The mystery of Xu Shilin's tomb

Xu Shilin (1684~1741) was a native of Qingdeng Prefecture (present-day Xujia Village, Zetou Town, Wenden, Shandong), and the governor of Jiangsu. After his death, he entered the Xianliang Ancestral Hall in Kyoto, and was praised by the Qianlong Emperor as a model of "loyalty and filial piety".

However, what is puzzling is that after his death, he did not choose Xujia Village in Zetou Town, his hometown, but Guojiadian Village in Wenden Song Village, which was twelve kilometers away.

The tomb is a royal burial, there is a tall stone stele; there are more stone carvings, 4 tall bluestone horses, equipped with saddles, and stone lions, stone wengzhong, stone dogs, etc., are exquisitely carved and lifelike. Nearly a hundred meters southwest of the tomb, there is a large gray date tree that several people are hugging thick. In 1954, when the country's first cultural relics census was conducted, the tomb was identified as a county-level key cultural relics protection unit. Tombs and trees were destroyed in the early days of the communalization movement in 1958, and cemetery stone tablets and stone carvings were destroyed in the early days of the Cultural Revolution in 1966.

Because Xu Shilin's tomb is neither in his own village but in other places, and the burial place is not his official place, and ancient books such as Fang Zhi do not have records related to his tomb, there are many speculations and legends around Xu Shilin's tomb.

Guo Yongxin, a 69-year-old villager in Guojiadian Village, said that the legend of Guojiadian Village is that Xu Shilin's grandmother is Guojiadian Village, and the family lives in the northwest of the village, which is called "Northwest Heaven" by the villagers. When Xu Shilin was young, he often lived in his grandmother's house and liked to play in front of the house and behind the house. One day, he saw a snake and a rabbit tearing and fighting, a shout, attracted many people to watch, people said that it was called "dragon and tiger fighting", thinking that the place where this strange scene occurred was a treasure land. That place turned out to be the pile grass of Xu Shilin's grandmother's house. After Xu Shilin's death, he was buried here in accordance with his grandmother's wishes.

However, this is only a legend, about this matter and other information related to this matter, such as who Xu Shilin's grandfather is, what his name is, etc., Guo Jiadian Village Chronicle and County Chronicle can not find any clues, and no one in the village can say clearly.

Another theory is that Xu Shilin died of illness during his tenure as inspector of Jiangsu, and before he died, he told his subordinates that he would be buried in the west of the village of Qiandianzi in the south of his hometown. However, after the coffin disembarked from the ship in Shidao Port, when the subordinates carried the coffin along the road to Guojiadianzi Village, they inquired about the name of the village, and people told them that the village was called Guojiadianzi, they only remembered The Dianzi Village, and mistakenly thought that this was the Dianzi Village that Xu Daren said, so they were buried in the west of the village.

There is also a saying that Xu Shilin had been a private school teacher before becoming an official, and had taught in Guojiadian Village. One day, Xu Shilin overheard the voice of a woman crying in the west neighbor, crying very miserably. He felt something was wrong, so he asked the student, "What is the reason why the daughter of the west neighbor is crying?" The student told him: "The woman's family is only with her husband, because her husband has not heard from her husband for many years in Kanto a few years ago, and the clan has discussed selling her, and she is sad and scared, and she cries with grief and anger." ”

The next day, Xu Shilin took out some silver and a letter, sent the students to the home of the woman next door, and instructed that when knocking on the door, you should shout loudly, and you must let the neighbors know that you are going to deliver the letter. The student came to the woman's door with a silver two and a letter, and when he knocked, he deliberately shouted loudly. At this time, someone in the neighbor went out and asked the student what he was doing. The student replied, "Her man has a letter from home." "It soon spread to the woman's people.

When the tribesmen heard that the woman's husband had heard from her, they did not dare to sell her hastily. Coincidentally, a few days later, the woman's husband who broke into Kanto actually returned. When the husband and wife met, the woman was surprised and strange, and asked: "You just brought the letter and the silver two, how did the person come back again?" After listening to his wife's detailed statement, the man still couldn't feel his head, and after some careful inquiry, he learned that Mr. Xu, who was teaching, had saved his wife's life. In order to express the grace of saving lives, the husband and wife sent money and gifts, which were rejected by Xu Shilin. Finally, Xu Shilin said, "Well, I've seen the small wasteland of your family in the west of the village, so let's make me a piece of land." The couple immediately agreed. Therefore, Xu Shilin was buried there after he died.

The latter two claims are not entirely reasonable and have obvious loopholes.

The former argument cannot be justified, Xu Shilin is the emperor's teacher and inspector, such a prominent figure handled such a big thing as the burial, did not his family participate? The attitude of the imperial court and its officials in Jiangsu was also so perfunctory, only a few people who did not even know the address were sent to handle it in a vacuum? Even if in ancient times there was a custom that the body of someone who died in a foreign country could not enter the house, the officials in his jiangsu governor would certainly handle it carefully, how could it be so hasty?

