"Tour Shanxi, Read History" on the Party District Wufeng Building

On October 1, after the rain, the first sunny day, the national cultural relics protection unit WufengLou in the mist was ancient and imposing. The autumn leaves are yellowish, and the whole ancient building is more solemn and simple. Coinciding with the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar, the incense in the temple is in full swing, and tourists come to visit in an endless stream. According to legend, the Jade Emperor had five daughters, passing through the Southern Song Village of the Southern Song Dynasty in Shangdang District, and was attracted by the beautiful scenery, so he stayed here for a long time, and later generations built this building to commemorate them, known as "Five Phoenix Building".

The solemn and quaint Wufeng Tower is magnificent

"WufengLou is the old building of the Mountain Gate of the Jade Emperor Temple, which was built in the JinYuan period and was repaired in the Ming and Qing dynasties. The rise and development of Taoism is described in the novel "The Condor Heroes", when Taoist temples were widely built throughout the country. According to historical records, the Wufeng Tower was built with funds from local officials at or above the provincial level. Li Songyi, a senior docent of the scenic spot, said eloquently. Over the past few hundred years, Wufenglou has witnessed the vicissitudes of history and left traces of time. On the stone pillar on the east side of the gate, the stone inscription of "May 31, 41 of the Ming Wanli Calendar" is clearly visible, and the two stone pillars in front of the door and the lower eaves were reinforced in that year. Stepping into the Wufeng Building, the handwriting of "Qianlong Thirty-Eight Years of General and Deputy Covenant" behind the door brings people's thoughts back to that period of history.

"Jingliang Maple Ladder" can be described as a spectacle of the Five Phoenix Towers and the Twins. Entering the building, the "canoe staircase" on the east side leads to the second floor, and its peculiarity is that it is a ladder carved from oak wood, 7 meters high, with a small head diameter of 42 centimeters and a large head diameter of 76 centimeters, which is about 500 years old according to the annual rotation. Looking up, two thorns of 7.39 meters in length and more than 50 centimeters in diameter are used as beams and are erected on the roof. According to the architectural structure of the "Jingliang Staircase", it can be inferred that the material that seems to be only able to weave baskets can now be used as the material of the beam at that time. "This spectacle in the Wufeng Building broke the way materials were used under the influence of feudal thought, revealing the ancients' wisdom of 'meritocracy' and 'appointing meritocracy'." Li Songyi said.

Passing through the Wufeng Tower, the north is the Dedication Pavilion, which reads "Rational Deity", which means "understanding the great righteousness of the gods". There are three wonders in the pavilion: one is the four stone pillars of sand and stone carvings exquisite and flexible, each stone pillar has images on all four sides, and different, the figures, dragons and phoenixes, and unicorns are vivid, which shows the carving skills at that time; the second is that the top of the pavilion is formed with a full mortise structure to form an umbrella cover shape of the outer circle and the inner circle, the center is Bagua-shaped, and the vertical pillar corresponds to eight directions, just in response to the ancient people's "Gaitian Theory", as if the heavens and the earth are all between here; the third is that the four beams in the pavilion, after the baptism of time, support this ancient building to stand tall. Of the four beams, only the east beam is fractured. According to Li Songyi, it is this broken beam that has aroused many people's speculations, roughly there are three conjectures: "the embodiment of the Taoist imperfect beauty", "the tenon and tenon structure expansion and contraction gap", or just "the raw materials are not enough to splice together". But either way, it leaves an unsolved mystery for this beautiful ancient building, adding a bit of mystery to it.

Directly north of the pavilion, there is the main hall, the Lingxiao Treasure Hall, which is the shrine of the Jade Emperor, the highest god of Taoism. The unique single-eaves overhanging mountain top makes the Lingxiao Treasure Hall feel less like a shrine above the gods, but the rare eleven sets of bucket arches and thirteen steps highlight its noble majesty. Looking up, you can faintly see the light yellow bucket, with a light blue step, painted with cloud-shaped paintings, each of which shows the grandeur and dazzling grandeur of this hall. The glass decoration on the top of the whole hall can be described as a representative work of the peak of glass firing in the history of our country. Whether it is a dragon with a unique shape or a chrysanthemum that blooms slowly, you can glimpse that the glass firing in China has reached the point of pure fire in that period.

"The top glass is updated on the second day of the first month of February in the 42nd year of the Wanli calendar." Li Songyi introduced, "According to research, behind the portrait under the pagoda at the top, the words 'Southern Song Dynasty Village, the yiling capital of Xiongshan Township, Lu'an Province, Shanxi Province, The Ming Dynasty' are engraved, which shows the long history of the Southern Song Dynasty Village and the exquisite local architectural skills." ”

Strolling through the landscape group of Wufeng Tower, you can see the traces of history and the wisdom of the ancestors. Standing in the courtyard, looking up at the Wufeng Building, you can see the four-story eaves, the northwest corner is in the shape of a "bucket corner", and the northeast corner is "hooked", forming the beauty of the wrong hook of the building. "Each holding the terrain, hooking the heart, Du Mu's "A Fang Gong Fu" describes this kind of house structure." Li Songyi said.

Out of the Five Phoenix Building, look up again, but in front of you is a five-story eaves, forming a special landscape of "inner four floors and outer five floors". There are different gods on each corner of the eaves, including the saying of "Heavenly Soldiers and Heavenly Generals", as well as the talk of "temple horn villains, cornered", and there is also an anecdotal legend that the four people in the eaves are "Han Xin, Bai Qi, Luo Cheng, and Wu Zixu". Either way, it conveys the different emotional sustenance and interpretation of this ancient building in different periods.

Nowadays, there are still many lovers of ancient buildings and traditional culture from Shanghai, Beijing, Fujian and other parts of the country every year, who come thousands of miles to see the style of Wufeng Tower and explore the historical imprints and legends left behind. "Southern Song Dynasty village has a thick Chinese history and culture, in addition to the WufengLou, there are many ancient residential buildings with historical value in the village, integrated with the simple rural nostalgia, in the future we will rely on the advantages of tourism resources, through scientific and rational planning, so that more people into the Southern Song Dynasty Village, understand the WufengLou, taste the thick humanistic history of Damei Shanxi, and appreciate the beautiful scenery." Qin Jiangping, head of the Wufenglou Scenic Area, said so. (Source: Changzhi Daily reporter Zhang Ruiying)