In the autumn of the tenth year of Chunxi (1183), Fan Chengda fell ill with a small disease. He had been frail and sick since childhood, but the illness had left him depressed for a long time, so much so that he went to the table five times, but he was not approved. After a while, after disagreeing with Song Xiaozong on political affairs, he was disheartened and suddenly felt that he had no way to serve the country, so he simply stepped down from his post as a scholar of the Senior Government Hall and went to the Dongxiao Palace in Lin'an Province to hang up a job and did not have to go to work--of course, this was within the scope of the southern Song Dynasty's policy, and it was definitely not the current empty salary--and then he returned to his hometown and began a long-awaited retirement life on the shore of Shihu Lake.
This time back to Shihu, until Shao Xi's death on September 5, 1193, the fourth year of Shaoxi(1193), for more than ten years, Fan Chengda planted plums, raised chrysanthemums, met friends, wrote poems, and compiled the "Wu Junzhi", and spent the most calm and elegant days of his life.
one
"Sixty Songs of Four Hours pastoral miscellaneous" is Fan Chengda's representative work. There is a small preface before the poem, Clouds:
Chun Xi Bing noon, sinking less relief, returned to the old hidden of Shihu Lake.
Since it is "re-arrived", it means that I have returned to Shihu lake before, not even once or twice. In fact, from the twenty-sixth year of Shaoxing (1156) to serve as the Sihu of Huizhou to join the army, he had many experiences of returning to his hometown to live in his career. In the second year of Qiandao (1166), when he was promoted to the post of official Wailang in Hangzhou, someone framed Fan Cheng for being suspected of being promoted beyond his rank, so he led the shrine Shilu in a loud rebuke, returned to Suzhou, and stayed by Shihu Lake for a few days. Of course, this exclusion may be related to the post adjustment of Hong Shi, an old leader who had appreciated and reused him during the Huizhou period. In this year, Hong Shi retired from the important position of prime minister and privy councillor, and Fan Chengda's career was also squeezed out.
More than ten years later, Fan Chengda returned to Shihu again, which was also a wish to return to his hometown and live in seclusion. Fortunately, this time he finally unloaded his armor and returned to the field and began the long-awaited life of retreat. It is for this reason that many people take it for granted that his Stone Lake Villa was built at this time. In fact, as early as the seventh year of Qiandao (1171), he broke ground on the shore of Shihu Lake to build a villa. In March of that year, Song Xiaozong wanted to use the traitor Zhang Said, fan Chengda refused to make a hasty system, which made Song Xiaozong both embarrassed and embarrassed. A few months later, Zhang said that the matter continued to ferment, and Fan Chengda, feeling that it was difficult to gain a foothold in the imperial court, proposed to resign and serve as the Jingjiang Prefecture and Guangxi Jingluo Appeasement Envoy as a cultivator of the Jiying Palace. Before taking up his post, he first returned to Suzhou, and did not leave Suzhou until December 7 of the following year for Guilin.
The Stone Lake Villa was probably built in this year and a half.
▍A corner of The Stone Lake Villa Shou Oak Hall
It should be said that the construction of the Stone Lake Villa is an ongoing process. Only this time, he began to break ground in the true sense. Now is an era of villa popularity, and in Fan Chengda's view, he returned to his hometown, and he is a scholar, and he has to make his house look decent. He chose a piece of land, the land is in the south of Yuecheng, with the high terrain and set up churches, pavilions, pavilions, etc., successively "Beishan Hall", "Yuxue Slope", "Splendid Slope", "Dream Fish Xuan", "Mengguo Pavilion" and other buildings turned out.
This ancient village, centered on his villa, is known as Fan Zhai because of its fame.
Fan Village is a garden in the south of Fan House, originally seventy houses of others, Fan Chengda purchased all the houses, planted plum trees in one-third of its land, built a pavilion and a pavilion, and named this garden Fan Village.
In the Record of the Luan, written in 1173, Fan Chengdashu and his visit to the Qianlin and Panyuan gardens in Fengcheng made a note: "At the beginning of Yu Yu Wuzhong Stone Lake, I learned to hide it. Failed to operate ruyi also. According to this, he was not satisfied with the construction of the Stone Lake Villa at that time, but in the eyes of his good friend Zhou Bida, it was already "the victory of the landing, A in the southeast".
All this corroborates the fact that as early as the Southern Song Dynasty, Shihu Villa was already a private garden famous in Jiangnan.
two
In 1183, Fan Chengda, who returned to Shihu, was truly stable. He wandered among the landscapes of Shihu Lake, not asking about current events, writing poems, and compiling local chronicles. The poem is "Four Hours of Pastoral Miscellaneous", and the local chronicle is "Wu Junzhi".
