The Imperial Footprints of Mount Ōnishi

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The Daxi Mountains in Gyeonggi stretch for 3,000 square kilometers, leaving a large number of imperial footprints in the years of dynastic change. Jin Zhangzong's eight palaces are called the Eight Great Water Temples of Xishan Mountain, and the Shuangquan Temple on Shuangquan Mountain is one of them, called Shuangshui Temple, he often stays in Shuangshuiyuan, visits the landscape, and talks about Zen; as the King of Yan, Zhu Di's footprints are all over the Great Western Mountains, and after he became the Great Ming Son, he personally went to Changping Tianshou Mountain to investigate the imperial tombs; when the Ming Dynasty Wanli Emperor visited the "First Immortal Mountain of Yandu" Shijing Mountain, he was very interested in an intertwined ancient cypress inscription - Linggen Gubai; since Jin Xizong, there have been emperors who have continuously entered the Xiangli Buddha at the Xishan Tanzhu Temple. Visiting the landscape, only in the Qing Dynasty, there were four emperors of Kangxi, Yongzheng, Qianlong and Jiaqing who visited tanzhu temple, and the temple of "Shujian Xiuyun Zen Temple" on the mountain gate of this thousand-year-old temple was written by Kangxi. In addition, the beautiful mountains and rivers, the fragrant hills and rivers, the Xiangjie Temple, the Huanggu Temple, the Charity Temple, the North Huiji Temple and the Yongding River also have the footprints of the emperor.

Through the imperial footprints of the Great Western Mountains, the natural features, social customs, human history and royal pattern of the time can be seen, because it is a microcosm of a dynasty.

Shuangquan Temple was once the palace of the Jin Dynasty

There is a shuangquan mountain in the west of Beijing, there is a shuangquan temple on the shuangquan mountain, and the thousand-year-old village where the shuangquan temple is located is called shuangquan temple village. A mountain, a temple, a village, all named after the double spring. As for the origin of Shuangquan, I have not found historical records, but I heard a legend in the area of Shuangquan Temple.

Legend has it that in ancient times, the jungle of Shuangquan Mountain was dense, and there was a deep valley ravine between the mountains, called the Black Dragon Ditch. Two streams of spring water gush out from the mountains and forests, one is a yang spring and the other is a yin spring. The mountain springs flow continuously throughout the year and merge into one in the middle of the Heilonggou Valley, where the Shuangquan Temple is located at the confluence of mountain springs.

The history of Shuangquan Temple can be traced back to the Tang Dynasty, but it was not until it became the Shuangshuiyuan Palace of Jin Zhangzong's yan jing that this thousand-year-old temple that has experienced vicissitudes has become famous. Perhaps because of the proximity to the imperial city and the beautiful mountains and rivers, there have been many royal palaces in the Shijingshan area of western Beijing, such as the Xiangjie Temple in the Eight Great Places, the Huanggu Temple in Xihuang Village, and the North Huiji Temple in Pang Village, but these palaces were formed later than the Shuangquan Temple. That is to say, Shuangquan Temple is the earliest royal palace in the Shijingshan area.

According to the "Jin Shi ZhangzongJi", Jin Zhangzong had just crushed a palace coup before he arrived at Shuangquan Temple. The heir to the throne chosen by Emperor Zhangzong's grandfather, Kim Sejong, was Emperor Zhangzong's father, Wanyan Yungong. Due to his ability to complete Yan Yun gongde, he was made crown prince in the second year of Dading. Unexpectedly, the white-haired man sent the black-haired man, and Yan Yungong died before his father. After that, Jin Sejong did not appoint another crown prince, but made Guanyan Jing, the son of Wanyan Yungong, the grandson of the emperor and the heir to the throne. After Yan Jing ascended the throne, his uncles disobeyed, so they caused Xiao Wall. After the rebellion was put down, Jin Zhangzong wanted to find a quiet place to relax, so he chose the Shuangquan Temple, which was sparsely supported by flowers and trees.

The Babbling Daxi Mountain, with a total of eight palaces of the Jin Zhangzong, is called the Eight Great Water Temples of the Western Mountains. Shuangquan Temple is one of them, called "Shuangshui temple". When rebuilding Shuangquan Temple, Jin Zhangzong ordered the construction of a prayer pagoda in the north of the temple, trying to pray to the heavens through this pagoda and give him many sons and blessings, because his six sons died one after another, and the future heir to the throne was pending.

