Not far to the west of the south entrance, the north wing of West Lake Road, a north-south street called Dengren Bridge. This street is not long, about 100 meters, the gate of "Long County Middle School" is located at its northern end, and the street in front of the school is the east-west College Street. The construction of Huangxing South Road Pedestrian Street has made the eastern section of College Street a passageway for buildings.
And from the south entrance of Dengren Bridge 20 to 30 meters west of an alley called Nanqiang Bay, the alley is very narrow, about three meters wide, a small storefront next to each other, operating a variety of snacks, the consumer group is mostly students of Chang County Middle School.
South Wall Bay (Lane)
Further west of the South Wall Bay is the Xiwen Temple Plain. This street is also narrow, and at the western end, near the main street of Xuegongmen, stands the only ancient archway in the ancient city of Changsha, where a plot of land is the site of the "Xuegong" of the old Changsha Province.
Xiwen Temple Ping Ancient Arch
Changsha, the only ancient archway located in the downtown area on the east bank of the XiangJiang River, is more than nine meters high and more than six meters wide, and is a four-pillar and three-room (gate) heavy eaves stone archway, which is magnificent. The front of the arch is inscribed with four large characters of "Daoguan Ancient and Modern", and the back of the arch is embossed with the word "Xianguan". On the upper ridge of the archway is a two-dragon play bead on one side and a relief of a lion hydrangea on the other, and its carving technique is very delicate and exquisite, showing the exquisite conception of the designers and the superb skill level of the craftsmen.
The former Changsha Fu Xuegong, the highest school in the twelve counties under the jurisdiction of Changsha at that time, was built in the 5th year of qing tongzhi (1866), which was a building of the "left temple and right learning" that combined the temple of literature with official learning, and was later destroyed in the Wenxi fire in 1938, leaving only this ancient archway. In the 1930s, He Jian, chairman of Hunan Province, held a grand ceremony here.
Two years earlier, I often germinated the humor of thinking about the ancients, and chose to walk alone in the Xiwen Temple Ping when the streets and alleys tended to be silent after nightfall, stopping near the ancient archway and the ruins of the Xuegong Palace, concentrating on my thoughts, as if suddenly falling into a sense of time and space. After a little concentration, I saw that the two or three mahjong halls facing the street of the surrounding residents were in full swing, and several small daily grocery food shops were still operating or closing. Under the dim lights of the streets and alleys, the night pedestrians rush by...
Who could have imagined that a plot of high-rise buildings in a modern big city, such a back street, could "explore" a different kind of ancient charm. The new citizens of Changsha, and even those who have lived in the city for more than ten years or longer, may not have thought about it, or may have ignored this place with deep cultural heritage.
Ruins of Changsha Xuegong
Continuing westward from the ruins of xiwenmiao pingxuegong, a north-south street is in front of it, which is the main street of Xuegongmen. The pavement of the streets and alleys was renovated several years ago, paved with regular and flat mechanical hemp stones, replacing the original hemp stones that were originally hewn by hand.
Diagonally facing Xuegong Street on the north side of the Xiwenmiaoping intersection, a somewhat unusual building is very eye-catching, which is the "Mei Mansion" that still exists today.
The Mei Mansion was originally the former residence of Mei Jingfu, a famous merchant known as the "King of Pigments". Mei Jingfu became a giant merchant by selling foreign goods and built a mansion. The small western-style building has two floors, covering an area that is not large, with a blue tile roof, the wall is a color of green bricks, and the roof side is built with a ventilation veranda, which integrates a lot of Western elements.
It's just that the mansion is too close to the street, there is no depth, and there is no front and back or left and right courtyards and roadways, which is much inferior to the higher grade mansions. However, it is really rare that the Mei Mansion can be preserved to this day, and it has now become a living witness of the mansion architecture of the Republic of China period in Changsha.
Mei Mansion, has been fenced
There is a "Chen Ji oil shop" in the middle of Xuegongmen Main Street, and the pavement facing the street is no different from the adjacent shop, but this oil shop is famous for helping the CCTV "China on the tip of the tongue" film crew to "randomly" choose it in the deep alleys of Changsha.
