. The most used stereotype of the corner building is one positive and one horizontal (wing room), which is vividly called "key head". That horizontal is out of the characteristics - the upstairs hanging column, the downstairs falling column. Qian Mi is a lively person, in order to close the Zhouzheng, will make a two-wing room, surrounded by a "pinched mouth", and even add "Chaomen" in front of the "mouth" to form a "Sihe water". In order to create the effect of "painting buildings and clouds", it can also be developed into "two entrances and one hugging hall" and "four in five patios".
The form of the hanging foot according to the terrain has a half-load crane, a half-side crane, a two-handed cart two-wing crane, a hanging key head, a curved ruler crane, a water crane, a crane across the gorge, etc., all kinds of tricks. The most distinctive features of the corner tower are the eaves and niches. The gable rain is connected with the eaves, becoming the eaves, which is used for rain protection and ventilation, and its mountain flower part is often open for ventilation, commonly known as "crow's mouth". The niche is the elegant name of the small pavilion of the Tujia family, it is the wing room on the hanging tower, and there is a walking bar outside. "It is difficult for a blacksmith to hit an iron hydrangea, and it is difficult for a carpenter to get up a corner building", to say that the most difficult thing is the corner tower. The eaves must be extended from all sides of the house, connected by railings, and the floor slabs should be paved on the railings.
The bar is supported on the melon column, and the melon column is supported by the melon pick, and the lower end does not fall to the ground, and is often carved into a melon column, or a weeping lotus column, and is suspended in the air. The corner building is a competition of ingenuity and ingenuity, a good corner building is not only light and beautiful, but also strong and smooth, the lines are natural and round, and the carving is rich in charm. The Tujia people regard the dwelling as the tip of their hearts, take care of it, cherish it, and do their best to dress it up beautifully.
In order to resist weathering and insect damage, the slab pilasters are coated with tung oil. In order to avoid being burned down the camp, a fire wall will be built, and one unit will be separated. In order to decorate the roof, the eaves are bent into a semi-arc to form a horn style, which looks delicate and elegant. Under the corridor hole, the dragon is carved and the phoenix is painted. In order to decorate the doors and windows of the railing, in addition to carving auspicious patterns such as "Hui", "Xi" and "Ya", it also takes the earth red pigment as the base, and mixes the mountain paint with varnish, and the brush is bright. In addition, the roof ridge of the attic is made of tiles as the Taiji diagram, and the head and end of the wall of the fire wall are decorated with the phoenix divine bird, at first glance, only the phoenix leads the neck to the sky, seems to be singing, seems to want to go up.
The main house is equipped with corner buildings at both ends of the building. (Photo by Lu Ruisheng)
The corner building is very particular and very orderly. First of all, you have to "cut down the green mountain", choose the Tsubaki wood and purple wood, take the homonym of "spring" and "child", which means "spring is always there, and the child is extended". After the wood is dried, invite the famous carpenter and painter to start the "big size": draw the gossip, Taiji diagram, lotus and lotus seed patterns on the main beam, the coloring is extremely bright and bright, the flowers are green, and the eyes are bright; the pillar is planed to smooth and smooth, chisel on the tenon square groove of the appropriate size, and connect with each other according to the five pillars and six hangings or five pillars and eight hangings, and arrange them into a wooden fan. Its structure is very strict, without nails, the whole system of mortise and tenon is fitted, and it is tightly sealed.
After everything is ready, choose an auspicious day of the zodiac, invite all the neighbors to help, and erect the rows of wooden fans. The bluestone stone stone is cushioned under the column head of the wooden fan, the carving is very fine, there are square, round, octagonal, there are carved with the shape of a lion elephant and other beasts, and there are carved with various patterns and other objects. When going to the roof beam of the hall, it is necessary to sacrifice, set off firecrackers, and ask two singers or palm ink masters to praise the beam. Those who praise the beam climb the ladder, one person carries the wine jug, one person holds the tea tray, one step at a time, "the portable wine jug shines golden, the wine in the pot sprays incense, and the beam is joyful, and the main beam must be praised with the main east... Where was the main beam and where was the main beam born, where was it grown? Born on Qinglong Mountain, grew up on the Phoenix Gang..."Then throw the beam baba and hang colorful cloth on the main beam. On this day, relatives and friends will come to give gifts to congratulate, those who have money will send some money, those who have rice will bring a few liters of rice, and the gifts are not limited to how much.