Today, the Pagoda of Prayer no longer exists. A staff member of Shuangquan Temple told me that this Shuangshui Temple during the Jinzhangzong period was destroyed several times. Decades ago, it was the site of the Shuangquan Temple Village Production Brigade. Before it was rebuilt in 2010, only the ruins of the broken walls remained. After three years of construction, it was completed and opened to the public in 2013, and this is the new temple that now includes the Daxiong Treasure Hall, the Kannon Hall and the Jizo Hall.

Also said Jin Zhangzong. Jin Zhangzong was an accomplished emperor, and during his reign, he was politically clear and economically and culturally prosperous, because his era name was Mingchang, and the history was called "The Rule of Mingchang". The world-famous Lugou Bridge was built during his reign, and "Lugou Xiaoyue" has been listed as one of the "Eight Scenic Spots of Yanjing" since the time of Emperor Zhangzong of Jin.

Especially worth mentioning is his literary and artistic feelings. Due to the dual education of Jurchen culture and Han culture since childhood, he was most deeply influenced by Han culture among the successive emperors of the Jin Dynasty, and the Sinicization of the Jurchen people was finally completed during the Jin Zhangzong period. Some people say that Jin Zhangzong's yan jing belonged to the literati and scholars-type emperors, which were comparable to the Southern Tang Dynasty and the Song Huizong, because he was good at calligraphy and painting, and his literary style was also good. He has a poem titled "In the Palace": "Five clouds of golden arches toward the sun, the pavilion Zhengrong Emperor's family." The curtains of the Thirty-Six Houses are rolled up, and the east wind is everywhere. The literary style is not inferior to the Southern Tang Dynasty's "When is the Spring Flower and Autumn Moon", so the "Ciyuan Series" written by the Qing Dynasty believes that Jin Zhangzong was "the father and son of the Li clan of the Southern Tang Dynasty". The Qianlong Emperor of the Qing Dynasty was also very elegant and exported into chapters, but among the more than 40,000 poems he composed, there were no such wonderful sentences.

Jin Zhangzong favored The thin gold calligraphy of Emperor Huizong of Song, and his handwriting was similar and could be confused. The British Museum's ancient facsimile of Gu Kaizhi's "Female Shi Zhen Tu", the left end of the scroll has a "Female Shi Zhen", since the Ming and Qing dynasties, the paintings have been identified as the handwriting of Song Huizong, and later confirmed to be from the hand of Jin Zhangzong's complete Yan Jing, because the word "Gong" in the text is missing, which is to avoid the secret of Yan Jing's father, Yan Yungong.

According to the "History of Jin", Yan Jing's mother, Empress Xiaoyi, was highly cultivated in sinology, "good poetry", "book", especially "Lao" and "Zhuang", while his father Guanyan Yungong was a rather talented painter, "good at danqing, good at painting people and horses, learning from Li Gonglin, the most worker of roe deer, mozhu is a family of its own, although it is not perfect, it is not involved in customs." "Since childhood, he has heard and heard, and he is also talented and intelligent, which has created Yan Jing's profound Han cultural foundation."

In addition to poetry, Yan Jing is still a chess fan, and even if he goes out on a parade, he does not forget to carry chess equipment. Sometimes as the sun sets, the honor guard with the flags displayed is gone, and he is still immersed in the chess game. Emperor Xuanzong of Ming, Zhu Zhanji, felt this and wrote a poem: "When the Lord of Jin was idle in government affairs, he once sat in the mountains with a chess game. The white clouds are far away, and the herbs are remnants of the sunset. The poem is titled "Checkerboard Island." The so-called chessboard island is a flat boulder in the mountains, not far from shuangquan temple. When Jin Zhangzong was stationed in the Shuangshuiyuan Palace, he often went there to play chess, and he always lingered. It can be seen that Jin Zhangzong is not only a literary emperor, but also a person with a personality.

Zhu Di surveyed Tianshou Mountain

In the magnificent Ming Chang Mausoleum, I wandered between the Gate of Grace, the Hall of Grace and the Fang City, and the unknown weeds grew out of the cracks of the broken green bricks, and were trampled by the footsteps that came and went. Thick oil pines, cypresses and oak trees are leafy and shady. In the wide space of the courtyard, a piece of music with the same wide range is played, sad and noble. In the blue sky, the clouds seemed to be involved in the heart, moving very slowly. I suppose they are trying to drag this piece of music into the sky.