"Four Hours of Pastoral Miscellaneous" is a group of large-scale group poems created by Fan Chengda after living in seclusion in Shihu, with a large time span and complete content, divided into five series of "Spring", "Late Spring", "Summer", "Autumn" and "Winter", each series of 12 poems, a total of 60 poems. Fan Chengda's position in the ancient poetry circle was also established by this group of poems. The scholar Qian Zhongshu said with praise in the "Selected Notes on Song Poems", "This is the integration of ancient Chinese pastoral poetry." The birth of this group of poems is of course the accumulation of Fan Chengda's life, but the merits of Shihu Lake cannot be ignored, because the poems have both the lake and mountains of Shihu Lake and the customs and folk customs of Shihu Lake, which are captured by Fan Chengda with the keen sensitivity of a poet, forming a picture of pastoral life in the Southern Song Dynasty. In fact, Fan Chengda in Shihu, in addition to the 60 poems of "Four Hours of Pastoral Miscellaneous", also wrote a group of "Murata Lefu", these poems vividly present the various customs of The Shihu area and even the Wudi culture, and these fading life customs such as the lamp market and the silkworm are perfectly reflected in his poems.
"Wu Junzhi" is a very authoritative book in the history of Suzhou that has been handed down to this day.
As a retired official, Fan Chengda had a great dream of establishing a legend of his homeland, which was also the writing position of the ancient literati. Moreover, he was an excellent naturalist himself, and as early as his tenure in Guangxi, he compiled the "Guihai Yu Hengzhi", which detailed the products and customs of the Lingnan area. Moreover, the records of "Lan Yuan", "Luan Lu" and "Wu Chuanluo" that he successively wrote in succession during his exiled eunuch career accumulated rich experience for him to write "Wu Junzhi" in succession, and also cultivated and exercised his keenness in writing zhishu.
Fan Chengda's compilation of the "Chronicle of Wu County" must have been more attentive and hardworking than any previous zhishu. After all, this is a chronicle for the hometown. He compiled old books such as Lu Guangwei's "Records of Wu Di" of the Tang Dynasty and Zhu Changwen's "Continuation of the Wu County Map Classics" of the Northern Song Dynasty, extensively collected historical records, supplemented new events, and finally completed this imperial masterpiece in the third year of Shaoxi (1192). There are two salient features of the "Wu Junzhi", one is that the art and literature are not listed separately, but are attached to each door - this kind of zhishu writing has been approved, and later generations have followed it; the second is to strengthen the regional characteristics, and set up a separate door on the tiger hill, juxtaposed with the mountain, and the first of the "upgrading" of the Fang Zhimen. The year after completing the compilation of the Wu Junzhi, Fan Chengda died, although this was a regrettable thing, but it did not affect its wide spread.
If we look at the history of the development of Fang Zhixue, the Wu Junzhi has been recognized by Fang Zhi scholars and bibliographers, and even Wang Jun, who compiled the Gu Su Zhi, praised "Fan Zhi's completion and rectification". The Compendium of the General Catalogue of the Four Libraries is even more praised: "The introduction of Haobo and the description of the simple core are the rare books in the chronicles of the land." "I have to admit that the contribution of Wu Junzhi to the cause of Local History in China is also enormous, it carries on from top to bottom, is the song Dynasty Fang Zhi style stereotyping of the masterpiece, but also an important documentary material for studying the history of Suzhou area and its economic and cultural development. Moreover, if we look at it from the perspective of regional culture, Fan Cheng's great cultivation seems to be his own doing, but in fact it has a far-reaching impact, opening up the non-stop pursuit of the literati family in the Shihu area for the humanistic depths of Wuzhong Shengjing. In the Ming Dynasty, the two major families of the Lu and Mo clans who lived in Shihu, their descendants, in order not to make the sages hide and not show", followed the cultural behavior of Fan Chengda's compilation and revision of the Zhishu, and the ones that have been handed down to this day are Lu Xiang's "Shihu Zhiluo" and Mo Zhen's "Shihu Zhiluo". Among them, the former is included in the "Four Libraries Complete Book Series", and the latter is included in the "Continuation of the Four Libraries Complete Book".
three
Fan Chengda, who lived in seclusion, sang poetry and wine with new friends and old friends in Shihu Villa, tasted tea and poetry, and spent a happy and romantic time.