Beam. (Photo by Liu Changru)
The middle of the main house of the corner building is the hall house, set up a shrine, worship the ancestors, celebrate the New Year and celebrate the festival, and sacrifice with three animals. The left and right are the bedrooms, the left is the respect, the right is the humble, the left is the parents, and the right is the children. Some also set up a fire shop in the left room of the hall, and the ground was covered with wooden planks one step higher than the hall house, and a fire pit was set up in the center of the house. Before the "change of land and return to the stream", both men and women slept here, and both men and women often rested here, and there was no suspicion - according to research, this is the inheritance of the ancient Xiju system.
The fire shop is the center of Tujia life and interest, festivals, nights, winter leisure seasons, family members or relatives, men sit around the fire, drink tea, smoke, or stew a pot of preserved meat or flying rabbit and other game on the tripod of the fire pit, take out the self-brewed bud grain roast or rice wine, gossip about the wine, drunk and talk about social life. The most elegant place is the niche, which is the residence of Tujia sisters. Ah Mei is indoors, picking flowers and embroidering, or reading and writing. Here carved windows embroidered pavilion, strong style. The light in front of Ah Mei's window is a temptation to hook people's souls, and the young man who has just opened his love will lie downstairs, looking directly at Ah Mei's shadow reflected in the window, learning to chirp birds and insects, leading Ah Mei to have a tryst; or on the hill facing Ah Mei's attic, sing a love song in the moonlight, "Sing here and listen there, if you have a loving sister, you will agree, Lang will find your sister to go to the mountains, and the brother and sister will be reunited..." The outside railing is a good place to dry clothes and quilts.
Whose Sealand Cap is beautiful, whose women and daughters are dexterous in picking flowers and embroidering and weaving, here is a wonderful place to show. Under the niche is an open house with only pillars, and it is often placed with dry mills, grinding discs, and yards, or tying oxen, feeding pigs, or piling up sundries, such as plows, rakes, shovels, or stacks of firewood. The kitchen is generally located at the back of the fire shop, and the indoor is equipped with stoves, cupboards, and boards, and all kinds of pickle jars and jars.
At harvest time, the beams of the corner building will ride on golden bud grain cobs, hang fiery red pepper skewers, and some will also wear sweet potatoes and radishes with bamboo slices to hang and dry. When the farm is slack, the wall will be hung with clothes, hats, fishing gear, long guns and other utensils. The winter snow covers the mountain, and it is the time of hunting, and there will be muntjac, rabbits, wild boars, pheasants and other things hanging on the wall.
The sun and the moon are sinking, the flowers are blooming and falling, the smoke is curling, and the corner building interprets the weddings, funerals, diets and daily life of the Tujia people... Ten thousand kinds of tastes are circulating here. The corner building, like a rural pastoral song, is like a waterwheel that keeps turning on the bank of the river ditch, singing day and night the history of Tujia and the rain, the swaying and colorful life and the endless story, vicissitudes, long-term and eternal.
(1) The source of architecture
The northwest of Hunan is the Tujia settlement, which belongs to the karst terrain and has many natural karst caves. The original residence of the Tujia ancestors was these caves, which were called "cave dwellings".
After entering the primitive society, the ancestors began to walk out of the caves and set up simple "shacks" and "thatched huts" with wooden forks in the hilly areas. With the passage of time and the development of society, the indigenous ancestors slowly learned to build houses on the slopes, replace natural trees with large trees off the ground, and use the downstairs space to raise livestock and poultry, and the "nest dwelling" gradually became a "pole and railing" type building. At this time, the timber frame has appeared in the beam lifting type and the bucket type. The roof appears in the form of hanging mountain, rest mountain, hard mountain, palace and point. A large number of bricks, tiles, and wooden materials have been unearthed from the county administration sites of Qianzhong County in the Qin Dynasty and Wuling County in the Han Dynasty, and the streets and alleys are crisscrossed by ruins, reflecting that the architectural skills have reached a high level at that time.
