At noon on October 17, 2020, Mr. and Mrs. Wu held a send-off luncheon for the two of us at the Shijiazhuang International Building. After bidding farewell to our old classmates and old friends in Shijiazhuang, we continued to head north, and today's destination is Dingzhou. Along the way, the rain is constantly falling, and the wiper is also constantly turning, and the distance of more than 80 kilometers has been more than two hours. At 5 o'clock in the afternoon, we arrived at Chongwen Street, Gujianqun, Dingzhou City.
When I was building the Beijing-Kowloon Railway, in order to thank the assisting unit for its strong support for the Beijing-Kowloon Line, I went to Dingzhou Kaiyuan Thermos Cup Factory to order a batch of stainless steel insulation cups as souvenirs for the relevant units. At that time, it was only known that Dingzhou City was a county-level city in Hebei Province.
In October 2019, when I visited the Jinsha Site Museum in Chengdu with my friends, there was an exhibition hall called "Discovery • Zhongshan Kingdom", which was 132 groups of 227 fine cultural relics excavated from the Zhongshan State ruins in the Warring States period, introducing the entire process of the mysterious Zhongshan State in Chinese history from the founding to the strong to the prosperous.
At that time, I saw the cultural relics on display and was amazed by such exquisite cultural relics in Zhongshan during the Warring States period. The present-day city of Dingzhou was historically the capital of the Zhongshan Kingdom. Therefore, I will go to Dingzhou to see it as the end of this self-driving tour.
▲Photos of "Discovery • Zhongshan Kingdom" taken during a visit to the Jinsha Site Museum in Chengdu on October 17, 2019.
Looking at the disclosure of the ruins of zhongshan country and the interpretation of cultural relics one by one, we have also entered the history of the Warring States Zhongshan kingdom for more than two hundred years. As a nomadic people, the ancestors of Zhongshan were tenacious and indomitable, heroic and good at fighting, three times the country was destroyed and twice restored, and several glories eventually passed away.
The legendary experience of Zhongshan Kingdom confirms the process of blending nomads and Central Plains civilization. The discovery of the tomb of King Zhongshan fills in a history that has been missed by historians, reconstructing a mysterious ancient country that has long disappeared from the blanks.
▲Introduction of Zhongshan Country
Zhongshan Kingdom (414 BC – 296 BC), surnamed Ji (一說子姓, founded by Duke Wu of Zhongshan, was a state founded by Bai Di, named Zhongshan Kingdom because there were mountains in the city (Zhongshan City). The land is embedded between Yan zhao and Yan. After experiencing the three stages of development of Rong Di, Xianyu and Zhongshan, he had long been at war with the Jin dynasty and other Central Plains countries, and was once regarded as a major problem for the Central Plains countries, and experienced the events of Xinghou Borong and Jinhou resisting Xianyu.
Later, The Wei state of Wei Wenhou sent the generals Le Yang and Wu Qi to command the army, and after three years of bitter fighting, occupied the state of Zhongshan in 407 BC. Later, the Duke Huan of Zhongshan restored the country, and the national strength was at its peak, with 9,000 chariots. In 296 BC, it was destroyed by the Zhao state.
After the Warring States Seven Xiongs Qin, Chu, Qi, Yan, Han, Zhao, and Wei, there was also an eighth Xiong, namely the Zhongshan Kingdom. In the long river of Chinese history, the strange flower of the Warring States Zhongshan Kingdom has always shone with mysterious brilliance, and there are many records about it in the annals of history, which first appeared in 506 BC and was still faintly visible in the more than two hundred years when the Zhao State destroyed the Zhongshan Kingdom in 295 BC. For example, in important classics such as the "Records of History", "Zuo Zhuan", and "Bamboo Book Chronicle", there are records about the Zhongshan Kingdom.
▲Came to Dingzhou and lived in the antique style commercial pedestrian street in Dingzhou City. Here is the junction of the north district and the south district of Dingzhou City, a wide avenue, divided into two parts: Kaiyuan Building Square and Gucheng Commercial Pedestrian Street. Surrounded by parks, temples of literature, ancient gates, mosques, Yanyang Chu former residences and other historical and cultural buildings, this area is the most important ancient cultural center in Dingzhou.
In the evening, the rain also stopped, and we began to tour the ancient city of Dingzhou at night. At night, the ancient city is illuminated and the scenery is like a dream. After eating some local snacks on the snack street as dinner, we saw the towering "Kaiyuan Pagoda" illuminated by neon lights, walked the "idiom story" corridor with three red frames, crossed the golden and brilliant "East and West Gate", looked at the "Ancient Zhongshan Kingdom" city tower guarded by the Lion Town, read the "Dingzhou Bureau" that was carefully carved into a masterpiece, and guanding the "Han Qi Statue" of Guandingzhou Taishou...
▲ Dingzhou Ancient City is located in Beicheng District, Dingzhou City, Hebei Province, and is famous for its long history and splendid culture. Since the Shang Zhou Dynasty, Dingzhou has been the political, economic, military and cultural center of the north, leaving a rich cultural heritage for future generations.