During this period, he and Yang Wanli, who was later revered as one of the "Four Great Poets of Zhongxing", sang and wrote the most. In February of the sixth year of Chunxi, Yang Wanli was transferred to Guangdong, and when he was appointed to the post of Changping Salt Tea Official on Guangdong East Road, he made a special trip to Suzhou when he was waiting to return to his hometown in Jiangxi, and spent a good time with Fan Chengda on Shihu Lake. After he arrived in Suzhou from Changzhou via Wangting, he immediately wrote a poem "Berthing Boat Hundred Flowers Island, Denggu Sutai". After the two met, Fan Cheng accompanied him to wander around Shihu Lake during the day, admiring the beauty of the landscape, talking at night with candles at night, sleeping at the foot, leaving a good story.
Jiang Kui is also a literati who visits Shihu a lot.
His first visit to Stone Lake was in the early summer of 1187. This year, through the introduction of Yang Wanli, he came to Shihu with a poem, and Fan and Jiang fell in love at first sight, and their friendship was deeper after separation. Jiang Kui was originally a prodigal person who was not willing to be poor and longed for a prosperous life, and after living in Huzhou according to Xiao Dezao, he was introduced by Xiao and met Yang Wanli in Hangzhou. Yang Wanli was unable to help, so he recommended him to Fan Chengda. The two saw each other at first sight, and Fan Chengda especially liked this poet who was more than 20 years younger than him. This history is also described in Xia Chengtao's "Biography of Baishi", "Taste Yang Wanlijie, Gurudwara Fan Cheng is greater than Suzhou, chengda thinks that Han mo's character is similar to Jin and Song Zhiyashi." In the following ten years, Jiang Kui has been traveling back and forth with Su Lake, and has also left many poems about Shi Hu.
In the second year of Shao Xi (1191), Jiang Fu braved the snow to return to Shihu and stayed for more than a month. Jiang Fu walked on the snow to visit friends, warmed a pot of wine, admired plums and wrote poems, what an elegant sun and moon. Slightly regrettably, this year, "the plum blossom snow falls, the bamboo courtyard is deep and quiet, and the stone lake is afraid of cold"--Fan Chengda, because of his poor health, can not be accompanied, it is Jiang Kui who plays alone in the garden, like playing with his own garden, casual and comfortable. Jiang Kui's "Dark Fragrance" and "Shadow" were deeply liked by Fan Chengda, so he let the musicians and singers at home play. Among them, the singer Xiaohong especially likes these two words and sings very affectionately. It was the night of the Chinese New Year's Eve of the Year, Jiang Fu wanted to return to Huzhou, Fan Cheng Da Dun became a human beauty, and married Xiao Hong to Jiang Fu as a concubine. After the banquet, Jiang Fu and XiaoHong set off from Shihu Lake, passing through the Wujiang Weeping Rainbow Bridge, Jiang Fu touched the scenery, mixed feelings, and got a poem: self-composed new words rhyme the most delicate, Xiaohong sings my whistle, the song finally passes the Songling Road, looking back at the Fourteenth Bridge of Yanbo.
Since then, Jiang Fu has composed music and Xiaohong has sung, leaving a good story in Huzhou.
shop
In China's vast ancient literature, genealogy, as a book compiled systematically according to the category of things, is a glorious and unique category. The writing system of genealogy was basically formed by about the Tang Dynasty, and the Song Dynasty was an era of great splendor, especially the genealogical records closely related to garden flowers and market life sprung up like mushrooms, which were quite voluminous. Of course, this is not only related to the development of leisure life in the Song Dynasty and the profound changes in the lives of citizens, but also related to the mentality of the literati of the Song Dynasty, thus forming a unique humanistic landscape. After Fan Chengda retired to Shihu, he collected plum and chrysanthemum varieties and planted them in Fan Village, where he lived. At the same time, he also consciously threw himself into the writing of genealogies, and wrote one volume each of "Fancun Plum Genealogy" and "Fancun Juqu Genealogy".
Fan Chengda loved Mei all his life, and the deeds of Yongmei, Mei Appreciation, and Meimei have long been seen in the words. According to incomplete statistics, there are about two hundred poems in his poetry collection related to plum blossoms. Fan Cheng's great work "Plum Spectrum" is also due to temperament. He made a more specific account of the names, shapes, growth scales and ornamental value of 12 kinds of plums, such as Jiangmei, Early Plum, Guancheng Plum, Jumei, Gumei, Heavy Leaf Plum, Green Calyx Plum, Hundred Leaf Plum, Red Plum, Mandarin Duck Plum, Apricot Plum, and Wax Plum. As the first plum blossom monograph in China and the world, "Fancun Plum Spectrum" reflects Fan Chengda's rich botanical knowledge system, of course, this is also accumulated by his in-depth and meticulous observation in the production practice of planting plums for a long time. It should be said that the "Plum Spectrum" has extremely important reference value for the study of the biological development history of ancient China, and also has an extremely important role in the development of Plum culture in China.