During the Tang and Song dynasties, the application technology of building materials such as bricks, tiles, lime, and paint has been quite proficient, and various forms of buildings, palaces, pavilions and city buildings have appeared, and pole and fence buildings have become more and more mature. Located in the old Sicheng of Yongshun County, the ancestral hall was built in the second year of Jin Tianfu (937) after five generations, and it is the top of the double eaves rest. All are wooden structures, the main hall is surrounded by four pillars in large numbers, the wooden fang on the shelf, there is no trace of axe chisel at the place where the pillar mortise and tenon wooden fang undertakes, the palace bucket arch is majestic and simple, and the beam frame structure has national characteristics. The earliest Taoist building of Puguang Temple, Gaozhen Temple, was built in the late Southern Song Dynasty, and there are climbing, hump, Danliang under the ridge of its building, and the sandwich plate between the column base and the wooden pillar, which is unique in other halls. The old city of Yongshun County was built in the fifth year of Shaoxing in the Southern Song Dynasty (1135), which was built by Peng Fu Shichong, the chief of Yongshun, and then the location of the Yongshun Tusi Office, with a total of 4 city gates, 8 streets and 9 alleys. During the Tang and Song dynasties, pole and fence architecture continued to develop. Yuan Zhen of the Tang Dynasty described: "Ba people mostly live on the hillside, and call themselves pavilions (corner buildings)". It can be seen that in the Tang and Song dynasties, the pole and fence building gradually evolved into the Tujia corner building.
During the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, the imperial court set up the Yongshun Xuanwei Division, the Baojing Xuanwei Division, the Wuzhai Chief's Lawsuit, the Xiaoziping Chief's Lawsuit and other Tusi institutions in the Tujia area. The architectural style of the Tusi Office is the most distinctive, representing the highest level of the period. Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty "Yongshun Mansion Chronicles" contains: "The pillars of the Tuguan Office are carved beams, and the bricks and tiles are scaled. The common people forked wooden houses and braided bamboo as walls. The leader of the house and the leader Xu erected beams and columns, and the walls were surrounded by boards. ”
World Cultural Heritage Site of the Old Sicheng Yongshun Propaganda Embassy. (Photo by Tian Renli)
It is located on both sides of the Lingxi River in Yongshun County, the palace area of the old Sicheng branch office and the Tumin street area. The Tusi Office is the "Jinluan Palace", and the buildings in the government office area are composed of the State Guest House, the Shengwu Building, the Shengzhong Building, the Yongzhen Building, the Chipian Hall, the Shoulu Hall, the Fengxian Hall, etc., and the city wall is made of stone and lime mixture.
Built in the fourth year of Yongzheng in the Qing Dynasty (1726), the Yongshun Zhizhou Tuzhi Prefecture Government Office and the construction monument. (Photo by Tian Renli)
After "changing the land and returning to the stream", with the deepening of the Han culture, the disintegration of the lord economy, the establishment of the landlord economy, the scale and technology of the building have a new development, and the building types and styles are becoming more and more diverse, such as castles, towns, academies, school palaces, theaters, temples, government offices, stone arch bridges, towers, hexagonal pavilions, etc.
(2) Types of existing buildings
Residential buildings
Residence. The Tujia people's residence is composed of four parts: the main house, the partial house, the corner building, and the front door, and the general family only has the main house. Well-off families have main houses, partial houses and corner buildings. The wealthy people repaired the Chaomen and the cupola tower, and the wealthy families repaired the courtyard, built the courtyard wall, and sealed the bricks on all sides. Tujia dwellings are mainly wood-framed houses, and there are houses with composite structures of buckets and beams. The more typical is the Yongshun Liexi Peng's wooden house, which is a combination of buckets and carvings, which is unique. Wooden houses are generally four rows of three rooms, and there are also six rows of five rooms. "Row" is a row of shelves combined with "piercing fang", and then use "open fang" to link the rows and erect them on the cornerstone to form a "between". The main house has a variety of combinations such as three pillars and four chess, five pillars and eight chess, seven pillars and twelve chess. Most of the chess players are "full of chess".
The more rows, the more rooms, and the more chess, the greater the depth of the house. Yongshun Zhangmu has a compound with twelve rows of eleven rooms and three courtyards. Most of the Tujia dwellings are bungalows, the column diameter is proud of the roughness, the column height ratio is larger, and it has the beauty of roughness. The size between the columns likes "eight", in order to be auspicious, such as one zhang two feet eight, one zhang four feet eight, etc. The eaves of the house are wide to prevent rainwater from eroding the siding. The eaves have heads-up, double-heads, pick-and-hang chess, and other forms of expression. The roof is covered with green tiles, and there are also covered with stone slabs, thatch, and cedar bark. In order to ensure the stability of the structure, the carpenter often uses the technique of "stepping the column foot" to make the "foot" of the surrounding column achieve the purpose of "reaching all directions"; in order to make the house shape change, the technique of "lifting the eaves and flushing the ridge" is often used to obtain the reasonable arc of the roof ridge and tile slope, which not only makes the building line full of beauty, but also makes the cornice not appear to "steal water" phenomenon.
