Minqin County is located in the northeast of Gansu Province, the lower reaches of the Shiyang River Valley, is a county under the jurisdiction of Wuwei City, here on three sides by the Tengger and Badain Jarin two major deserts, so to Minqin tourism, most people come to the desert. But what is surprising is that 10 minutes drive from the county seat, there is a famous and breathtaking landlord's manor.
The manor is named "Ruian Fort", which is pronounced "PU" among the local population and is located 3.5 kilometers southwest of the county seat of Minqin County. This is a large-scale, private landlord's manor of the gentry that integrates houses and defense. Although the age of the building is not far away, after walking in and visiting, it is full of emotions.
This is a family home built on the northwest Gobi in the early days of the Republic of China. The entire "Ryan Fort" is symmetrically distributed along the central axis, with a three-entry courtyard design. Standing on a high rooftop overlooking, the entire huge residential courtyard system is known as the "Little Potala Palace" and "Little Imperial City" in the northwest, and in my opinion, it is more like a "Forbidden City" with the flavor of the Northwest Loess Plateau.
The old house is located in Santao Village, Sanlei Town, Minqin County, and was built in 1938 in the 27th year of the Republic of China, 82 years ago. However, most of them are well preserved, some of them have been repaired later, and now it is a local tourist attraction, and tickets are required to enter.
Ruianbao, the most well-preserved fort-style residential house in northwest China, became a "national key cultural relics protection unit" in May 2006.
When we came here, at the end of September, this large landlord's manor stood in the middle of the desert, with few tourists, and the most striking thing was that the green trees of the manor were hidden in the mansion of the loess and gray tiles, as if waiting, as described. For minqin in the Gobi and desert, it is not easy for a tree to grow so tall.
The owner of the house is named Wang Qingyun, born in 1892, a Minqin person. The house he built, Ruian Fort, is named Xiangrui Ping'an.
The whole manor covers an area of more than 5,000 square meters, the wall height is 10 meters, a total of three into 8 courtyards, more than 140 civil structure tile houses, 7 pavilions, divided into the front yard, the middle courtyard, the back east and west courtyards and the "moon" shaped courtyard.
The layout of the whole house is taken from the four characters of "One Pin Dang Dynasty", and the north and south walls are high and one short, called "phoenix single spread wings". There are also buildings in the fort such as "Wangyue Pavilion", "Embroidery Building", "Shuangxi Building", "Happy Palace" and so on, which are extremely luxurious.
The most special, go in and find that to go up to the second floor to ascend to the high lookout, you have to go through a lot of dark passages, if you are not careful, you will get lost and can't go out, it seems that every house has hidden "organs", like walking into a maze, there are many organs.
There are many dark passages, dark rooms, shooting holes, etc. in the fort, and the dark passages are crisscrossed in the fort. To enter a room, you have to find the exit by yourself, and these openings are no more than the size of a small manhole cover, and you have to climb a ladder, which is difficult for the elderly who are slightly fat and have limited mobility.
Climbing up to the second floor, there is a corner tower, like a sentry tower, the view is more open, you can overlook the entire fortress panorama, you can also look around.
In order to increase the defense, the corner tower and parapet are also filled with shooting holes, large and small inside, so that it is difficult to shoot in the outside guns, and people inside can still see the outside.
There is a circular passage on the second floor, very spacious for sports cars, in fact, this design, are all for defense, can be described as a copper wall, impenetrable, painstaking. It is not so much a private landlord's mansion as a fortress with an advanced defense system. It can be seen that the owner of the house is afraid of external attacks, and his life is worrying and insecure.
So, what kind of person is Wang Qingyun, the owner of the house, and why should he design his private house to be like an impenetrable military defensive fortress? His life is full of legends, listen to what the tour guide said.
Born in 1892, Wang Qingyun has five brothers and sisters, he is the third oldest, the descendants of Ming and Qing immigrants settled in Minqin, the early family mainly engaged in silk, salt and tea and other businesses, the late Qing Dynasty began to develop.
In the early days of the Republic of China, Wang Qingyun's eldest brother Wang Buyunrong served as the director of the Minqin County Education Bureau. In 1929, Wang Buyun was brutally killed to protect the teachers and students of the school, and later recommended his younger brother Wang Qingyun to be a teacher, and later recommended him to be the director of the Education Bureau.
According to the "Minqin County Literature and History Materials", Wang Qingyun's reputation is not good, he did not learn any techniques since he was a child, gambled wildly and prostituted indiscriminately, and his brother hated his lack of work, calling him "three thieves" and sometimes flogging him. After 2 years as director of education, Wang Qingyun resigned.
Wang Qingyun was able to make his fortune because he later became acquainted with the division commander Ma Buqing. In 1936, Minqin set up a security regiment, and Wang Qingyun was appointed as the head of the regiment, thus becoming the number one rich man in Minqin. Pursuing fame and fortune, he was afraid of attracting jealousy, and he deliberately built a defensive building with a strict structure inside and outside the courtyard, which is "Ryan Fort".
It is said that when ruian fort was built, thousands of migrant workers were working at the same time every day, which was as lively as building a royal palace for the emperor. Therefore, the locals named Ruian fort "Little Imperial City, Forbidden City". The entire landlord's courtyard house was built for 2 years and cost 100,000 oceans.
Building such a large-scale mansion, in fact, the Wang family did not have many families living in it. After his inception, Wang Qingyun has married three wives, the first wife died of illness three years after marriage, the second wife lived together for a year and divorced after a year, and the third wife was Liu Shi, who had a total of 4 sons and 3 daughters.
In the spring of 1951, the 59-year-old Wang Qingyun's life took a turn for the worse, and as a bully landlord, he was executed by shooting. His family members later fled to other places to earn a living, some in Xinjiang and some in Inner Mongolia, most of them making a living from farming.
From the age of 46 to 59, "Ruianbao" belonged to Wang Qingyun's days and survived for 13 years. Later, "Ruianbao" was confiscated and preserved for the use of state-owned new pottery farms.
As a trace of life during the Republic of China, "Ruianbao" has both the carved beams and paintings of ancient buildings and the practical beauty of modern buildings, which is the crystallization of the wisdom of the people who work hard, and is the most complete preserved private landlord's estate in Gansu and even in the northwest region, and a rare historical and cultural heritage.