In addition to the "Plum Spectrum", Fan Chengda also wrote "Fan Cun Ju Spectrum".
The pioneering work of ancient Jupu is Liu Meng's "Liu Clan Jupu", and another more important work in the history of Jupu is the "Shishi Jupu" of Shi Zhengzhi, who lived in Suzhou in his later years and called himself "Wumen Old Garden". Fan Chengda's "Fancun Chrysanthemum Spectrum" is simpler than the former, but it makes up for the shortcomings of the "Liu's Chrysanthemum Spectrum" that is vague about chrysanthemum cultivation technology, and it is more detailed than the latter, just right to "count all the spectrum" of 36 chrysanthemums in FanCun, and also analyzes the reasons why the world loves chrysanthemums. The most important value of the "Fancun Juju Spectrum" is that, first, it records the art chrysanthemum method of the old man under Wuxia, and the other is to record the elegant things of the chrysanthemum posing for viewing.
——Mei and Ju, like two beauties in the time of Fan Cheng's Big Stone Lake, have the beauty of red sleeves and incense, soothing the heart of an old man who has gone through vicissitudes.
five
The old garden will always be a paradise for wanderers, or a refuge.
Whether it is a daily return to his hometown or an impeachment, as long as Fan Chengda comes to Shihu, he will indulge in the lake and mountains of Shihu. And this time, when he really lived in seclusion, he must have dreamed that no matter how turbulent the situation outside was and how ups and downs people were, he would spend the rest of his life here. When he is idle, he will swing the stone lake with his friends and enjoy a leisurely life. He wrote two articles, one is "Records of Panshi Lake in the Mid-Autumn Festival" and the other is "Records of Heavy Nine Panshi Lake". Although the guests on the two trips are not the same, the text sincerely records the happy life of the boat Shihu Lake. Not only that, he also laid down his former status as a high-ranking official on the edge of The Rock Lake, went down to the field to cultivate, and enjoyed the joy and happiness of labor with the local farmers. He even looked like a peasant, and said in his poems that the work in the field was enough for him to work for more than half a year—his poem "Inspecting the New Field of Shihu Lake" recorded this experience. However, after all, the ideal of life in the countryside was still entangled in the political affairs of the Southern Song Dynasty and coiled endlessly. In November of the fifteenth year of Chunxi, he received an edict from the imperial court, ordering him to be appointed as the governor of Fuzhou.
This year, he was a 63-year-old man!
Fan Chengda was already accustomed to seeing the plum blossoms of Shihu Lake and the color of Shihu's water, so he returned to the official arena and continued to face complicated personnel affairs. Therefore, he repeatedly asked for resignation, but he could not allow it, so in February of the following year, he left for his post, fortunately, he went to Wuzhou (present-day Jinhua, Zhejiang), and when he asked for resignation again with the attitude of trying it out, he was unexpectedly allowed. Such news was undoubtedly a windfall, so he turned back and continued his life of retreat by the stone lake.
If the trip to Fuzhou was not dangerous, then Fan Chengda, who had been shaoxi for three years, did not escape the disaster after all: he was added to the senior government hall and knew Taiping Prefecture (taiping prefecture) (the seat of government was in present-day Dangtu, Anhui). It was also the last time in his life that he would be out. Perhaps, it was because he resigned on the way last time, and this time he was really embarrassed to open his mouth again, so he gritted his teeth and insisted and embarked on the road to his appointment. Soon after taking office, the second daughter who accompanied him died. A 67-year-old man, in the face of the great pain of the white-haired man sending the black-haired person, the body is difficult to support, and in the end, he has to resign and return home.
According to the "Fan Chengda Annals", it was June of that year that he returned to the stone lake.
land
On the fifth day of the ninth lunar month in the fourth year of ShaoXi (1193), Fan Chengda died at the age of 68, and was given the title of Young Master, posthumously honored as the Duke of Chongguo, Yuwen Mu, and finally buried in Yangtianwu, Tianping Mountain, west of Shihu Lake. A literati with a pure heart, an official who had achieved good political integrity in a faint dynasty, and whose eunuch footprints were all over Guilin, Chengdu, Nanjing, and other places, his magnificent life finally ended at the edge of Shihu Lake, leaving behind the story of the envoy who regarded death as a homecoming and countless poems that were popular among the population. And his last words were to ask his eldest son Fan Xin to ask Yang Wanli for an order—to write a preface to his self-compiled poetry collection Shihu Poetry Collection. A sick person, a dying person, on his deathbed is still thinking about his own article and preface, how much he loves his article.