▲ On the morning of November 18, it began to rain again. At breakfast, I visited three ancient buildings in Dingzhou in the rain, the Millennium Ancient Pagoda, the Tribute Courtyard and the Temple of Literature, the most complete preserved examination institute of the imperial examination system in the north, and the Ding porcelain exhibition hall.
▲Kaiyuan Temple Pagoda
Dingzhou Kaiyuan Temple Pagoda, named after the Kaiyuan Temple, has long been destroyed, and the only building in the temple is this pagoda. The Kaiyuan Pagoda was built in the fourth year of The Northern Song Dynasty Zhenzong Xianping (1001 AD) and completed in the second year of the Reign of Emperor Renzong of the Northern Song Dynasty (1055 AD). The reason for the construction of this pagoda is, first, to enshrine the Buddhist scriptures that the great monks of Kaiyuan Temple have been able to retrieve from Xizhu by order; The second is military necessities, and climbing the tower can look forward to the military situation of the Liao State.
During the Northern Song Dynasty, Dingzhou was located in the border of the Song and Liao borders, the gateway to the country, there are "eighteen roads under the heavens, the heaviest in Hebei, the thirty-six states in Hebei, for dingzhou the most important", so this tower is also known as the enemy tower. The tower is 83.7 meters high, is the highest existing brick tower in China, but also the world's highest building of the same structure in the same period, the famous ancient construction expert Mr. Luo Zhewen praised it as "The First Tower in China", in 1961 by the State Council announced as the first batch of national key cultural relics protection units.
▲Fixed porcelain
Ding porcelain: Ding kiln is one of the five famous kilns of the Song Dynasty, created and fired in the Tang Dynasty, flourished in the Northern Song Dynasty, and finally yuan, today's ding porcelain firing tends to flourish. The kiln is famous for its white porcelain, which has a firm and delicate tire quality and a transparent glaze color. "White as jade, thin as paper, sound as chime" is the true portrayal of ding porcelain. Liu Qi of the Yuan Dynasty highly praised Ding porcelain in the "Gui Qian Zhi": "Dingzhou flower porcelain Ou, the color of the world is white".
Its representative work is the baby pillow, and there is a folk legend that "whoever seeks a child, gets his porcelain baby and gets a tiger". Fixed kiln color glazed porcelain, although few but fine. In the Song Dynasty Shao Bowen's "Records of Smell and Seeing", there was a good story in which Song Renzong rebuked Zhang Guifei for accepting gifts from his courtier Wang Gongchen to send Dingzhou red porcelain. Su Dongpo has a famous sentence in "Yongding Porcelain" that "Dingzhou flower porcelain is carved with red jade".
▲Dingzhou Confucian Temple
Dingzhou Confucian Temple, also known as the "Confucius Temple", was founded in 848 AD (the second year of Tang Dynasty), and is one of the oldest prefecture capital Confucian temples in Hebei Province. Covering an area of more than 12,000 square meters, it is the largest preserved and most complete architectural structure preservation of the Temple of Literature complex in Hebei Province. The three adjacent courtyards of the east, west and middle that have been preserved are arranged in the central axis.
The main buildings of the East Courtyard are the Chongsheng Ancestral Hall and the Kuixing Pavilion; The west courtyard is Minglun Hall; The middle courtyard is the Dacheng Hall, the Gate of Halberds, and the Gate of the Stars. The Temple of Literature is a key cultural relics protection unit in Hebei Province. At the same time, there are also attractions such as Dongpo Double Locust, Locust Holding Spring, and Falling Star Stone. Later, the Dacheng Hall, Kuixing Pavilion, Lingxing Gate, Chongsheng Ancestral Hall, etc. were restored, and a number of exhibition rooms that were about to collapse were renovated, a stone inscription gallery was built, and a fine cultural relics exhibition room was built.
▲Dingzhou Gongyuan
Dingzhou Gongyuan (also known as the examination shed), is the only well-preserved examination hall in northern China for the selection of Xiucai and Gongsheng in the feudal society, in the third year of the Qianlong Dynasty (1738 AD), the Dingzhou Gongyuan was created by the Zhou Muwang Da Nian, bringing together the wen and martial arts candidates in the jurisdiction to take the exam, as a place for the examination of Xiucai and Gongsheng.
In the twelfth year of Daoguang (1822 AD), The State Pastor King Zhonghuai persuaded Yu min to expand the site, rebuild, and add to the building, forming a large-scale examination hall. After being repaired and preserved, it was listed as a national key cultural relics protection unit in 2001.
▲At 10:30 a.m., I left Dingzhou in the rain, went all the way through the wind and rain, and returned to Beijing at 2:00 p.m. It lasted 28 days, traveled nearly 5,000 kilometers, and ended the self-driving tour of Jiyu and Ejin.
Producer: Hou Zhong (Yi Weng)
Editor-in-Charge: Mao's Secret "White Wave Love"