"My Yuexiu Mountain Story" Essay Selection:
The five floors of the six-hundred-year-old Xiongzhen Linghai shrouded the ancient and modern
As the "first victory of Lingnan", ZhenhaiLou gathered literati and inkers to participate in the lives of the people, and experienced the fire of war and artillery to carry forward the national essence
This spring, the people of Guangzhou miss Zhenhai Lou especially.
Since its completion in the thirteenth year of Ming Hongwu (1380), for more than 600 years, spring has been an agreement between Guangzhou and spring for more than 600 years. At present, although the opening of the town has been suspended for the prevention and control of the epidemic, Zhenhai Tower is still one of the attractions that people ask the most and are most eager to reopen.
What's more, it also has a good news to share with you: in October last year, Zhenhai Lou was selected into the list of "Member Units of the Cultural Building Protection Professional Committee" selected by the Professional Committee for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Buildings of the Chinese Cultural Relics Society, and officially joined the "Circle of Friends of Famous Buildings in China" composed of Yueyang Tower, Yellow Crane Tower, Tengwang Pavilion, Daguan Tower, etc.
In 1929, ZhenhaiLou opened a museum, and in order to facilitate tourists to visit, a road was built from the Great North along the city wall to the Little North (from the "Zhenhai Lou Shiwen Tuzhi")
Zhenhai Tower looks like a building, side view like a tower, hundreds of years of restoration, the shape has not changed
Several rows of iron cannons are still preserved in front of the Zhenhai Tower
More than three hundred years ago, the Lingnan sage Qu Dajun wrote the sentence "Its Wei Li Xiongte, although Huang He and Yue Yang can not pass it" in the "Guangdong New Language", and now I know that I can not smile?
640 years of independence
The "late arrival" of this national-level famous building does not at all affect the style of Guangzhou Zhenhai Lou's 640 years of independence. In the city of Guangzhou, where the terrain is already high in the north and low in the south, Zhenhai Tower stands on the highest Yuexiu Mountain in the north of the city, embedded in the city wall, and indeed has the "first victory of Lingnan" weather that connects the north of Wanshan Mountain and stands on the city wall.
The height of Zhenhai Loulou is 25.4 meters, and the Xiaopanlonggang where it is located is nearly 55 meters above sea level, which is 60 or 70 meters above the average altitude of Guangzhou city, laying the skyline outline of the ancient city of Guangzhou after the Ming Dynasty. Especially in the classical era when sea trade flourished, merchant ships crossed the ocean from the Pearl River waterway into Guangzhou, and at a glance, the background of zhenhai tower "picked up" could be seen, and the low-level waterside houses and the towers, temples, gate towers, etc. in the urban area were staggered, and the prosperity of the thousand-year-old commercial port came into view. It is no wonder that since then, Zhenhai Tower has been depicted on various drawings and prints, and spread to the five continents and four oceans as the city mark of Guangzhou.
People affectionately refer to Zhenhai Tower as the "five-story building", which has been recorded in writing since the Ming Dynasty. The layer-by-layer contraction of the appearance is very common for ancient pavilions, but it uses different shrinkage ratios of the four walls to form a special style that looks like a building and looks like a tower on the side. This design is extremely stable, allowing Zhenhai Tower to stand on a complex sloping mountainous terrain. The number of floors is only seen in ancient city towers, and it has been restored several times over the centuries to keep the shape system unchanged.
A place where soldiers must fight
It is no exaggeration to say that ZhenhaiLou has always been a "place where soldiers must fight". The rows of iron cannons preserved in front of the building have silently witnessed the endless smoke of the flames.
Zhenhai Tower stands majestically at the commanding heights between the Great North Gate and the Small North Gate of Guangzhou City, and forms a horn arch and guard with the Yuexiu Mountain Zhugang on the terrain, which can not only monitor the city defense at any time to deploy troops, but also overlook the city's dynamic and static support, and the military significance in the era of cold weapons is self-evident.
At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, the "King of Pingnan" Shang Kexi trained carrier pigeons in this building and traveled back and forth with the Qingyuan Temple of Xiashan Mountain. Ye Mingchen, the governor of Liangguang during the Daoguang period, also set up a military headquarters to fight against the civilian "Hongbing" uprising on the Zhenhai Tower. After the Xinhai Revolution, the warlord Long Jiguang listed this area as a forbidden area and set up artillery garrisons. In 1923, Sun Yat-sen, as the "Grand Marshal" of the Guangdong revolutionary government, personally went up to the tower to direct the battle and foiled the plot of Shen Hongying of the Gui Army to occupy Guangzhou. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Japanese army occupied Guangzhou, and once again hoarded gunpowder on the fifth floor...
"Those who fight for the city will fight for the mountain", and those who fight for the mountain will fight for this building. The rise and fall of various military strategies has given Zhenhai Lou the meaning of national reunification and the rise and fall of the nation. During the Sino-French War, Peng Yulin, a soldier who had personally come to supervise the resistance to the French, wrote one of silou's most famous couplets: "Thousands of disasters and dangers still exist, ask who picks up the bucket and the sky is ancient; the five-hundred-year-old Hou An is there, so that I can lean on the fence to look at the sword and shed tears on the hero." "On the fifth floor of today's Zhenhai Building, there are still two versions of this link hanging high indoors and outdoors, written by Mr. Hu Zhaochun and Wu Zifu in lishu and xingcao respectively.