The people around Shihu Lake have never forgotten him.
The Lu Yong and Lu Xiang brothers of the Ming Dynasty always regarded Fan Chengda as their own model of rural sages, and they encouraged each other: "He has spare strength every day, and he is used as a academy to worship the duke." In the thirteenth year of Ming Zhengde (1518), Lu Yong, in order to supervise the imperial history, decided on his wish that year, consulted with his father Lu Gang and brother Lu Xiang to jointly build a academy and worship Fan Chengda. Lu Xiang said in the "Shihu Zhiluo", "The left of the Miaoyin Temple, the right of the Chamo Mountain, the stone lake under the Tongqu, and the Meng'ou Pavilion are straight, and the land is several acres." Therefore, it is owned by the surname of Limin Zhang, hazel mang. The family prince bought it for dozens of gold, and the herb was reclaimed, flat and quiet, and the ancient wood was repaired, out of the Ganglongjian. "After the purchase of land, it will be used as the first district of the college." Gunshou Yongkang Xu Gongzhen revealed it with the old amount of Kunshan. The sutra began with the self and ended in Xin Wei. In the three years from the fourteenth year of Zhengde (1519) to the sixteenth year of Zhengde (1521), the Fancheng Ancestral Hall was completed.
▍Vision of Fan Wen Mu Gong Ancestral Hall (Republic of China)
When the academy was built, Lu Yong had been looking around for Fan Chengda's Han Mo. In the winter of 1520, a guest came from eastern Zhejiang to Susu, carrying a hand scroll, which was Fan Cheng's large handwritten "Sixty Songs of Four Hours of Pastoral Miscellaneous Xing", and there was Fan Cheng's great saying at the end of the volume, saying that Yu Chunxi thirteen years (1186) sent a handwritten letter to Fuzhou envoys Jun and Zhong in the same year, singing and singing with poems between the two places after the Qi Dynasty. After repeated identification, it was indeed Fan Gong's original work, which made Lu Yong ecstatic and he bought it with heavy money. The Pastoral Monument, the Song Xiaozong Imperial Book "Shihu" Stele and the Fan Chengda Statue are the treasures of the three major town shrines of the ancestral hall. But with the passage of time, only the poetry monument has not been destroyed and has been preserved to this day. Fan Cheng Ancestral Hall, which was later renamed Shihu Academy, although in the Ming Dynasty was a place where Shen Zhou, Tang Yin, Wen Zhengming and other literati read and painted, but due to the lack of management of the Lu descendants, the academy was maintained by monks. Around the fortieth year of the Wanli Calendar (1612), when Fan Yunlin, the seventeenth grandson of Fan Zhongyan, came to visit, "a dome of stele was in the midst of abundant grass, and the Song Fuling handwritten 'Shihu' Chenhan was in the middle." So the old site was restored. Later, both Chongzhen and Jiaqing were repaired during the years, but in the end they were completely destroyed during the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
▍Pan Wen Mu Gong Ancestral Hall (late Qing Dynasty)
Now, the Fan Gong Ancestral Hall, which can be seen by the world, was rebuilt in March 1984 and officially opened to the public three years later.
In the autumn of 2018, on an autumn rainy afternoon, I walked into the Fan Gong Ancestral Hall for the first time with a sense of admiration.
There are four characters on the main entrance of the brick "Shihu Academy", which is the handwriting of the contemporary great scholar Qi Gong. There is a brick carved gatehouse in the back, and the forehead is "the old hidden in the city". The entrance is the front yard, and the south wall has a cave door, and plum blossoms are planted all over the door. The northeast side of the wall is curved and inlaid with a stone carving of "Pet Light Yi Shi". Three rooms in the main hall, the hanging plaque "Fan Wen Mu Gong Ancestral Hall", there is a standing screen, the front side introduces the ancestral hall, and the back introduces fan Chengda's life. The last one enters the hanging plaque "Shou Oak Hall", holding the pillar and saying: "Ten Thousand Miles Remember Wu Boat, Shushui BaShan Passing Place; Qianqiu Chongmiao Temple, Spring Moon String Feeling Time." "Lian, written by Deng Yunxiang, is written by Gu Tinglong. In the middle of a stone platform, Fan Chengda's bronze statue is on the top, he holds a scroll in his hand, and his eyes are clear.
What would he think when he looked at the Stone Lake? (Editor-in-charge: Sun Xiaoning)
Source: Beijing Evening News, Five Colors of Earth | Author Ye Zi
Editor: Yang Changping
Process Editor: Wu Yue