The Spiral Hall is a national key cultural relics protection unit, built in the 24th year of the Ming Wanli Calendar (1596), with a history of more than 400 years. It is an all-wood bucket structure.
When Mr. Liang Sicheng was in Lizhuang, he listed it as one of the "Four Absolute Gems of Lizhuang" and wrote his masterpiece "History of Chinese Architecture", praising the Spiral Hall as "the superiority of its beam and pillar structure, quite proud of the works of the world".
The majestic Spiral Hall photographed by Zhang Guangjin
Located 2.5 kilometers south of Lizhuang Town, The Spiral Hall was announced by the Sichuan Provincial People's Government as a provincial key protection unit in 1996 and was rated as a national cultural relics protection unit in 2006.
Originally named Wenchang Palace, the Temple was built by the Zhang clan, and this building was originally dedicated to Emperor Wenchang, whose real name was Zhang Yazi before Emperor Wenchang was born in Qiqu Mountain, Zitong County, Sichuan Province.
After Chengxian preached, he was enthroned as Emperor Wenchang, also known as Emperor Zitong, who was in charge of Wenyun and Gongming. Because the Zhang family attached great importance to the input and cultivation of education, and Emperor Wenchang's surname was Zhang, the Zhang family enshrined him here and used this place as the ancestral hall of the Zhang family, where they once ran a private school for a period of time.
In the past, on the first day of the first lunar month every year, the Zhang family gathered here to report to Emperor Wenchang how many talents, talents, and jinshi the Zhang family had produced.
Photo by Zhang Guangjin
The Spiral Hall was cultivated in the years of Qing Yongzheng, Qianlong and Jiaqing, the last repair was in 1957, the name of the temple "Spiral Hall" was inscribed by Bao Shouming, a descendant of the late Qing Dynasty calligrapher Bao Bichen, who was more than 70 years old at the time, and there was no road here, so he was carried here with a sliding pole and asked him to be named.
According to legend, the character "bao" was called "character demon" by Empress Dowager Cixi.
The shape of the spiral hall is a triple eaves octagonal spire, 25 meters high, 8 meters deep and 8 meters wide, and there is a walking beast on each corner, which represents the eight directions of the Taoists. There are three floors on the outside and only two on the inside!
Walking in can see the stone walls around it, most of the above is now faintly visible mostly for the "Zhang surname", there is a legend, it was originally called "TianLuo Hall", is a local Song surname youth, for people industrious and filial piety. Dependent on a blind old mother, every day in addition to farming and cutting trees, the mother and child's clothes will be taken to the dragon bowl of the spiral to be washed.
Over time, it touched a Tian Luo who had cultivated for a thousand years and attained enlightenment, and it transformed into a beautiful girl from admiration to marry him, and loved her for a hundred years. After his death, in order to commemorate this incident, the Song clan pretended to be the daughter of Zi Tong Xingjun, so xiu Wenchang Palace worshipped her father, and the people did not know why it was called Tian Luo Hall. Later people who are proficient in literature and ink take the outer shape of the snail shell of the field snail with the meaning of circling, and the harmonic field snail hall is the spiral hall.
There is a dragon head directly above the head, which is mentioned in Liu Yuxi's "Buried Chamber Inscription": "The mountain is not high, there are immortals, the water is not deep, and there is a dragon is the spirit", and there is a well directly below the dragon head, which leads to the dragon.
Later, because a child fell and drowned, the wellhead was sealed. The structure of the hall of the spiral hall is different from that of the general temple, with four wellhead columns running straight through the second floor, and the wellhead pillars are connected by lifting beams, piercing fangs and corner beams to form a backbone of beams.
The Spiral Hall adopts the "Beam Lifting Pillar Method". So the spiral hall that you can see above the beams and columns is two floors above and below to form a square.
In the eighth year of Qing Yongzheng (1730), when he was repairing the spiral hall, because he had to change two wellhead pillars and a lifting beam, it is said that the craftsman Liu Kunshan lay in the hall for three days and three nights, careful observation, careful thinking, a slight mistake will cause the whole hall to collapse, and finally after his very ingenious and precise construction methods, he completed the training project without fail.
Later, when Mr. Liang Sicheng designed the United Nations Conference Building in 1945, he applied the mechanical principles of the top of the spiral hall to it.
Most of the inscriptions on one of the beams are the names of the craftsmen who built the spiral hall at that time, because in the past, when building temples or Taoist temples, the names of the construction time and the builders were engraved, and the stone wall next to it was the names of some donors.
The bucket arch at the corner of the house is called the corner section bucket arch, the window is called the flat body section bucket arch, and there is another kind of bucket arch called ruyi bucket arch, the general bucket arch is three kinds, there are two kinds of spiral halls, and the latter bucket arch can be seen in the Yibin Grand View Building.
The Spiral Hall is located on the Shiniu Mountain 2.5 kilometers outside Lizhuang Town, and some people say that there is a demon cow here, and a building must be built here to suppress the demon cow; there are also legends that Lu Ban has a sword inserted here, and the Spiral Hall is the handle of this sword, which also deters the demon cow, making it not make waves and harming the human world; on the contrary, the world is smooth and rainy, and the country is safe.
You can see that the eight beasts of the Spiral Hall correspond to eight mountains. From a feng shui point of view, this is also a treasure of feng shui.
Source: Cuiping Cultural Tourism
#Cuiping District created Tianfu Tourist County ##宜宾资讯 #