In terms of housing use, take four rows of three "one-word houses (i.e., built into a row)" as an example, one in the middle is a hall house, and a "shrine" is installed on the wall directly above to provide a shrine for the ancestors, which is a place for the Tujia people to worship their ancestors and entertain guests. The two rooms on the left and right of the hall are called "human beings" and are used for people. Generally, the eldest son lives in the east and the second son lives in the west. The human world is bounded by the middle pillar and is divided into two small rooms in front and back, the front one is set up with a fire pit, and the fire pit is spread with bamboo and wooden strips above the fire pit, and hangs the kang for roasting bacon, corn, etc.; the back one is the bedroom, the window is small and rarely open, and there is a strong secret. The room is covered with wooden floors, and the floor pillows are high to facilitate ventilation and moisture-proofing. There is a corridor room behind the hall house, which is used as a room for putting things or the elderly. The partial house is called the grinding angle, which is connected to the left and right sides of the main house, and is used as a stove room or mill. At the intersection of the two ridges of the main house and the side house, an "umbrella handle pillar (that is, the pillar is like an umbrella)" was erected, which became the original creation of the Tujia craftsmen.
With the increase of population, the Tujia people used methods such as matching wing rooms, receiving tow houses, and adding partial rooms to increase the number of rooms. The most distinctive house is the Tujia corner building. At one or both ends of the left and right of the main house, one or more groups of racks are extended vertically to the main house, and the length of each row of columns is selected according to the height of the terrain to form a pole and railing building, that is, "corner building". The corner building is mostly three rows of two rooms, two floors above and below, and there are also three or four floors, and the roof ridge must be lower than the ridge of the main roof. The most repaired corner building is a main house and a wing house, and the wealthy family repairs a main house and two wings (that is, a two-compartment corner building). The most distinctive features of the corner tower are the eaves and niches. The gable is connected to the overhanging eaves and becomes the eaves, which are used to keep out the rain and ventilate.
The niche is the elegant name of the Tujia Pavilion, which is the wing of the corner building, and there is a hanging corridor outside. There must be a ladder to go up: some go up, some go up, some go up, some go up from the outside... Climb the stairs to the building, and place small lattice window lattices on both sides of the low pair doors. Most of the pavilions are boudoirs. The corridor is formed by the hanging columns picked out outwards by the floor-to-ceiling columns, and there are single-sided, double-sided, three-sided and even four-sided corridors, which are called "corner buildings". At the upper end of both sides of the corner building, the eaves are upturned, majestic and magnificent. The hanging pillars of the corner building are often decorated with wood carved gourds, and the corridors are decorated with wooden lattices. The "eyebrow fang" connecting the hanging posts is not only conducive to lighting, but also adds to the aesthetic appeal. Don't look at the "feet" of the corner building, the pillars are unevenly twisted and uneven, and the eyebrows are convex and straight, but they can be described as straight and straight, and the rhyme is to the gods. The characteristics of Tujia dwellings can be summarized as: "eight-character green tile house facing the door, flying eaves and corner corner building".
Courtyard patio. (Photo by Lu Ruisheng)
Cottage. The Tujia people are good at gathering and living together, so they often choose a higher place as the site of the village, and the same clan and surname form a village, generally with the surname as the name of the village, such as Xiangjiazhai, Qinjiazhai, Tianjiazhai, Pengjiazhai, etc. There are also those that use the Tujia language as the name of the village, such as Maizhai (the place where the sun shines), Yebizhai (where the birds settle), Kuzhu Zhai (the village on the hillside) and so on. Nowadays, it is most common to use Chinese as the name of the village. The cottage is equipped with a walled gate, and a waving hand hall is built in the center.
Town. Most of them are the seal houses with the outer wall of the fire, and the patio pavilion is combined, and there are three into two pavilions and even five into four pavilions. The undulating fire-sealing walls, towering pavilions, and exquisite decoration show its prominent position. Most of the houses along the street are combined with the shop front, and the counters are exposed and decorated with carved railings. Along the river, it is mostly in the form of cantilevered stilted buildings. Such as Yongshun Wangcun Ancient Town, Longshan Car Wash River Town, etc.
