The silver screen overlaps and is clear, and the head of Lang Lang Feng is facing the imperial capital.
万壑晶光迎晓日，千林琼屑映朝晴。
This poem is one of the "Eight Views of the West Ya" depicted by Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty, "Silver Ingot View Mountain", and it is also the only landscape gallery on the central axis of Beijing that shows the integration of mountains and rivers and cities. The Silver Ingot Bridge, located at the intersection of Qianhai and Houhai in Shichahai, Beijing, is a single-hole stone arch bridge in the north-south direction. The earliest documentary record of the bridge can be traced back to the Ming Dynasty's "Imperial Scenery and Things": "In the deep winter of Chongzhen's Guiyou year, the British took the ice bed, crossed the North Lake, and crossed the Guanyin Nunnery of the Silver Ingot Bridge. ”
Silver Ingot Bridge Photo by Qin Haiqing
Origin of silver ingots
Shichahai is a depression-type lake formed by the lower reaches of the ancient Gaoliang River (a small river system of the ancient Yongding River). In the Jin and Yuan dynasties, they were called White Lotus Pond and Jishui Pond respectively. According to the "Yuan History, River Canal Chronicles": "Haizi is a pond of water, gathering the water of the springs in the northwest, popular into the capital and converged here, the ocean is like the sea, and the people are famous because of their fame." At that time, the water surface of the pond was unusually wide, so it was also called "Haizi". By the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the pond gradually shrank into three parts, namely the Qianhai, Houhai and Xihai, and the waterways between the three seas were connected. During the Yongle period, when the street pattern in the city was demarcated, the silver ingot bridge connecting Qianhai and Houhai was built here.
There are different opinions about the origin of the name of the silver ingot bridge: there are "shape theory" and "stone tenon theory". "Shape theory" is the most intuitive and mainstream, the bridge is 12 meters long, 7 meters wide, 8 meters high, 5 meters in span, there are 5 hollow cloud flower railings, 6 pillars of green bottle curly flowers, there are eight-character railings and drum stones at both ends, and the bridge body has swallow wing walls on both sides. Viewed from a high point, the bridge resembles a silver ingot. "Stone tenon theory" is based on the old items used to secure the bridge. Among the ancient buildings in the mainland, the mortise and tenon joint structure is the most durable. When building the bridge, in order to increase the stability of the bridge, the craftsman embedded a large number of stone tenons in the bridge body, and used the concave and convex structure of the stone tenon to enhance the degree of occlusion between the stones, so as to achieve the effect of stabilizing the bridge. These solid bridges are named because of their stone tenon shape similar to silver ingots. In addition, there is the "toponymic theory". It is recorded in the "Complete Map of the Shoushan in the Jingshi City" that the waterfront near the bridge is called "Yindingwo", so it is named.
Qing Dynasty "The Complete Map of the First Good in the Jingshi City" (detail)
The silver ingot views the mountains and rivers flowing backwards
The two famous landscapes of Shichahai are "Silver Ingot View Mountain" and "Seawater Backwards".
Because the Silver Ingot Bridge is located at the intersection of the front and back seas, it has a wide field of vision, so standing on the bridge and looking west, you can vaguely see the undulating West Mountain. Once, Li Dongyang, a scholar of the Ming Dynasty and the first assistant of the cabinet, boarded the silver ingot bridge after visiting the Ci'en Temple, looked at the West Mountain and thought about the past, and chanted a song "The Occasional Cheng of the Ci'en Temple":
The best landscape in the city, the world's many idle years.
When the dream forgets this place, whose home does the scenery belong to in the old days?
A state of selflessness and indifference is beyond words. In the "Examination of Old News under the Sun", volume 54 quotes the "Yandu Travel Chronicle", it is even more said: "The silver ingot bridge is in the north of the three bridges of Haizi in Bei'anmen, and it is the first place in the city to see the West Mountain. Standing here to enjoy the scenery, the time is different, the scenery is different, the feeling is also different, the literati and ink writers are even more lingering, the famous poet of the Qing Dynasty Nalan Xingde and Cao Yin, Zhu Yizun and other friends often come here to stop and watch the scenery.
Since the topography of Beijing City is high in the northwest and low in the southeast, so is the flow of water under the Silver Ingot Bridge. In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, in order to ensure the stability of the water level of Taiye Pond, another river channel was opened from the east of Desheng Bridge, along the south side of Houhai to the east, to Liguang Bridge to turn back to the south, and then along the Qianhai to the east, and the water surface of the northwest corner of Shichahai was communicated. Because this river is curved like a crescent moon, it is called "Crescent River" by the people. Since then, the water of the West Sea no longer leads directly to the Houhai, but from the Crescent River to the Qianhai, forming a peculiar landscape of "silver ingots watching the mountains and rivers flowing backwards". By 1984, the waterway of Desheng Bridge was cut off, and there was no surplus waterway flowing into Qianhai, and this landscape disappeared.
The lotus flower is the most abundant
Every summer when the red sun is scorching, it is the time when the "gentleman in the flowers" in Shichahai who "comes out of the mud but is not stained, and the water is clear and ripples but not demons" compete to spit out. On a sunny day, the red lotus reflects the glow, scorching like fire, on a rainy day, the pink lotus silver beads are full of falling, and the wind passes, the lotus canopy sways, and the fragrance is overflowing. The Qing Dynasty poet Chong'en once wrote the poem "Late Past Shichahai" to describe the lotus flowers in summer:
There is no heat in the rain, and the deep forest is cool at night.
Stained with moss-colored, fluttering fan and lotus.
The moon is white between the peaks, and the smoke grows outside the trees.
宵来有佳句，乘兴过菱塘。
In the Qing Dynasty, there was a saying that "there are 38 lotus ponds in Fengchen Garden". Fengchen Garden, an official office set up by the Qing court, is one of the three courts under the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and is in charge of the imperial garden. These 38 lotus ponds are all "officially managed", and they are the places where the emperor, the emperor's relatives and the princes and ministers enjoy the lotus. "Jinghua Garden Talks" once wrote: "In the city, there are moats outside the Forbidden City, the South China Sea, the Middle Sea, the Beihai, Jishuitan, the west of the silver ingot bridge in Houhai, and the west of Shichahai in Di'an Bridge, totaling seven. ”
In February of the 25th year of Qianlong (1760), Lang Zhong Yinglian, Lang Tongming and others changed the rice fields of Jishuitan and Silver Ingot Bridge to dig Hepao and sent infantry to pick up and dig things. China's No. 1 Historical Archives Collection
According to the records of the Eight Banners of the King James Dynasty, there are rice fields in the west of the silver ingot bridge in Desheng Gate, "smoke green in spring and summer, and yellow clouds in autumn and winter". During the Qianlong period, the waters of Shichahai shrank. For this reason, Lang Zhong Yinglian, Yuanwai Lang Tongming and others in February of the 25th year of Qianlong (1760) made a report on the matter of changing the rice fields of Jishuitan and Yiningotqiao to dig up the river bubble and send infantry to pick and dig, saying: "The officials sent are now dividing (fake) to draw water, and the water has not yet dried up, and it is said that it will take three or four days before they can dry up before they can install the rank of soldier. After "excavating blisters" and dredging the bottom of the lake, the water level of Shichahai has risen significantly. In order to make this place more ornamental, Emperor Qianlong also ordered Fengchen Garden to plant lotus flowers.
(Source: China Archives WeChat public account; Author: Hairi Khan; picture source: original with pictures; original title: A silver ingot bridge, hundreds of years of Zhong Lingyuxiu, fireworks in the market - silver ingot view mountain; the original text has been deleted.) ）