Although Yashan is not as famous as the Five Peaks of China, friends familiar with history should not be unfamiliar with it. In the last years of the Southern Song Dynasty, there was a fierce battle here that shocked the world and wept ghosts and gods - the Battle of Yashan Sea. Although more than 700 years have passed, the spirit of indomitable righteousness and indomitable death shown by the military and people of the Southern Song Dynasty at the last moment is sincerely admirable. Today we will talk about the cliff mountain.
In Sanya, Hainan, there is a very famous place called Tianya Haijiao, some people think that Yashan is in Sanya, but in fact, Yashan is in the territory of Xinhui District, Jiangmen City, Guangdong Province. Xinhui is located in the lower reaches of the Tanjiang River, bordering Zhongshan City to the east, Zhuhai Doumen to the south, Jiangmen Taishan and Kaiping to the west, and Jiangmen to the north. Xinhui has a history of more than 1800 years, and was historically the center of this area, with Xinhui County in the Jin Dynasty, Gangzhou in the Sui and Tang Dynasties, and XinhuiCheng in the Ming Dynasty as the third largest city after Guangzhou and Chaozhou.
The south of Yashan is about fifty kilometers away from the urban area of Xinhui District, which is the outlet of Yinzhou Lake, Cliff Mountain and Tang bottle mountain stand in the east and west, and the water of Yinzhou Lake flows into the sea through the two mountains. The two mountains are like a gate, guarding the sea channel, so it is called the cliff gate, and now there is a cliff gate bridge, with a total length of 1289 meters. Yashan and Tangju Mountain are composed of a series of large and small mountains, including Niumuling, Fengshan, etc., Tangju Mountain is composed of Dagang Mountain, Ma mane Mountain, etc. The terrain around Yamen is dangerous, and the palace of the small court of the Southern Song Dynasty is placed on the mountain ridge east of Yinzhou Lake.
The Pearl River is the third largest river in China after the Yangtze River and the Yellow River, originating from the Maxiong Mountains of the Umeng Mountains of the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, flowing through Yun, Guizhou, Guizhou, Guangdong, Xiang, Gan and other provinces and regions and northern Vietnam, with a total length of about 11,000 kilometers of main tributaries. The Pearl River has eight gates into the sea downstream, called the "Eight Gates of the Pearl River". These eight gates are Tiger Gate, Banana Gate, Hongqi Gate, Horizontal Gate, Sharpening Knife Gate, Chicken Cry Gate, Tiger Jumping Gate, and Cliff Gate. Among them, Humen is very familiar to everyone, and in history, Lin Zexu Humen sold cigarettes in this area.
Yamen is the westernmost of the eight gates of the Pearl River, and the Yamen waterway, Yinzhou Lake, forms a Y-shape with the Tiger Leaping Gate waterway adjacent to the east. The Battle of Yamen took place in the waters of Yinzhou Lake, and in the Battle of Yashan, Zhang Hongfan led the Mengyuan Water Army to march from the Tiger Jumping Gate Waterway, blocking the Southern Song Army in Yinzhou Lake, and finally the Song Army was completely destroyed.
Nowadays, it seems that Silver Island Lake is clearly a river, why is it called a lake? In the Pearl River Delta region, there are many channels into the sea that were previously called "seas" or "lakes", these channels were originally part of the sea, and later due to the siltation around the formation of land to become today's topography, after the 20th century by the modern geographical influence most of the parties changed to rivers, waterways.
Because the coastline of the ancient Pearl River Delta region was not as far south as it is today, Guangzhou Haizhu District, Panyu District, Zhongshan City, Jiangmen City, Zhuhai City, Macao and other places were in the sea, and now the mountains closer to the sea were only islands in the sea. During the Song Dynasty, Yashan was still a large island, and the north of Yashan Island was irregularly distributed with many large and small islands and reefs, hundreds of years of alluvial sediment, and those scattered islands and reefs had long disappeared, and now the north of Yashan Island has almost completely connected with the land.
In 1273, the Yuan army attacked Xiangyang, an important military town in the Southern Song Dynasty, and went down the Han River to capture Wuchang. The Yangtze River defense line of the Southern Song Dynasty collapsed violently, jiankang (present-day Nanjing) was soon breached by the overwhelming Yuan army, and the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty, Lin'an (present-day Hangzhou, Zhejiang), was in danger.
In 1276, the Yuan army attacked Lin'an, and the Song Gong Emperor Zhao (Xian) lowered the Yuan. Wen Tianxiang, Zhang Shijie, Lu Xiufu and other ministers supported Zhao Yan as emperor in Wenzhou, and then retreated all the way to Guangdong. On the way back to the Leizhou Peninsula, he encountered a typhoon, Zhao Yu fell into the water and fell ill and died, and his brother Zhao Hao was made a young emperor. The small court of the Southern Song Dynasty retreated to Yashan and built a palace on Yashan Mountain. The empress dowager, the emperor, the minister of culture and military affairs, the accompanying soldiers, and their families all lived on Yashan Island, and they did not expect that this place had become the last palace of the Southern Song Dynasty, and now it has become a scenic spot - the Song and Yuan Yamen Naval Battle Cultural Tourism Zone.
In 1279, the Yuan army was divided into two routes, the water route led by Zhang Hongfan marching from the coast, and the land route Led by Li Heng from the southwest to attack Yashan. Hundreds of thousands of troops and thousands of warships on both sides fought a great decisive battle, and finally the Southern Song Dynasty was defeated, Lu Xiufu jumped into the sea with the Young Emperor on his back, and 100,000 Southern Song soldiers and civilians generously died, how magnificent.