Yongshun Orchid Cave Village Tujia corner building group. (Photo by Lu Ruisheng)
Ancestral building
Swing your hand. The building is divided into two parts: the Tuwang Temple and the Swinging Field. In the archway-shaped gate, a deep and long rectangular hand-waving field is enclosed by a short wall, and the top of the hand-waving field is the "Tuwang Temple". All the Tujia people worship ancestors, pray for the New Year, make a decision, make a vow, welcome the spring, sing and dance, and compete in many places. The Tuwang Temple is a stone tile building, with a shrine inside, dedicated to the eight kings or Duke Peng, Xiang Lao Guanren, Tian Haohan idols, and some worship the local Tuwang. These ancient buildings preserve folk crafts such as wood carving, stone carving, color painting, and rock painting handed down by the ancestors of the Tujia family. Horseshoe Village in Longshan County, Lihu in Baojing County, Shuangfeng in Yongshun County and other places have waving hands.
Longshan Miaoertan fishing car Tujia waving hand. (Photo by Tian Renli)
Patriarch's Palace. The Tusi Palace building is located on the mountainside one kilometer southeast of Laosi City, Yongshun County. Built in the second year of Jin Tianfu (937) after five dynasties, rebuilt in the Ming Dynasty, it is the top of the double eaves rest, the hall is 17.5 meters long, 13 meters wide, more than 20 meters high, it is close to the mountains and rivers, and the environment is quiet. The main hall pillar is surrounded by a large number, the wooden fang is on the shelf, there is no trace of axe chisel at the jointing tenon, the palace bucket arch is strong and simple, and the beam frame structure has national characteristics. There is a big Buddha statue platform in front of the gold pillar in the center of the hall,
There is a wooden niche dedicated to the statue of the patriarch. There is also a lion bell mouth, 1.5 meters high, 1 meter in diameter, it is cast in the tenth year of Jiajing in the Ming Dynasty (1531). According to the Qing Dynasty's "Yongshun Mansion Chronicles", the ancestral hall was built by Peng Yinan, the Yongshun Xuanzhi envoy during the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty.
It was built in the five dynasties and rebuilt in the Yongshun Tusi Patriarch Hall of the Ming Dynasty. (Photo by Lu Ruisheng)
Religious buildings
Taoism is a native religion of China, which began to spread to the Tujia region in the late Han Dynasty, and Buddhism was introduced to the mainland from the late Western Han Dynasty, and gradually spread in the Tujia area during the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties. With the spread of Taoist Buddha, many palaces and temples have been built in various places in the past dynasties, among which the famous one is the Yongshun Laosicheng Patriarch Hall of the Later Jin Dynasty.
Judging from the existing Taoist and Buddhist buildings, its architectural style and structure are basically the same as those in the Han region, but often a religious building often integrates Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism. Some religious buildings have added some Tujia architectural symbols. For example, Guanyin Rock Temple, there is the style of Tujia corner tower building.
Road and bridge construction
Arch bridge. There are single arches, multi-arches, single arches of two end masonry forts, one arch across the riverbed, multi-arch in the middle of the masonry pier, arch arch is connected. The bridge deck is often equipped with wooden pavilions, cornices and corners, and carved hollows. Wooden benches are set up in the pavilion for pedestrians to shelter from the wind and rain and rest. The famous Che Wash River Flower Bridge, located in Che Che River Town, Longshan County, was built in the 45th year of Qianlong in the Qing Dynasty (1780) by the gentleman Xiao Jialin. Three holes, for the stone pier wooden surface pavilion bridge. The top of the bridge is painted with Tai Chi figures, the curtains on both sides are carved with various patterns, and the corridors are built with wooden railings and flat benches.
Rock Bridge. In order to facilitate pedestrians, for some rivers with wider riverbeds and deeper river bases, there is no money to repair bridges for a while, so they take stones nearby, build them at a certain distance, connect them step by step, and go straight to the opposite bank. In this way, pedestrians can cross the river as long as the river does not submerge the stone piers when the water does not rise to a large level. As for small rivers and streams, rock bridges can be seen everywhere.
