This article was originally written by Fang Zhi Jiangsu, and the author Xu Xingwu is the dean of the College of Literature of Nanjing University. This article is reproduced with permission and has been reproduced with deletions.
Four Scenic Springs of Yangzhou, Mingyue, Qing, Yuan Yao
It is said that as early as the end of the 17th century, Pocket Guides designed for hiking tourists appeared in Paris in Europe, accompanied by maps. In China, although there have long been books such as the Northern Wei Yang Zhenzhi's "Luoyang Jialan Record" and the Southern Song Dynasty Meng Yuanlao's "Tokyo Dream Hualu", they are all memoir-style works. It was not until the end of the 18th century that a similar book appeared in China, the Yangzhou Painting Record.
Li Dou, the author of "Yangzhou Painting Record", was born in the fourteenth year of Qianlong (1749), died in the twenty-second year of Jiaqing (1817), the character Beiyou, Ai Tang, Jiangsu Yizhengren, lived in Yangzhou, did not work as an official, and wrote several plays. His friend Zhang Jushou praised him as a "short Li Hugging Wizard" in "Title Li II", so he may be short and the second oldest in the family.
In his "Self-Introduction", Li Dou believes that most of the local literature about Yangzhou is detailed in ancient times and slightly in recent times, and he himself "neglects the history of scriptures and is good at swimming in landscapes." Taste three to western Guangdong, seven tours to Fujian and Zhejiang, one to Chuyu, and two to Beijing. When you retreat home, you will boat on the lake and travel back and forth between the various sections. The experience is familiar, so the alleys and toilets are all known in detail. And taste what you see with your eyes, what you hear with your ears, the charm of the magis and the doctors of the upper, the trivial and obscene things below, and the witty and slang talk, all of which are recorded." He spent thirty years, starting from the twenty-ninth year of Qianlong (1764), to write the scenes of Yangzhou life, street trivia, customs and customs, scenic spots, and celebrity anecdotes that he was familiar with into eighteen volumes of "Yangzhou Painting Record" (hereinafter referred to as "Painting Ship Record").
The reason why "Painting Ship" can be regarded as a travel guide is first of all that the whole book "takes the land as the scripture and takes the character chronicle as the weft", talking about a certain city or garden, the author stops down and tells the characters and stories here; secondly, although there is no map in the book, the narrative path is very specific, and the journal is also equipped with many illustrations of scenic spots; third, the vehicle that runs through the whole book is the transportation - the painting ship, that is, the cruise ship, so the "Painting Ship" is a real city guide guide.
The advective waterfall of the four scenic spots of Yangzhou Qing Yuan Yao
However, in ancient China, there was no such profession as a tour guide, so Li Dou had to invite an important tourist to appear, introduce the attractions by writing the tourist's whereabouts, and establish the authority of the tour guide guide by virtue of the identity of the tourist.
The tourists invited by Li Dou were the Qianlong Emperor. The Kangxi Emperor (1654-1722) of the Qing Dynasty and his grandson the Qianlong Emperor (1711-1799) both made six trips to Jiangnan, passing through Yangzhou each time.
In the Qing Dynasty, the salt industry was run by officials and merchants, so the Lianghuai Salt Inspection Bureau and the Lianghuai Salt Transport Department were set up in Yangzhou to manage the production, transportation and sales of salt in Huainan and Huaibei. The place where salt merchants and salt officials gathered was where China's wealth gathered, and they made the city prosperous, and the special cultural landscape was the garden. It is said that yangzhou in the Qing Dynasty had more than 200 gardens, and even government offices, monasteries, and academies were built with gardens, which had a lot to do with the settlement of salt merchants. Many of these gardens are used to meet guests, provide dining, and have fun. The "Record of Paintings" records the evaluation of the famous scholar Liu Daguan: "Hangzhou is victorious with lakes and mountains, Suzhou is victorious by the city, and Yangzhou is won by garden pavilions." "Most of these gardens were purchased or built by salt merchants.
In order to receive the emperor and show his political and economic achievements, Yangzhou's salt officials and salt merchants spent a lot of money to continuously build and repair garden villas, which greatly improved Yangzhou's urban style and economic culture.
The northern outskirts of Yangzhou City run through a small hill, and according to legend, its vein is through Shu, so it is called "Shu Gang". The City of Yangzhou in the Tang Dynasty was built on it, with monasteries such as Chanzhi Temple, Guanyin Temple, and Daming Temple. Since the Ming and Qing dynasties, Yangzhou City is located in the Yangtze River alluvial plain at the foot of Shugang, there is a river in the city that runs through the north and south, and the city along the river is prosperous, and people compare it to the Qinhuai River in Nanjing, known as "Little Qinhuai". In fact, this is also a moat, the city in Hexi was built first, called the "old city", and the city in hedong was built after the city, called the "new city". On the east side of Yangzhou City is the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, which leads directly into the Yangtze River. Flowing through Zhuyun Bay in the northeast of Yangzhou City, a canal was dug to the west, because most of the boats carrying hay entered the city from here, so Yangzhou people called it "Caohe". The Caohe River forms a closed square moat around Yangzhou City, in order to prevent flooding, and excavated an artificial lake from the northwest corner of Yangzhou City to drain the flood, meandering north, passing through the Twenty-Four Bridges, straight to the foot of Shugang, called "Guarantee Lake". The moat river system converges in the south of the city into another wider canal, heading southwest, with one stream flowing to Guazhou into the Yangtze River, and the other going west through Yizheng into the Yangtze River. Therefore, the northwest direction of the Yangzhou Moat connects to the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal and the southwest direction connects to the Yangtze River.
