The May Day holiday is approaching, and it is expected that the popular scenic spots in Guangzhou will usher in another wave of crowds.
Today, we have excavated the niche museums worth exploring in Yuexiu District and planned a citywalk route.
Since the establishment of Nanhai County in the Qin Dynasty, Yuexiu District has always been the administrative center of Guangzhou, and as the oldest urban area in Guangzhou, there are many historical relics in Yuexiu District, which are often scattered in small streets and alleys, which are not easy to find......
Five Immortals
Yangcheng is one of the oldest nicknames in Guangzhou. The Five Immortals Temple, located on Huifu West Road, Yuexiu District, is built to thank and commemorate the gifts of the Five Immortals.
I believe that most people in Guangzhou have heard the legend of the five sheep heads: when Guangzhou fell into drought and there was no harvest, the five immortals took the five-colored fairy sheep with the five grains, came to Guangzhou from the sky, and offered the ears of grain to the people.
▲Five Immortals View (Source: Internet)
Today's Five Immortals Temple preserves a city tower known as "the first building in Lingnan", which is also the prototype of the gatehouse of the West Lake Flower Market this year.
There is a large bell in the castle tower, which is also interesting in history. Only in the event of a serious fire will the government ring this bell to alert residents. Because every ringing will be accompanied by disaster, the people of Guangzhou believe that this bell has a bad atmosphere and cannot be easily struck, and gradually called it the "forbidden bell".
Today's Five Immortals Ancient View is small in area, but it is also quite elegant, green trees, and can be said to be a blessed land in the hustle and bustle of the city.
▲ Forbidden Bell Tower (Source: Internet)
Visitor Information:
Address: No. 233, Huifu West Road, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province
Opening hours: Tuesday to Sunday 9:00 - 17:00 (closed on Mondays)
Contact number: 020-83323508
Note: Until July 2024, the main building (apse, forbidden bell tower, east and west zhai, etc.) will be under maintenance and will not be open to the public.
Yaozhou ruins
Walk a little northeast from the Five Immortals Temple, and you will arrive at the ruins of Yaozhou.
The ruins of Yaozhou are the royal gardens of the Southern Han Dynasty during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. In the third year of Qianheng (919), Liu Yan, the founding emperor of the Southern Han Dynasty, chiseled the long lake 500 zhang in the area of Xihu Road and Education Road today, known as West Lake or Fairy Lake in history, there are pavilions, buildings, pavilions and pavilions along the lake, and the scenery is very beautiful. The island is built in the lake, and the alchemy is sought in this place, so it is called the medicine island. There are nine strange stones in the lake, called nine obsidians.
In the Song Dynasty, Yaozhou came into contact with the literati and scholars. First of all, the Northern Song Dynasty physicist Zhou Dunyi lived in Yaozhou when he was sentenced to prison in Guangzhou. Later, the painter Mi Fu also admired the visit to Yaozhou, and inscribed a poem on the cactus stone.
Under the influence of the two literati, celebrities, high-ranking officials, envoys of friendly countries, and businessmen and ordinary people all came to Yaozhou to visit.
▲Yaozhou site (source: Internet)
In the Ming Dynasty, Yaozhou became the cultural and educational center of Guangdong. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, the Provincial Office and the Office of the Governor of Education were all located here. After the establishment of the Republic of China, the original Department of Education was successively changed to the Ministry of Education and the Department of Education, and the old site of the Ministry of Education was still used as the office.
The place names of Xihu Road and Education Road are all related to the history of Yaozhou. At present, there is only a gatehouse, a pond, a row of display stone tablets left in the restored Yaozhou site, and only eight pieces of obsidian are left, and the turtles and fish swim in the pond.
Last year, a drink shop was set up here, and you can enjoy the heritage while drinking a drink, which is also a unique flavor.
Visitor Information:
Address: No. 86, Education Road, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou
Opening hours: 9:00-17:30
Transportation: Bus No. 24 Park Front Station or Zhongshan 5th Road Station, 42 Road, 12 Zhongshan 5th Road Station, Metro Park Front Station Exit D 200 meters
Ten Thousand Wood Thatched Cottage
Walk east along Zhongshan 4th Road for a while and you will come to Wanmu Thatched Cottage.
