In winter, starlings fly over Xihaizi Park (Southern People Weekly reporter Jiang Xiaoming/photo)
Just after 10 a.m., a woman walked out of the Tongzhou Beiguan subway entrance, crossed the road, and went down to the plank road on the north bank of the Tonghui River. She flipped her phone out of her handbag, her face beaming with autumn joy. But what happened next was completely unexpected for her - neither she nor the caller could accurately describe where they were - they were separated by a river, but nowhere to be found.
On the other side of the river is the place where she made an appointment with the other party - Xihaizi Park.
In October 2007, a person practicing qigong under the cedar (Southern People Weekly reporter Jiang Xiaoming/picture)
Xihaizi Park was founded in 1936 and has since been abandoned and rebuilt. The last expansion was in 1985 and the most recent was in 2016. After the expansion, the park is divided into two by a newly planned road with many entrances. First-time visitors are inevitably disoriented.
In September 2006, the master and apprentice who practiced Tai Chi in the English corner (Southern People Weekly reporter Jiang Xiaoming/Picture)
The woman is carefully dressed up and down. Freshly permed chestnut hair with a purple silk scarf tied around his neck. She looked around. An old man carrying a birdcage walked past her, tilting his head to look at her. The woman's mood changed, the brilliance on her face gradually faded, and she raised her voice on the phone: "Which door are you talking about-"
I would have liked to tell her where she was or where the other person was. But for some reason, I didn't.
In October 2006, the man singing in the covered bridge (Southern People Weekly reporter Jiang Xiaoming/photo)
The Tonghui River is located in the north of the park and is a canal road dug and built in the Yuan Dynasty. The woman's current location used to be the old road of the Tonghui River, and there were villages on both sides. After the renovation, the old road was transformed into a landscape plank road, and the village was transformed into an expensive apartment building and office building.
In February 2022, the Yunqu Bridge in the snow (Southern People Weekly reporter Jiang Xiaoming/photo)
The boardwalk is paved with ochre-colored anticorrosive floors. The woman paced back and forth, her suede boots clattering, the back of her hand dipped in beads of sweat on her forehead, and her eyebrows wrinkled together. A runner wearing headphones passed her several times, and she gave him a blank look. The plank floor is elastic and popular with runners. One day, I saw the lead singer of the reshaping band, Hua Dong Chen, who was renting a nearby community for a while.
In September 2006, the girl holding the rabbit (Southern People Weekly reporter Jiang Xiaoming/picture)
In June 2006, I moved back to Tongzhou, Beijing, from Shanghai. In my spare time, I often go to Xihaizi Park to wander around and take pictures. I always enter the park from the east gate next to the Tongzhou Cinema, and walk a few steps onto the covered bridge in the middle of the lake. The design of the covered bridge is simple and simple, and the rafters are painted with Soviet-style paintings. The pillars are always full of people playing chess, cards, chatting and watching plays. Pedal boats come and go under the arched bridge, stirring up the sound of rushing water. On the island in the middle of the lake, there are nesting houses built for waterfowl.
The east gate of Xihaizi Park before the expansion (Southern People Weekly reporter Jiang Xiaoming/photo)
On the west side of the park is a children's paradise, where children cry, scream and laugh on weekends; on the east side of the grove there is a secluded open space - Tongzhou English Corner, which is occupied by Xi martial artists practicing inner family boxing except for the days of the English salon; in the northeast corner there is an ancient Taihu Lake stone rockery, in front of which is the territory of ballroom dancing.
At this moment, the sun slowly rises south, hanging high above the lighthouse.
Two old men playing cards (Southern People Weekly reporter Jiang Xiaoming/Photo)
"Don't talk to me, I can't tell the difference between north and south......," the woman was a little angry and incoherent.
The Tonghui River plank road connects the east and west areas of the park. According to historical records, in the north of the old city of Tongzhou, there are two seas in the east and west (the lake was called Haizi in the Liao, Jinyuan and Yuan eras). Donghaizi is long gone, and Xihaizi has survived to this day. The formation of Xihaizi is related to the lighthouse. When the tower was first built, it was necessary to dig the foundation of the earth to increase the height of the tower base, and the place where the soil was taken was later formed into a pond of stagnant water.
In September 2006, outside the park wall, an old man picking beans. Now the village no longer exists (Southern People Weekly reporter Jiang Xiaoming/Photo)
The lighthouse, also known as the Buddha Relic Pagoda, was built in the Northern Zhou Dynasty more than 1,400 years ago. Since the Tang Dynasty, successive royal dynasties have been rebuilt.
The lighthouse is a landmark of the ancient city of Tongzhou in the past. Once upon a time, literati and merchants who entered Beijing via the Grand Canal were thrilled to see this lantern-burning pagoda, and arriving in Tongzhou meant that all the hardships along the way would be over. Now, the renovated lighthouse continues to play the role of a landmark in Tongzhou, and its image often appears in cultural tourism brochures.
In September 2017, the child with bandages on his hands fished for snails with his father (Southern People Weekly reporter Jiang Xiaoming/photo)
"The left side of the tower, or the right side of the tower, I'm sorry—" The woman became annoyed, her fingertips tugging at the tights that were clinging to her back. She got on the bridge, got off the bridge, and walked to the other side.
The pagoda town river, the Taoist temple fights drought, and the Confucian Temple makes the cultural context sustainable.
There are three temples under the lighthouse - the Temple of Literature, the Temple of Youshengjiao, and the Ziqing Palace. The three religions of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism are close to each other and independent of each other, and have coexisted harmoniously for more than 400 years, which is rare in the country.