The arias go on and on
Zhenhai Tower, which can win the shape and conquer the city, was selected as the Eight Views of Yangcheng during the Kangxi Period of the Qing Dynasty, and became the most important landscape in the city under the name of "Zhenhai Floor", and it is also the only choice for the literati to climb the inscription and gather the ancients. Since the Ming and Qing dynasties, most of the famous cultural people and political figures in Yangcheng have left works of Dengzhen Hailou. Zhu Yizun, Ruan Yuan, Zhang Zhidong, Zhu Ciqi, and even the modern Liao Zhongkai, Hu Hanmin, Huang Jie, Ye Gongqi, etc., are all remembered.
Chen Gongyin, one of the "Three Houses of Lingnan" in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, climbed the five newly renovated floors at the age of 59 (1689) and wrote the famous "Zhenhai Loufu". Today, this long gift is still in the Guangzhou Museum in the building, because of the orderly inheritance and the combination of the inscriptions of the past dynasties, it is known as the "Traces of Cantonese Opera" and has become a famous building. The other two of the "Three Houses of Lingnan", Qu Dajun and Liang Peilan, have also appeared in the poetry of Zhenhai Lou many times.
At the age of twenty-four (1881), Kang Youwei also came to the building, and in his youthful spirit, he wrote that "the vicissitudes of the sea are sometimes robbed by embers, and where the cloth is not a prince", expressing his ambition to serve the country. Qiu Fengjia, a famous poet of the late Qing Dynasty, wrote about Zhenhai Lou at least three times: the first time in Taiwan (1896), leaving a poem of "The Wind and Dust of the Island, the Lions and the Twilight, the Great River And the Clouds and Trees of Humen Qiu"; the second time was written in the early twentieth century when he traveled to Guangzhou and Chaozhou, Meizhou and other places to run schools, with the theme of climbing the building to bid farewell to friends, Chengcai composed twenty-four poems and seven laws, synthesizing the longest set of poems describing Zhenhai Lou in the past, and it is also the most composed of poems written by Qiu Shi in his lifetime.
Zhu Guang, the second mayor of New China, who was famous for the fifty poems of "Guangzhou Good", also sighed a thousand times before leaving Sui to take office in Beijing, and inscribed the next sentence: "Before going to the building to rely on the moon alone, I can't sleep when the lights of ten thousand homes are shining."
Exhibit old objects to enlighten the people's wisdom
Zhenhai Tower, which was temporarily closed in spring, did not hibernate. The staff of the Guangzhou Museum are still nervously meeting, discussing, rectifying... Since the early spring of 1929, this "big cultural relic" of Guangzhou City has been used as a city museum exhibiting countless "small treasures" and continues to this day.
Beginning in May 1928, Zhenhai Tower underwent the first major overhaul in modern times and was opened as the Guangzhou Municipal Museum. It is also one of the first modern public museums in China.
From October 24, 1928, when the municipal council meeting was proposed to make Zhenhai Tower a museum, to february 11, 1929, when the Guangzhou Municipal Museum was officially opened, it took less than four months of preparation! Such administrative efficiency and the ability to implement cultural mobilization are amazing. It can be seen how the preparatory committee, headed by Xie Yingbo, president of the China Journalism College at that time, and Ding Yanyong, a teacher at the Municipal School of Fine Arts, included professors from Sun Yat-sen University (such as Gu Jiegang and Xin Shuzhi), kuomintang elders (such as Hu Yimin), and antiquities collectors (such as Luo Yuanjue) worked day and night! They successively began to collect historical museums (later added revolutionary souvenirs), fine arts and natural sciences, and at the same time established rules and regulations, widely supported by society, showing the advanced concept of disseminating scientific knowledge and preserving cultural relics and carrying forward the essence of the country.
On the opening day, ZhenhaiLou exhibited for the first time in the order of earth geological displays, animal and plant specimens, mineral specimens, antiquities and fine arts, revolutionary monuments and cultural and historical materials of various countries. There were more than 10,000 guests on that day, and according to the Guangzhou Republic of China Daily, in the three weeks after the opening, the daily visitors "were more than 60,000 or 70,000."
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The first large-scale exhibition in Guangzhou
Ten pavilions are spread over Yuexiu Mountain
From February 15 to March 16, 1933, Guangzhou held its first ever large-scale exhibition. The exhibition is divided into ten exhibition halls: revolutionary monuments, antiquities, folklore, municipal administration, education, armament, fine arts, agriculture, industry and commerce, and photography, which are distributed in many buildings at the foot of Yuexiu Mountain from the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall to the highest point, Zhenhai Tower.
The Zhenhai Building, where the Guangzhou Municipal Museum is located, serves as the municipal hall of this exhibition. The exhibits of the Municipal Hall mainly include three categories: models, physical objects and charts, presenting a "modern Guangzhou" in the planning blueprint of the administrator.