The "Record of Painting Ships" begins with the title of "Yangzhou Royal Road, Starting from the North Bridge", which narrates that the Qianlong Emperor's royal boat entered the moat system of the "CaoHe River" from the canal, entered the city at the "Benyi Gate" in the northeast corner of the city, and traveled west to the royal pier in front of the Tianning Temple Palace to land. After completing the tour, he left the city from the tax checkpoint "Banknote Pass" in the south of the city to board a boat, stationed in Gaomin Temple to the south, and then crossed the river from Guazhou to Zhenjiang. When the royal boat entered the Caohe River, the thirty salt merchants associations in Huainan and Huaibei divided their labor and sent people to build archways, incense pavilions, and opera stages on the shore to display strange things of flowers and plants, and play music and act. Since then, the waterfront of this area has formed one of the eight scenic spots in Yangzhou, "Hua Zhu Ying'en". The gardens of salt merchants, as well as restaurants and tea shops, are also distributed along the Grass River, from east to west, along the moat in the north of the city and the waters of the Baoli Lake, providing a place for tourists to travel out of the city, and the city has also expanded from the city to the outside of the city.
Because it is a suburb, some agricultural and flower ornamental industries have been developed, such as "Hanshang Nongsang" and "Apricot Blossom Cottage", which display agricultural tools and rural life scenes, and worship the gods of agriculture and silkworms. Some gardens also have tickets printed, such as the ticket for "Qiaoxi Caotang" with the inscription "Year, Month and Day Gardener Sweeps the Path and Opens the Door". Flowers, bonsai and fish and birds are indispensable vitality in the garden, so the business of planting flowers and trees in bonsai, raising goldfish, and caged birds has developed.
The "Record of Paintings" records the production industry of Yangzhou bonsai, and also records the industry of fish farming, such as Zhu Biao, the owner of Liulin Villa:
Good at raising flowers and fish, planting willows in front of the door, surrounding the earthen walls, planting four flower trees, potted flowers with red lacquered wooden frames, listed chess pieces, high and low. The rich families in the city are decorated with flowers, and when they are replaced, there are only many bidders. There are fish stored in sand tanks under the willow, including mandarin fish, egg fish, sleeping fish, butterfly fish, and crystal fish. "Dream XiangZi" Yun: "The squad wenyu is round like an egg, and a new tank of water is green in the snail." That's it. The superior selection is used as a goldfish tribute, and the second tourist buys more for the soil, and the rest is raised with white powder pots, so that the gardeners are in the city.
Also zai, the owner of the cake shop, Mi Jingquan, was a poet and bird keeper, and the salt merchant at that time was surnamed An, so he trained the myna to practice in the cage called "An Gong Buy Me". One day, when The Manager an passed by, he heard the great joy and bought it with a heavy amount of money.
In order to facilitate the purchase and rest of the tourists, many tea houses have been set up near the gardens on the outskirts of the city to sell snacks. According to the "Record of Painting Ships", the tea shop in Yangzhou is the first in the world. People who do this industry, or build gardens, or buy rich people's mansions and abandoned gardens, which are very exquisite, with pavilions, flowers and trees, cups and plates, and tableware. Along the riverbank, along the bridge, and by the lake and mountains outside the city, many tea houses are famous for their dim sum. For example, stuffed baked cakes, soup buns, pine buns (steamed buns steamed with pine needles), Huai dumplings, slightly wheat (roasted wheat) and so on, are in short supply.
During the Ming and Qing dynasties, salt merchants built many private garden villas along the shores of Baoli Lake outside the city, all the way to the Pingshan Hall in Shugang. The Records of paintings records that the Qianlong Emperor lived in the gardens of Huang, Jiang, Cheng, Zhang, Wang, Zhou, Wang, Min, Wu, Xu, Bao, Tian, Zheng, Ba, Yu, Luo, and Wei. In order to take over, lu mi, the two Huai salt transporters, built this area into a scenic belt. In the year of Qianlong's fourth southern tour (1765), he built the "Twenty Views" in the northern suburbs, including:
"Fist Stone Cave Heaven", "West Garden Qushui" "Hongqiao Range Rover" "Yechun Poetry Society"
"Long Causeway Spring Willow" "Hepu Smoke Wind" "Jasper Exchange" "Four Bridges Smoke and Rain"
"Spring Terrace Bright Moon", "White Pagoda Qingyun", "Three Traces", "Shugang Evening Photo"
"Wansong Dicui", "Huayu Shuangquan", "Twin Peaks Cloud Stack", "Mountain Pavilion Wild View"
"Linshui Hongxia" "Green Rice Fragrant Coming" "Bamboo Building Small City" "Hiraoka Yanxue"
After ethyl unitary (1765), the lake was re-added "Green Poplar City Guo", "Xianghai Ciyun", "Meiling Spring Deep" and "Water Cloud Victory". He carved twenty-four scenes on ivory plaques to carry out liquor orders, also known as "twenty-four scenes of tooth cards".