In October 2006, the children who "took paper" on the arch bridge (Southern People Weekly reporter Jiang Xiaoming/photo)
Weeping willows swayed slowly, and reeds stood still. The woman walked towards the security guard on duty. The security guard had not long arrived, scratching his cheeks with an embarrassed expression, and pointed out to her an unsure general direction. After the park was expanded, many security guards were recruited to maintain order at various attractions. Although the nameplate reads: Do not trample on the lawn, do not climb over it, and do not climb...... However, what is really needed for the above actions is not "do not" and "forbidden", but to advise and stop.
The woman turned off the phone, threw it in her handbag, and walked quickly into the west gate of the park. She bypassed a high-platform building, the Dry Water Gate. If you climb the stairs, you can stand in the Xieshan Pavilion and overlook the Tongzhou New Town between the lake area and the skyline. But the woman didn't have time to climb up and look at it, and walked angrily in the direction of the lighthouse.
In May 2007, the old man doing eye exercises in the woods (Southern People Weekly reporter Jiang Xiaoming/photo)
I sat on the bench in the West Sea Pavilion and looked at the lake for a while. By the time I bumped into the woman again, she had regained her glow, her face glowing with the surprise of a "reunion after a long absence"—she had finally found a date—a lanky, sunglassed man, a blue trench coat fluttering, and a sense of relief and relief. The two talked as they walked, and the topic was still the same as before. When they passed by Li Zhuowu's tomb, they suddenly stopped talking. They did not know the identity of the tomb's owner. The man pushed his sunglasses into his eye sockets and squinted at his watch. As noon approached, they probably had to find a restaurant to sit down and delve into other topics.
The tomb of Li Zhuowu is located in the northeast corner of the park, hidden among the green pines and cypresses. If you don't look for it, few people know that this Ming thinker is buried here.
Li Zhuowu is Li Zhen, who was called "the first madman of the Ming Dynasty" by later generations. He was an official in his early years, and in his later years he wrote books and lectured in Tongzhou. At the age of 76, he was arrested in Tongzhou on the charge of "daring to advocate chaos and confusing the world and slandering the people", and his works were burned by general order. Soon after he was imprisoned, he committed suicide in prison. His friend Ma Jinglun buried him in Tongzhou North Horse Factory. In order to facilitate the descendants to pay their respects, his tomb was moved to Xihaizi Park in 1983.
Li Zhuowu's tomb in the rain (Southern People Weekly reporter Jiang Xiaoming/photo)
Li Zhen was a pioneer in emancipating the mind. In the era of feudal etiquette, he deviated from the norm and evaluated more than 800 historical figures from the Warring States period to the death of the Yuan Dynasty with his unique insights. He dared to expose the hypocrisy of Taoism, opposed the Baguwen, advocated the equality of all people, the equality of men and women, the equality of saints and fools, and the equality of all things, and advocated that "saints are never high, and mortals are never low", as well as the people-oriented idea that "the world is a king, and it is thought that it is for the people".
For the first time in the history of Chinese philosophy, Li Zhen explicitly raised the question of the criterion of truth. He believes that the standard of truth changes with the development of society, and there is no immutable model, advocating that "learning is expensive and doubtful".
Women and men walked towards the south gate of the park. Looking at their laughing backs, I suddenly felt a sense of emptiness, probably knowing the end of the story. It's a shame that they came here for a first date and didn't visit here.
In the minds of the old Tongzhou people, Xihaizi Park is their "central park". This nearly 100-year-old park is a place where they reminisce about the past and reminisce about the past.
After the expansion in 2016, the park included ancient river channels, ancient trees, ancient tombs, ancient towers, ancient temples, ancient city wall ruins and ancient Cao Yun Wharf, etc., and introduced the landscape sight of Tonghui River and the Grand Canal into the park, forming a landscape corridor that changes scenery step by step.
In February 2022, Xihaizi Park in the snow (Southern People Weekly reporter Jiang Xiaoming/photo)
Xihaizi Lake is injected with new water, and boating is no longer allowed in the lake. The new corridor bridge is displaced to the south, drawing on the design of the Summer Palace Bridge, which is twisting and turning, layered on top of each other, and is named: Yunqu Bridge. The newly planted lotus leaves and cattails are green and yellow, cut and grown. The koi fish are fat and strong, because of the endless feeding by tourists. They barely swim much, and gather on the shore every day, like a red swamp, begging for food despite their round bellies.
The new replaces the old and then is replaced by something newer. The former wet market near the park has disappeared. The park is full of tiles and lawns, and practitioners look elsewhere because it is difficult to find a corner of earth. However, there is always a lot of people around the newly installed gym equipment.
In January 2022, a woman wearing Hanfu (Southern People Weekly reporter Jiang Xiaoming/photo)
The sound of chanting and the jingling of wind chimes on the lighthouse can be heard in the temple, businessmen, students, the elderly and a lame man who has suffered a stroke pray for blessings in the turret, and the saxophone is played on the observation deck across Hulu Lake - Kelly King's "Homecoming".
The river flows leisurely, yesterday, today, tomorrow, the same. I walked east along the Tonghui River, turned at the confluence of the five rivers to the Daguanglou where the grain was used to be transported, and then ran southeast along the North Canal, heading towards home.
Southern People Weekly reporter Jiang Xiaoming
Editor-in-charge: Zheng Jie, Fang Yingzhong