The oil shop's signature oil products are steamed buns, oil cakes, and twist flowers. In the TV series of short films, the steamed buns, which are known as one of the "Top Ten Gourmet Snacks" in Changsha, attracted foreign tourists, especially from all over the country, making the "Chen Ji Oil Shop" really popular for a while. In fact, there are many shops selling fried steamed buns in the streets and alleys of Changsha, and Chen Ji's steamed buns are not unique. I have to lament the power of the media.
I also secretly counted the so-called "top ten gourmet snacks" in Changsha: sugar and oil dumplings, shallot oil dumplings, white sugar dumplings, sesame oil pig blood, sister dumplings, stinky tofu, white grain pills, steamed buns... What else? Can't make it up. Because there was no "top ten gourmet snacks" before. However, the passage of time, the progress of the times, inheritance, excavation, development and innovation will always be the driving force of social development, and food culture is naturally indispensable.
Chen Ji oil store
XiwenMiaoping road intersection walks past the main street of Xuegongmen, and that street is called Tempeh Garden. The streets and alleys of the ancient city of Changsha are really "full of styles", just to say that the names related to eating: taro garden, fragrant leaves, vegetable root incense, white orchard, citrus garden, butcher street... And so on, it is really interesting, arousing people's memories and associations.
Tempeh Garden is also a secluded alley, and the biggest difference between it and other alleys is that the alleys are winding and winding. In addition, the tempeh garden, which is less than four meters wide, is long and long, and the length is not very commensurate with the "garden". Because among the streets and alleys in Changsha, the streets and alleys with "Li", "Garden", "Tai" and the like are not long, but this "Tempeh Garden" seems to be an exception.
Changsha people used to love to eat tempeh, there is always a bowl of garlic pepper fried tempeh on the family table, spicy "tempeh pepper" is very appetizing, but it is a very good meal, everyone eats sweating on their heads, spicy and long-winded, and even said "good sizzle, good sizzle"...
After the reform and opening up, people's clothing, food, housing and transportation have undergone tremendous and gratifying qualitative changes, just to say that in terms of eating, from filling the stomach to paying attention to the nutrition, diversification and health of food, it is a change that was never extravagant in the past. In recent years, our old classmates often have dinner, everyone is the authentic "old Changsha", but they all say in one voice: the dishes should be less oily, low-salt, and not too spicy.
At that time, there was a popular folk song in Changsha, "One point and one horizontal length, one skimming to Liuyang, Liuyang out of tempeh, tempeh (there) an inch long", this folk song and "Moon rice, sit a daddy in it..." is also famous. There are many liuyang villagers among the indigenous Changsha citizens, has the tempeh garden been named after the liuyang migrants who gathered to live here, or once opened a large tempeh workshop? For example, the Esheng Lane and Minsheng Lane in Changsha City are inhabited by migrants from Hubei and Fujian and have guild halls.
The tempeh garden is still secluded
This block, College Lane (renamed "Dongxue Lane" for a while) is also a little distinctive, because of its proximity to Long County Middle School, this narrow alley has become a "street of cultural supplies", school bags, pens, books, balls... Cheaper than the big shops, students from many schools in the city often visit the area from near and far, with a complete range of goods and affordable prices. Later, some shops turned to the operation of lady and boy costumes, which made this street flow with people's inadvertent "Korean Wave". In some years, middle school students have been popular in "chasing stars", chasing movie stars and singers on the mainland, as well as movie stars and singers from Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea.
The old gate of Chang County Middle School was originally in Shangli Jiapo, the school gate was very small, and later the new school gate was built at the intersection of College Street and Deng Ren Bridge and College Street. Xueyuan Street has always been a lively street in the West Wing near the south entrance of Huangxing Road, and the "Cultural Cinema", one of the seven major cinemas in old Changsha, is located here (in the past, changsha had seven cinemas in Changsha, namely Xinhua, Jianshe, Youth, Volkswagen, Silver Star, Culture and Workers). The "Cultural Cinema" is the cinema that screened the first round of films, and there is also an open-air film screening venue in the middle of summer, when the indoor cinema has no air conditioning, and the open-air cinema is naturally much cooler.