Longshan Miaoer Beach Jabala Wind and Rain Bridge. (Photo by Liu Jingang)
Guidestones. In the Tujia area of Xiangxi, the guiding monuments that can be seen everywhere are also called "token tablets". It is a kind of stele stone with a long upper circle and lower circle, which resembles the token used by the county lord in the lobby, hence the name. There are thousands of steles in the world, none of which are enjoyed by the living, except for the token stele, which is specially set up for the living. There is a custom in the Tujia family in Xiangxi, if a child is sick and sick, and the parenting is not smooth, and the parents are suspected of being entangled with ghosts and gods, the best way is to set up a stele at the crossroads, and mark the east, west, north and south can go somewhere, and the two lines of big characters in the middle: "long life and wealth, easy to grow into a person." This monument is designed to point out the path for pedestrians from other places, and it is a kind of good deeds and accumulation of virtue. It is said that whoever does this will be raised by the child.
Mausoleum building
Tusi Tomb. It is located in the old city of Yongshun County, 16 kilometers east of the city. According to the "Yongshun County Chronicle": "Yongshun Tusi Peng Shiqi, Peng Mingfu, Peng Zongshun, Peng Yinan, Peng Yongnian, Peng Yuanjin, Peng Tingji, Peng Tingchun, Peng Honghai and other couples have 30 tombs in Sicheng. According to the statistics of the cultural relics department, there are more than 200 tombs here, most of which belong to the tombs of the Tusi and their royal families in the Ming and Qing dynasties, all of which are rammed brick chamber tombs, which are basically well preserved. From the tomb of Peng Zongshun and his wife, its tomb is like a small palace building, the hall is divided into multiple rooms, the rooms are communicated, and the inner brick wall is carved with exquisite characters and flower patterns. Nanmu coffin, with the burial goods are mostly gold and silver utensils, which looks magnificent. Another example is the tomb of Peng Shiqi's mother, the tombstone is made of blue-gray fire bricks, the tablet is square, and the title book is "the epitaph of the late lady Peng Mu of the Ming Dynasty". The text is a lishu, with a full text of more than 2,000 words, commenting on the Peng family and its Tusi system in previous dynasties. The Tusi tombs of Laosicheng and their unearthed cultural relics have important historical value for the study of the political, economic and cultural conditions of ancient Xiangxi in the Tusi period. In 1985, the tomb group was listed as a provincial key cultural relics protection unit.
Yongshun Tusi Laosi City Purple Mountain Tomb Group. (Photo by Tian Renli)
Tombstone. In the mountains where the Tujia lived, stone tablets and tombs can be seen everywhere. It was built by the descendants of the deceased to commemorate the kindness of their ancestors and show their filial piety. Tujia tombstone has a unique style, rarely set up a single stele, mostly a single box stele, the wealthy family, then repair the three compartment stele, the five compartment stele, the seven compartment stele, the nine compartment stele. The single-compartment stele is relatively simple, also known as the "Confucian stele", with a stele and stele cap, stele corner, stele pillar, stele ear, stele tomb and other eight to more than ten pieces of stone together. More than three tombstones, more complicated, in addition to a large piece of the main monument, there are two to several sub-monuments. The main stele engraves the name of the tomb owner and the name of filial piety men and women, and the sub-stele engraves the epitaph and the sacrificial text or poems; the main and secondary steles have the stele beam, the stele cap, the stele corner, all carve the dragon and the phoenix; there are stele pillars on the left and right of each stele, and the front of the stele pillar is engraved with couplets; the inner side of the column is engraved with the story of the characters or flowers, birds, insects, fish, dragons, phoenixes, lions and tigers. The large tombstone is called the archway stele, there are three, five, seven tablets face, engraved couplets several pieces, the inscription hundreds of words to thousands of words.
In the seventh year of Tongzhi in the Qing Dynasty (1868), Longshan pine forest Tianmu Peng Peng was buried in the tomb, and the archway stele was seven steles. (Photo by Tian Renli)
Cliff coffin tomb. On the cliff of the river, the relatively wide and flat cliff face is used to artificially dig out the longitudinal cave with a regular rectangular niche or a square opening, and there are also a few natural caves that have been slightly processed and placed in the coffin. The outside of the coffin of the horizontal niche is exposed, and the square cave is not sealed. Generally, three or five points are a group, and dozens of points are a group. Horizontal holes are the majority.
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