Ma Liang Hutong has nothing to do with "Ma Liang"
On the west side of the back door bridge on Di'anmen Outer Street, there is a small alley that is easy to ignore, named: Ma Liang Hutong. Regarding this hutong, it is recorded in the Beijing Geographical Names Dictionary: "In 1949, the Latest Peking Map called the Ma Liang Compound, and in 1965 it was renamed to the present name.
Ma Liang Hutong North Exit
Ma Liang is a legendary painter with the story of Ma Liang. What is its name or what it means? This question mark at the end of the sentence indicates that there is speculation and uncertainty. (Below: The right pole is the east entrance of Maliang Hutong, and the left is an antique shop.) Filmed in 1955)
Maliang Hutong is diagonally oriented from east to west, with the east exit on Di'anmen Outer Street, the west to the front of Hainan, and the north entrance facing the Shicha coast. It is 119 meters long and 2 meters wide. Hutong was formed in the middle of the Qing Dynasty, because there are large households with the surname of Ma living in the hutong, so it is called majia courtyard. So, is Ma Liang Hutong related to ma liang?
According to the "Shichahai Chronicle", "The former Hainan along No. 4. During the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, Ma Liang of Enxian County, Shandong Province, built a small mosque, and in the tenth year of Daoguang (1830), Ma Liang's grandson Ma Jiu expanded and rebuilt the temple in order to buy a property surnamed Huang. It is not difficult to infer from this that the origin of the name of Ma Liang Hutong proves to be related to Ma Liang, the founder of the Shichahai Mosque (the mosque was occupied by street factories after liberation, and only the ruins remain. At present, there is a preparatory group for the Shichahai Mosque).
Inside Today's Ma Liang Hutong
According to another written record, in the old days, the area of Maliang Hutong was low in terrain and was called "Majiakeng". Because Ma Liang Hutong is close to the Qianhai, there was a tao river around the Qianhai in the early years, which was used to adjust the water level. It is possible that the embankments on both sides of the Tao River were higher than the nearby streets and alleys at that time, and Ma Liang Hutong (called Majia Courtyard at that time) was exactly in the "pit", because there were large households with the surname of Ma living in the streets and alleys, so it was named "Majiakeng".
The Ma family is a Hui ethnic group, and ma Lianggong, an imam from EnXian County, Shandong Province, is their ancestor who moved to Beijing - Ma Lianggong Qianlong came to Beijing for ten years and settled in Houmen Bridge outside The Gate of Beijing's Di'anmen Gate, known as Houmen Bridge Horse. Some researchers have deduced that today's Ma Liang Hutong is the site of the Old Mansion of Ma Liang Gong, the Ma Liang Compound, and the genealogy calls this Ma clan as the Ma clan of Beiping Zhongshutang.
Mr. Zhang Chunyan, whose ancestors lived in Maliang Hutong for three generations, recalled that the predecessor of the Oriental Bookstore (No. 10 Maliang Hutong) at the north entrance of Maliang Hutong today, the owner of the courtyard was surnamed Ma, and he was definitely a Huimin. During the "Cultural Revolution", he was swept out of the house and bombed back to his hometown. After the implementation of the policy, the descendants of the Ma family also returned to handle the procedures for the return of private real estate. From this, should this be a descendant of ma Liang's family?
Zhang Chunyan said that most of the people living in Maliang Hutong were buyers and sellers, there were workshops that made traditional Chinese medicine, and there were glass shops. Zhang Chunyan's grandfather started by playing small drums (collecting waste), and later opened an antique shop and bought a shop and real estate.
Jubaozhai (antique shop) on the left side of Ma Liang Hutong
Today, the "Baoju Zhai" by the back gate bridge of Di'anmen is one of the acquisition offices of the Beijing Cultural Relics Store, and the plaque is from the hand of the painter Qin Zhongwen. The predecessor of the store is the property purchased by the Zhang family.
In the late 1990s, the folk collection gradually became scarce, called the Acquisition Department, but there was nothing to collect, and then it was closed, and it was once the warehouse of the Oil Painting Department of Hanhai Company. Today, Collector magazine belongs to the cultural relics company and began to move to the office here.
Backdoor post office before 2003
In 2003, the Di'anmen Post Office (formerly known as the Houmen Post Office), which was founded in 1906, was finally settled on the banks of the Houmen Bridge after several moves and turnovers near Di'anmen. To this end, the east entrance of Maliang Hutong "sacrificed" half of the hutong, and many families were demolished. (Below: A small three-storey building with a vista view, that is, the Di'anmen Post Office next to Ma Liang Hutong)
Nowadays, After more than two hundred years of wind and rain baptism, although the "limbs" are damaged, after all, the overall spirit of the hutong is still there, which is the luckiest and most gratifying. (To be continued)