Long County Middle School Old School Gate Photo Source/Chen Xianshu
I still remember the banxiang on the east side of Banxiang Street, a family surnamed Yu in that narrow alley, an old couple who were sixty years away. This Yu Big Daddy retired from the DaChunqiao Vegetable Shop in the late 1970s, and his wife is a housewife without a job, living on a monthly pension of twenty-three yuan, and his life is tight.
The two old sons, childless, in order to have a care for them, brought back a 17-year-old distant relative from the countryside of their hometown of Liuyang. The leader of Yu Dapa's vegetable shop "opened the net" and let this man work as a temporary worker in the vegetable shop. The servant is diligent and capable, very optimistic about the leaders and colleagues, intending to turn his recruitment to a regular, let him go back to the countryside to open a large number of certification materials step by step, and finally stuck in the hukou migration, failed to enter the job. At that time, the "change from agriculture to non-agriculture" was an insurmountable gap, and it was even more difficult to move the hukou from Dizhou County to Changsha City.
However, the luck of this man was not bad, and after returning to Liuyang, he entered the tobacco company and became a well-treated and welfare employee in the system. In the following years, this man often came to visit and help The two elders of Yu's father, and finally sent the two elders to the end. An unsuccessful succession and job search, derived from such a grateful picture, is really worthy of account and praise.
Distribution of old streets and alleys around Xiwenmiaoping (1986 map)
From xiwenmiaoping in the south to Shanglijiapo in the north, there is an alley - Quansijing, the origin of the fame of this alley, which can be supported by the folk name slip by the mouth: "East and West Four Wood Red Arch Building, walking horses in the building; Pengzuo Chen Hongwu Jiajing, well spring hiss." According to legend, there is an ancient well in this alley, and every night, the well emits a hissing sound, so it is called the spring hissing well.
With the construction and popularization of the urban water pipe network, this ancient well has been abandoned and buried like the ancient wells in the streets and alleys of the city. Nowadays, the shed has been renovated and renewed, with landscape walls, several leisure nodes and an exquisite pocket park, which has become a good place to explore the ancients.
When it comes to the ancient wells in Changsha, the most famous are Baishajing and Hualongjing. Baishajing is located at the foot of the old Huilong Mountain, later the western section of Baisha Road; Hualongjing is located in the middle of Hualongchi Alley, east of Huangxing South Road, not far from Dongwenmiaoping. Of course, the unique name and heritage of the spring well also makes this ancient well extraordinary.
Izumi Well (Lane) has been organically transformed
With the completion of the renovation of Huangxing South Road Pedestrian Street in 2002, College Street spontaneously formed as a snack street, bringing together the special snacks of the north, south, west and east, but most of them are some stalls and small stores, and the streets and alleys are lined with people.
In the summer of the previous year, one of my colleagues who retired back to wuhan went to Changsha, and I specially took him to this "south entrance snack street" as an east guest, and chose a shop: a plate of red crayfish, a dish of dark stinky tofu, a few golden onion oil dumplings, one person and one beer, two people ate and drank happily. The colleague was full of praise, even saying "no less than the snacks in Wuhan" and "living in Changsha is so happy"... My heart was racing: food is truly an interpretation of life.
Many old streets, alleys and dilapidated houses that have gone through the vicissitudes of time and historical changes have been reduced to shantytowns with the process of urban modernization, demolition, transformation, planning... Imperative. According to the blueprint, the xiwenmiaoping westward Xuegongmen Main Street and tempeh garden, Tangjiawan, Baihe Lane, Quansijing, Yongxiang New Street and many small streets and alleys are included in the scope of demolition and construction, shantytown transformation and organic renewal are combined, and some streets and alleys have become a section of the "Changsha Historical Trail" that runs through the north and south.
Then, we will take the transformation of shantytowns as an opportunity and entry point, through the restoration of the past, to create a complex of buildings with folk customs, so that the dazzling Changsha historical and cultural block can be integrated into the lives of citizens, so that people can understand, watch, experience and feel this land of outstanding people, the proud history and culture of Huxiang.
Organically transformed White Crane Lane
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*This article is published exclusively by CityMemory, author | Zheng Shoushan, Editor | clearly. The photographic images in this article are provided by the author.