The predecessor of Wanmu Thatched Cottage was Qiu's Study. In the ninth year of Jiaqing, Qiu Juehuang, a person from Zengcheng, chose to build a study room near the Panyu School Palace (now the Agricultural Lecture Center) as the residence of the Qiu children to study and take exams in the provincial capital.
▲Wanmu Thatched Cottage (Source: Internet)
In fact, the renaming of Qiu's study to Wanmu Thatched Cottage does not conform to historical facts.
In the spring of 1890, Kang Youwei gave lectures to his apprentices in Guangzhou, trying to rejuvenate the country through education, advocating reform of the law, and cultivating a group of politicians and scholars such as Liang Qichao and Chen Qianqiu.
Kang Youwei first lectured in his great-grandfather's ancestral home, and then moved the lecture to Qiu's study in 1891, at which point he changed the name of the study to Changxing Xueshe instead of Wanmu Thatched Cottage.
In 1892, after the lecture site was moved to the Kuang Clan Ancestral Hall on Weibian Street (near present-day Guangwei Road), the plaque of "Wanmu Thatched Cottage" was officially hung, and in 1893, it was moved to the Yanggao Ancestral Hall of Guangfu Xuegong (now the First Workers' Cultural Palace of Guangzhou), and continued to use the name of Wanmu Thatched Cottage. Therefore, the two school sites after the relocation should be called Wanmu Thatched Cottage.
However, now that the latter two sites no longer exist, the only remaining Qiu study room is named after the more famous Wanmu Thatched Cottage, and its real name "Changxing School" is gradually unknown.
Visitor Information:
Address: No. 3, Changxingli, Zhongshan 4th Road, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province
Opening hours: Every Tuesday to Sunday, 9:00-12:00, 14:00-17:00 (last admission at 16:50, closed on Mondays)
Dongping big bet
Continuing along the road to the east, we saw a black watchtower building standing at the fork of the road, which was Dongping Daigashi.
As early as the Ming Dynasty, the pawn industry appeared in Guangzhou. But it was not until after the outbreak of the Opium War that the pawnbroking industry in Guangzhou grew by leaps and bounds under the impact of foreign capital, and many pawnbroking establishments appeared.
▲Dongping Dazhu (Source: Internet)
Built in the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China, Dongping was the second largest pawnshop in Guangzhou at that time, second only to the now vanished Xiguan Prison.
The existing building of Dongping Dazhu was a warehouse building at that time, with heavy iron doors, vertical walls, narrow windows, and heavy walls, and you can still intuitively feel the strict protection of pawnshops at that time.
In 2010, this watchtower was transformed into China's first pawn museum, the first floor restores the high counters and pawn scenes of pawnshops in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, the second floor displays the cultural and historical materials, pictures and objects of modern pawns, and the third floor displays the development and innovation of the modern pawn industry.
Visitor Information:
Address: No. 1, Zhongshan 4th Road, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou
Opening hours: Tuesday to Sunday 10:30-17:30 (closed on Mondays, in case of holidays and special circumstances, opening hours will be announced separately)
Mingyuan Building
Coming out of Dongping Dajiao, walking south along Yuexiu Middle Road, you came to Mingyuan Building.
As an important place for the imperial examination, we have also made a video to explain the history of Mingyuan Tower in detail.
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▲Click to watch the video
In 1924, Sun Yat-sen led the establishment of Guangdong University (later renamed Sun Yat-sen University), which was also located here. Since then, the remains of the Guangdong Gongyuan Institute are basically gone, and only the invigilation site Mingyuan Building has been preserved as the reading room of the university library at that time.
At present, Mingyuan Building still continues to exist as the historical exhibition hall of Guangdong Gongyuan, which is a two-storey pavilion-style building with wooden structure, and is the only building left by Guangdong Gongyuan in the Qing Dynasty. Visitors can get a glimpse of the scale of the Guangdong Gongyuan at that time from the restored model of the Guangdong Gongyuan of the Qing Dynasty placed in the center of the first floor of the exhibition hall.
Visitor Information:
Address: No. 125, Yuexiu Middle Road, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou
Opening hours: Tuesday to Sunday 9:30-12:00 (last entry 11:30), 13:00-16:00 (last entry 15:30)
Note: Only the exhibition hall on the first floor is currently open
belfry
The southern part of Mingyuan Tower is the bell tower.
