The legend of Qin Shi Huang and the Five Mountains of Wolves
Junshan and Jianshan Banxia photographed
In the southern suburbs of Nantong City, there are five peaks standing near the river, they take the Wolf Mountain as the center, there are Jun Mountain, Jian Mountain in the east, Ma'an Mountain and Peni Mountain in the west, and are known as the five bright pearls that are embedded in the Jianghai Plain and the Yangtze River, and integrate religious, humanistic and ecological values.
What few people know is that when the wolf five mountains enter people's sight, the first thing that reflects is the military value, because it is located at the strategic point of the intersection of the river and the sea, and is regarded as an important town of river defense and coastal defense by the soldiers of all dynasties.
This has to start with Junshan and Jianshan, the reason why these two mountains have such heroic and heroic names is related to Qin Shi Huang, the "Emperor of the Ages".
In the ancient folklore, more than 2,200 years ago, Qin Shi Huang inspected the south and crossed the river here. Now there is a clear water in the low-lying place at the southern foot of the military mountain, which is called "drinking horse pool", and it is said that the garrison of Qin Shi Huang once drank water here.
Sword Mountain is shaped like a sword, taken in Banxia
As for the Sword Mountain, it is said that Qin Shi Huang once sharpened his sword here, hence the name. On the mountain cliff in the southeast of Jianshan Mountain, there used to be a piece of grinding sword stone that was more than a foot long, and then fell into the river due to long-term growth. In the old legend, Qin Shi Huang once sharpened his sword in this stone, and the sword traces survived for thousands of years, so the sword mountain was also called "the sword trace mountain".
The god whip stone is taken in the middle of the summer
On the cliff at the northern foot of Wolf Mountain, layers of rocks overlap up and down, and the stone cracks are extremely neat, so in the old Nantong folk, there was also the story of "Qin Shi Huang roaring the mountain to reclaim the sea", and it is said that these stone cracks were whipped by the gods.
According to folk tales, Qin Shi Huang wanted to see the place where the sun rose, but he was blocked by the vast ocean of the East China Sea, so he was not allowed to go. He ordered the gods to wield a whip and drive the undulating mountains into the sea, turning them into stone bridges to the other side. When the gods drove the mountains into the sea, some of the mountains walked as slowly as old oxen, and the gods whipped them with a whip. Wolf Mountain, located on the coast of the East China Sea, was also whipped by whips, so there are many clearly recognizable whip marks left at the northern foothills. Now the stone workshop on the south side of Wolf Mountain, its couplet has a sentence "Whip stone has Qin Emperor", which is the story.
Couplet "Whip Stone has Qin Emperor" Banxia photograph
The legend of Qin Shi Huang and the Five Mountains of Wolves has been recorded in local documents, but it is believed that there is no way to verify it, and the names of Junshan and Jianshan are purely folk traditions. From a historical point of view, Qin Shi Huang crossed the river in the Wolf Five Mountains and sharpened his sword here, although it was almost impossible, but due to the situation at that time, it was reasonable to send troops to garrison on the mountain.
Qin Shi Huang destroyed the six kingdoms, became an emperor, unified the world, and made great achievements, however, this process was not as simple as destroying the withering and decaying. Among the Seven Heroes of the Warring States, the Qin State stood out, and broke the strategy of "combining verticals" of the six countries with the strategy of "connecting horizontally", and finally broke them one by one, which took ten years before and after. At that time, Qin and Chu both had the conditions to unify the world. The boundary of "Eastern Chu" outlined by Sima Qian in the "Historical Records" is roughly the Jiangsu region in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. The iron hooves of the Qin army went all the way east, and many Koreans, Wei and Chu were forced to move east to the Eastern Chu region.
Sima Qian records that the counter-currents surging in the southeast of Chu made it difficult for Qin Shi Huang to sleep and eat, so he inspected the whole country five times in the eleventh year of his reign, including three times in the southeast, forcing the people of the six countries to submit to him spiritually.
In 211 BC, Qin Shi Huang went on his fifth and last tour, and Sima Qian recorded: Qin Shi Huang crossed Yunmengze, Hubei, sacrificed to Yu Shun, floated down the river, and finally died on the sand dune platform.
At that time, the Wolf Five Mountains were still located in the estuary area, and Qin Shi Huang naturally chose the narrowest river in Nanjing. Militarily, the Wolf Five Mountains are the water fortresses and springboards that take into account both the north and the south, in order to prevent the Eastern Chu rebellion, Qin Shi Huang did not take any tactical measures here, but the garrison fortification in the Wolf Five Mountains, and even as a strategic idle chess player, should also be normal.
There are no records or legends of the Han Dynasty garrison, but many dynasties have been stationed here since then. In the late Tang Dynasty, there was a "Wolf Mountain Town Containment Envoy", the Yao family had a military division in the five dynasties, and the Tongzhou defense system with cities and mountains dependent on each other was formed in the early Song Dynasty. In the Ming Dynasty, there was also the record of the Wolf Mountain Tide Guard Reviewing the Water Division, and the "Jun Shan Hong" blocked the Japanese Invaders, and the Wolf Tomb in the north of the Wolf Mountain was used to warn the chimney pier in the city when the Wolf Invaders landed.
In the eleventh year of the Kangxi reign of the Qing Dynasty (1672), there were many forts in dangerous places such as Jianshan and Penishan. The old street of Langshan Town is also known as "Fort Street" and has a mouth, called "the first pass in Jiangbei". On July 8, 1842, during the Opium War, the British invading navy sailed the Langshan River, and the primary goal was to destroy the Monishan Fort.
On March 17, 1938, during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the invading Japanese army saw that the defense of Wolf Wushan was weak, and landed at Yaogang in the west of Penishan, and then plundered and killed to the east and occupied Nantong. On January 31, 1949, the vanguard of the People's Liberation Army approached the suburbs of Nantong City, shelled the positions of the Kuomintang defenders in Wolf Mountain and Yaogang, and liberated Nantong City on February 2. In the fifties and sixties of the last century, in order to prevent foreign provocations, Junshan and Wolf Mountain opened up the mountains and built a war readiness project.
Throughout the history of the Wolf Five Mountains, it was first a military town, but with the great eastward extension of the alluvial plain, the distance between the Wolf Five Mountains and the mouth of the Yangtze River gradually increased, and the military status declined. Since the Wei and Jin dynasties, it has gradually become a famous mountain of religious culture, and since the Song and Yuan dynasties, many humanistic relics and landscapes have been added.
Based on the strategic value of the Wolf Five Mountains and the surrounding waters at that time, it is a legend that Qin Shi Huang garrisoned troops in Junshan and sharpened his sword in Jianshan, but it is not impossible.
Nowadays, when you climb the Junshan, you can see the Zen temple named by the great calligrapher and painter Dong Qichang of the Ming Dynasty and personally wrote the inscription - Junshan "Putuo Courtyard" (the best view to watch the sunrise on the river), and the first agricultural meteorological observatory with modern scientific level founded by Zhang Jian - Junshan Meteorological Observatory.
Putuo Courtyard Banxia photograph
Junshan Meteorological Observatory Banxia photograph
Moving to Jianshan, you can go to the Wenshu Monastery, which was built with Zhang Jian's donation, to pray for the blessings of all living beings and for the students Naji. Stop in front of Wenshu Monastery to overlook the river platform, look at the wolf mountain on the right by the railing, look at the military mountain on the left, the egret flies under the mountain, the boat breaks the waves on the river, it is refreshing and pleasant.
Jianshan Wenshu Monastery Banxia photograph
Source: Nantong Cultural Innovation and Research Center