The latter statement also has irrationalities: First, Xu Shilin's good deeds seem to be just to return the favor, taking the opportunity to ask for a graveyard from others, which is much heavier than gifts. Refusing gifts and asking for a cemetery, and knowing the details of the family, knowing that the land belongs to the woman's family, there is a suspicion of deliberately setting a trap. You must know that choosing a cemetery in feudal society is a big deal. Second, feudal society especially pays attention to the burial of ancestral graves, and Xu Shilin, a man full of poetry books, actually disregards traditional habits and actually takes matters into his own hands that he will settle down a hundred years later so rashly? Lack of good reasons to bury yourself out.

In addition, there is also "the coffin can not be moved when it falls", saying that people carried Xu Shilin's coffin from Shidao to the village, and when passing through Guojiadian Village, the rope that bound the coffin happened to be broken, and people could only bury him there according to the rule that "the coffin cannot be moved when it falls". There is also a saying that Xu Shilin met a woman when he was serving in the south, and the clan believed that the door style was bad, "not allowed to bury the ancestral grave." These statements are probably all stories that people interpret according to the irregularity of the tomb in a different place, which is not enough to believe.

Regarding Xu Shilin's death, there is also a kind of "swallowing gold" theory. It was said that Xu Shilin received three golden medals from the Qianlong Emperor and urged him to enter the capital to take the order, he did not know what was going on, he was very afraid. I remembered that when I taught Qianlong to read when he was a child, he once hit Qianlong with a ring ruler because of a word. The more he thought about it, the more frightened he became, and he did not dare to meet the emperor, but he did not dare to disobey the emperor's orders. When the palanquin walked to the Guo family shop, he took off a gold hammer and swallowed it. Because he died of falling gold here, he was buried there.

According to the Records of Wenden County, during the Qianlong period, Xu Shilin resigned from the emperor's appointment three times in five years on the grounds that his father was filial and his mother was old and ill, and finally served as the inspector of Jiangsu at the repeated urging of his eighty-three-year-old mother, who had just recovered from illness. "Swallowing Gold" is a legendary story based on Xu Shilin's experience. In fact, Xu Shilin's illness died during the post of Inspector of Jiangsu. In that year, at the age of fifty-eight, he was seriously ill, and he wrote to the Qianlong Emperor to ask for leave to return to his hometown to recuperate and was approved, and died on the way home on a ship in Huai'an.

When the Guojiadian tomb was excavated that year, no coffins and Xu Shilin's bones were found inside. It is said that later, the wife of Guo Shimin of Guojiadian Village went there to get soil and dug out a golden bead of hat from the soil, and the tomb was obviously a crown tomb. So, why did Xu Shilin bury his crown tomb so far from home? Is it his own will, or is it someone else acting in his name for some purpose? However, various chronicles and notes, including the "Wenden County Chronicle", do not have any records on where Xu Shilin's cemetery is and where Xu Shilin's tomb is in Guojiadian, and it is not known what the cause is.

Still, we found a clue indirectly. According to the Republic of China's "Records of Wendeng County", Huang Shulin, who was an official in the same dynasty as Xu Shilin and then the governor of Shandong, said in his Shinto inscription written for Xu Shilin: "The gong was buried in JiudingShan last year, and yu Zhizhi's tomb was restored this autumn. The "Nine Peaks Mountain" in the sentence refers to the Jiudingbu in the north of Guojiadian Village, Jiuding Mountain, which is another of its names. There are indeed ancient tombs of unknown age on the north hill of the original Jiudingbu Village, among which there may be the tomb of Xu Shilin. Even so, it is still full of doubts: why is it that the tomb is on the mountain, but the crown tomb is set up on the edge of the village in front of the mountain? Is it to hide the eyes and ears? Why do all kinds of chronicles not see the relevant records of Xu's tomb?

In the "Ancient Tombs" of wenden City Chronicle, it is said: "There are 10 ancient tombs in the territory, such as the Shiyanghan Tomb Group, the Shenzi Tomb, the Cong Lan Tomb, the Guo Changqian Tomb, the Xu Shilin Tomb, the Yu Chen Tomb, and the Diao Tong Tomb, which were announced as provincial key cultural relics protection units in 1956. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, except for the Shiyanghan tomb group, the remaining 9 tombs of cultural celebrities were all destroyed. The tomb of Xu Shilin mentioned in it refers to the destroyed tomb of Xu Shilin in Guojiadian Village.

Xu Yuanhai, the former old secretary of Xujia Village and the 8th generation grandson of Xu Shilin, said that their Ancestors of the Xu family migrated here during the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty from the Baima Xu family in Wendeng County (now Baima Three Villages in Boyu Town, Weihai Jing District). The ancestor of the village, that is, their 13th grandfather is called Xu Shangdeng, and Xu Shilin is the 5th generation grandson of Xu Shangdeng.

Xu Shangdeng once taught a private school in Guojiadian Village. At that time, Xu Shangdeng bought a cemetery in Guojiadian Village, and the first and second generations of the Xu family were buried in Guojiadian, and only after three or four generations began to be buried in the Xu family. By Xu Shilin's generation, more than 10 people in the Xu family had been buried in the Guojiadian cemetery.

Xu Yuanhai said that before Xu Shilin's tomb was destroyed, they had to go to Guojiadian every New Year or Qingming to worship their ancestors. Xu Shilin's tomb was once stolen.

The reason for Xu Shilin's tomb was chosen more than twenty miles away from his village is still a mystery.