After the demolition of the Guangdong Gongyuan, the Liangguang Normal School was established here. There is a brick and wood structure house in the school, the front half is two floors, the back half is one floor, the appearance looks like the "mountain" shape, because the highest part of the building is installed on four sides of the clock, so it is called the bell tower.
In 1924, the first national congress of the Kuomintang was held on the first floor of the bell tower, and Sun Yat-sen, Wang Jingwei, Li Dazhao, Mao Zedong and others attended the meeting.
▲In 1906, the Liangguang Excellent Normal School (source: Internet)
Later, the merged National Sun Yat-sen University was still located on this site, and the Bell Tower became the office building of CUHK.
On January 18, 1927, Lu Xun was invited to serve as the director of liberal arts and the director of academic affairs at National Sun Yat-sen University, where Lu Xun lived and worked.
During this time, Lu Xun completed the creation of "On the Bell Tower", which depicts what Lu Xun saw, heard and felt in Guangzhou during his teaching at CUHK, which is a precious material for understanding the modern social and revolutionary conditions in Guangzhou.
Today, the hall on the first floor of the bell tower has restored the meeting scene of the freshman year of the Kuomintang, and each row of seats is marked with the corresponding figures at the congress at that time, and we can still sit in the positions of Li Dazhao, Mao Zedong and others to experience the history firsthand.
▲The restoration scene of the site of the First National Congress of the Kuomintang (source: Internet)
The exhibition area on the four sides is used to display and introduce the history of the First National Congress of the Kuomintang and the period when Lu Xun taught at CUHK.
Visitor Information:
Address: No. 215, Wenming Road, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou (in Zhongshan Library, Guangdong Province)
Opening hours: Tuesday to Sunday 9:00-17:00 (last entry after 16:30, closed on Mondays)
Eight Flags Museum
After coming out of the bell tower, walk south along Dezheng Road, and we will come to the Eight Flags Museum.
Many unfamiliar people may wonder why there is a museum of the Eight Banners in Guangzhou? Shouldn't the Manchus and the Eight Banners be far away in Beijing and Northeast China?
In fact, after the Qing Dynasty unified the country, it set up Eight Banners in a number of important cities, Guangzhou was one of them, and at that time the west of Guangzhou (now Huifuxi, Haizhuzhong, and Dade Road) was the settlement of the Eight Banners, and the Manchu nobles served as the generals of Guangzhou.
Guangzhou still retains many traces of Manchu or Eight Banners colors: such as Manchurian Window, Miao Jixiang Room, Eight Banners Guild Hall, Eight Banners Erma Road, Jiangjun East Road, etc.
▲Eight Flags Museum (Source: Internet)
Walking into the Eight Flags Museum, you will be greeted by the style of the Beijing royal family. As soon as you enter the door, there are two dummies wearing the costumes of the Eight Banners, and in the middle is a map of the settlement area of the Eight Banners of Guangzhou in the Qing Dynasty.
The exhibition hall is composed of three parts: "The Origin and Development of the Eight Banners", "The Children of the Eight Banners Garrison in Guangzhou", and "The Life and Culture of the Eight Banners in Guangzhou", which comprehensively introduces the formation, development and basic situation of the Eight Banners in Guangzhou.
In addition to the text introduction, the exhibition hall also displays the relics and old photos of the Eight Banners of Guangzhou. Although the exhibition hall is small, you can basically understand the situation of Guangzhou Eight Banners after walking around.
In fact, there is a movie called "Wu Zhuangyuan Su Qier" in Hong Kong that is related to Guangzhou Eight Banners, in which Wu Mengda plays the Guangzhou general, and Stephen Chow plays the general's son, that is, the son of the Eight Banners.
▲ Stills from "Wu Zhuangyuan Su Qier" (source: Internet)
After watching this movie, a visit to this small but comprehensive museum may give you a different feeling.
Visitor Information:
Address: 5th Floor, No. 51-55, Dezheng South Road, Zhuguang Street, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou
Opening hours: Opening hours are uncertain, you need to call in advance to make an appointment before visiting
Contact number: 83185323
Compared with the large museums, these niche museums and historical sites hidden in the streets and alleys also show the historical face of the city. If you want to savor Guangzhou's past without wanting to be crowded, you might as well visit it in your free time!
Dear friends,
What other niche historical sites and museums do you know of?
Feel free to leave a message in the comment area!