Set up in a small two-storey building next to the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, the Museum displays traditional gold stone calligraphy and painting artifacts from private collectors, Sun Yat-sen University, the Municipal Museum and the Huanghua Archaeological College. Because there are many antiquities exhibited, the way of changing the exhibits on a daily basis is adopted, and the antiquities displayed every day are different.
The Folk Customs Museum is located in the middle of Yuexiu Mountain, between the Sun Yat-sen Monument and the Zhenhai Tower, and most of the objects on display reflecting ethnic minorities in the Xijiang River Basin, Leizhou Peninsula, Hainan Island and Nanyang Islands.
Interview
Zhenhai Tower has both historical, cultural and military significance
Undertake the mission of public museums and deeply intervene in the construction and development of Guangzhou
Chen Hongjun is an expert in local literature and history and a researcher at the Guangzhou Museum
Yangcheng Evening News: In your opinion, what is the most unique place about Zhenhai Lou?
Chen Hongjun: Zhenhai Lou has the significance of cultural history, military history and museum history.
First of all, it is an important witness to the history of the founding of Guangzhou. More than a thousand years after the founding of Guangzhou, during the Hongwu period of the Ming Dynasty, in 1380, Zhu Liangzu, the Marquis of Yongjia, united the three cities and built a city wall, and built the Zhenhai Tower. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, there were no tall buildings in Guangzhou, except for the Tower of the Six Banyan Trees and the Pagoda of Huaisheng Temple, there were several Zhenhai Towers, and waterway merchants often used it as a navigation marker to enter Guangzhou. Zhenhai Tower is not only a cultural symbol of Guangzhou, but also a physical symbol of entering Guangzhou.
Not to mention the rich cultural connotation of Zhenhai Lou. It is not only a place where the official advocates local culture and the elegant collection of readers, but also a good place in the lives of ordinary people and citizens. Many major events in Guangzhou in modern times, even events that rewrite the history of the country, are related to it, such as the artillery fire of the invaders during the First and Second Opium Wars and the War of Resistance Against Japan, and the military tug-of-war during dynasties and regime changes, which have given ZhenhaiLou significant military significance.
Since it was opened as a museum in 1929, ZhenhaiLou has undertaken the mission of a public museum for nearly a hundred years, which has continued to the present.
Yangcheng Evening News: Judging from the literature of the past, what role did Zhenhai Lou play in the urban life and cultural life of Guangzhou people?
Chen Hongjun: Zhenhai Building is both official and non-governmental. Each restoration is officially presided over; but after the repair, it seems that many of the uses are private participation.
At first, the design of Zhenhai Tower did not have a fixed function, but later in addition to the use of the building as a military command post, we can know that it also served as a villa for high-ranking officials stationed in Guangdong, a folk literati poetry club, a high-end restaurant, and a place to ascend to Chongyang. There are old photos from the end of the Qing Dynasty that the fifth floor of Zhenhai Tower was once dedicated to Emperor Wenchang, and there are also poems that record the worship of Su Dongpo, the leader of the literary world. Interestingly, during the Republic of China, there were also "South Vietnamese restaurants". Huang Jie also mentioned in the "Record of Rebuilding the Zhenhai Tower" that this upstairs also "sells cakes and bait and tea", so the scholar can often "sit for a long time"... This shows that ZhenhaiLou is a place that can be used in wartime and better in peacetime.
Yangcheng Evening News: Among the early public museums in modern China, what are the most distinctive features of the Guangzhou Municipal Museum (hereinafter referred to as the "Municipal Courtyard")?
Chen Hongjun: In the 1920s, there were only 27 museums in China. At that time, Guangzhou, as the cultural center of southern China, was the first in academic research, administrative management and exchange of ideas with foreign countries, and the municipal court was prominent in concept and operation. At a time when most other museums in China are still generally displaying antiquities and treasures, the Municipal Court, under the guidance of the academic concept of the presiding officer Xie Yingbo, tried to use local cultural relics to reflect regional history in the exhibition, highlight the characteristics of the Pearl River, Xijiang civilization and Lingnan culture, and highlight the characteristics of the source of the revolution, which is a pioneering achievement.
In addition, the Municipal Academy presided over the establishment of China's earliest professional archaeological academic community, the Huanghua Archaeological Institute, and published the earliest archaeological journal in China, the Journal of Archaeology (inaugural issue), which laid the foundation for Guangzhou's position as the source and core of modern and contemporary field archaeology in China.
The Municipal Court was also deeply involved in the construction and cultural development of Guangzhou as a modern city, such as hosting the first exhibition in Guangzhou in 1933. In 1940, the "Guangdong Cultural Relics Exhibition" was held in Hong Kong, and although the municipal court had been destroyed by the war at that time, there were still some related collections and key people participating in this patriotic exhibition. It can be said that whether at the time of Chengping or at the time of national peril, it supports the preservation and cultural inheritance of Lingnan's cultural context.
Author: Deng Qiong