Four Views of Yangzhou Wansong Stacked Cui Qing Yuan Yao
The emperor traveled around Yangzhou in a royal boat, and the people of Yangzhou also shared the prosperity of the city by boat. Yangzhou is a water city, and the Tang Dynasty poet Yao He's "Yangzhou Spring Words" wrote: "The gardens are mostly houses, and the cars and horses are less than the boats." "People of the Qing Dynasty, as long as they boarded the ship at the docks at some of the city gates between the old city and the new city of Yangzhou, they could go to the city wells and gardens outside the city to enjoy the tour. Therefore, in the tourism industry of Yangzhou in the Qing Dynasty, the cruise ship industry was very developed. Yangzhou's cruise ships are called "Painting Boats" and travel between the city and the gardens. Li Dou's ten-minute love for the painting boat is not only used as the title of the book, but the eleventh volume of "Hongqiao Record" vividly describes the scene of the painting boat playing. The eighteenth (last) volume, entitled "Fang BianLu", introduces the origin of yangzhou painting ship, the name of the painting ship, and the pier of Yangzhou painting ship.
Painting boat docks are mostly near the city gate, people in the Spring and Autumn Flower Market or the arrival of various temple fairs in the year, climb the painting boat, swim along the moat, to the Hongqiao place into the wide waters of slender West Lake, fish through the painting boat often go side by side.
Even if it is not a festival, people can call a painting boat, about three or five friends, come out of the city, and drink tea, drink wine, poetry, and amusement in the gardens on the lake where the emperor has visited. For example, Jiangyuan Garden, which was a garden that Both Kangxi and Qianlong had visited, the Qianlong Imperial Inscription "Yi Sex Hall" plaque, and the Skylight Cloud Shadow Building. Li Dou appended his travelogue with his friends on a trip to the garden in the "Record of Paintings", in which he wrote that more than twenty people were boating on the lake, playing chess, drinking, listening to music, and telling stories, "when the sunset was late and red, the smoke came out of the sunset, and the drinking cabinet was in the pavilion." After "drinking and ear-warming", then "rock the boat into the smoke wave" to enjoy the night view, "return to the boat to lie downstairs in the sky and clouds".
When the Qianlong Emperor made his sixth southern tour to Yangzhou, he was already a seventy-five-year-old man. In his later years, in the presence of the crown prince and the future Jiaqing Emperor, he said to the chancellor Wu Xiongguang: "Sixty years after his arrival in the imperial court, there is no loss of morality; only six southern tours, labor and hurt the people's wealth, and it is beneficial to do no harm." In the future, if the emperor patrols the south, and Ru does not stop it, he will not be able to deal with it. The "prosperous era of Kangqian" in Chinese history is nearing its end.
Four Scenic Spots of Yangzhou Pinggang Yanxue Qing Yuan Yao
Among the scholars recorded in the Records of Paintings was Ruan Yuan, the nephew of the salt merchant Jiang Chun, who was "Qianlong Ji Youjinshi and official waiter." Gong Li Shu, profound study". In the fourteenth year of Daoguang (1834), Ruan Yuan had been promoted to the governor of Yungui, and he wrote the "Pai" for the "Record of Paintings", saying that after the eighth year of Jiaqing (1803), the Yangzhou gardens had been "destroyed by the buildings and withered away". "In the past ten years, the desolation has been even worse. And Yangzhou is engaged in salt, while the old garden merchants are mostly closed and poor." There are many reasons for the decline of Yangzhou's salt industry, mainly the transfer of salt production areas, the decline of water transportation and so on. Ruan Yuan said that during his tenure in Yunnan, he even saw hungry people wandering to his hometown in Yunnan because of the Flood of Jianghuai, so he sighed: "Fifty years of dust dreams, eighteen volumes of old books, the feelings of the present and the past, and the unknown to future generations." ”
In the nineteenth year of Daoguang (1839), the seventy-six-year-old Ruan Yuan had already returned to his hometown, and then composed the "Trek" for the "Record of Painting Ships"; on the cold food festival of the twentieth year of Daoguang (1840), Ruan Yuan boarded a boat about the governor of The Southern River and the acting governor of Liangjiang, and then set off from Hongqiao, through the Zhichun Poetry Society, the White Pagoda, and the Lotus Bridge, to the foot of Shugang, took the public opinion up the mountain, toured the Pingshan Hall, and gossiped about the rise and fall of yangzhou gardens.
In the summer of that year, the Sino-British Opium War broke out, China's history bid farewell to ancient times, and the prosperity of Yangzhou became a glimpse of the past glory of the Qing Dynasty.
Source: Purple Cow News