I asked a staff member for the name of the music and replied with "Sun and Moon". This gave me an epiphany about the roots of breadth. Everything in the world is interpreted in the sun and the moon, the sun and the moon, yin and yang, including all the legends of the world. In the darkness, the words of heaven and earth, jiangshan, emperors, imperial tombs, etc., which were infiltrated by the sun and the moon, were transformed into the names of two ancients in front of my eyes- Zhu Di and Xu Yihua.

In the fifth year of Yongle (1407 AD), the 46-year-old empress Xu Yihua died of illness, and Zhu Di, the ancestor of Ming Cheng, did not build a mausoleum for him in the capital city of Nanjing. He sent people thousands of miles away to Beijing to find "Ji Lang" and prepare to bury Empress Xu there. Feng Shui master Liao Junqing and others traveled all over the outskirts of Beijing, and after Tujiaying, Yangshan, Yanjiatai and Tanzhushan were rejected one after another, they finally selected the Loess Mountain in Changping County, north of Beijing. After personally surveying, Zhu Di was very satisfied with the mountain-shaped terrain there, and decided to build a royal mausoleum there, and renamed the unknown Loess Mountain to Tianshou Mountain.

For Tianshou Mountain, the late Ming dynasty scholar Jiang Yikui described it in the "Chang'an Ke dialect": "The imperial tomb is victorious, from its closeness, there are phoenix mountains such as Suzaku in the front, Huanghua Town such as Xuanwu in the back, Qinglong in the left MangShan, and white tigers in the right Huyu, and the two major waters in the east and west mountain passes will flow on the Chaoning River, encircling the jade belt for more than thirty miles, which is really a district created by heaven and earth." Only in this way did he fulfill Zhu Di's wish, because he was a person who believed in feng shui.

In the seventh year of Yongle (1409 AD), Zhu Di mobilized a large number of craftsmen and people to start a huge construction project of the imperial tomb. After that, he personally went to Tianshou Mountain to inspect the progress of the project, and named his Shou Palace Changling, which means Jiangshan Long. In the eleventh year of Yongle (1413 AD), the underground palace of Changling was completed, and Zhu Di ordered that Empress Xu be moved from Nanjing to Changling. In the twenty-second year of Yongle (1424 AD), Zhu Di died of illness on the way home when he led a large army to conquer the north of the desert for the fifth time. The iron-blooded emperor, who had been active at the center of the political stage of the Ming Dynasty for decades, entered the underground Xuan Palace of Changling and realized his joint burial with Empress Xu.

Changling is the first imperial tomb in the Tianshou Mountain Mausoleum area, and it is also the largest one. Later, with Changling as the center, twelve imperial tombs were successively built, including Xianling, Qingling, Yuling, Maoling, Tailing, Kangling, Yongling, Zhaoling, Dingling, Jingling, Deling, and Siling, and were called the Thirteen Tombs together with Changling. Today, the Ming Tombs have become a national key cultural relics protection unit, a national key scenic spot, a national 5A level tourist attraction, and a world cultural heritage. Without Zhu Di, there would be no Forbidden City in Beijing, no Yongle Canon, no Grand Canal, No Western Ocean, no grand Ming Tombs, and the history of the Ming Dynasty would be much dimmer.

Xu Yihua is the daughter of Shogun

In the Hall of Grace in Changling, I saw a seated statue of Zhu Di, the Yongle Emperor. He was sitting precariously, not angry. "Is it a bronze sculpture?" I asked a staff member. "Yes." He added, "Hollow." ”

The bronze statue is hollow, and Zhu Di is by no means a hollow man. In addition to the Daming Jiangshan in his heart, he also contained a person who promised life and death, that is, his beloved wife Xu Yihua. Although the beautiful women around her are like clouds, in Zhu Di's mind, Empress Xu is irreplaceable. Zhu Di had four sons and five daughters in his lifetime, and seven of these nine children were born to Empress Xu, which shows their affection. In the houses of emperors throughout the ages, such love is extremely rare.

When Zhu Di and Xu Yihua became intimate, he was 17 years old and Xu Yihua was 15 years old. At that time, Zhu Di had not yet been crowned king, just an ordinary prince, and as the eldest daughter of Xu Da, the founding father of the country, Xu Yihua was already a talented woman in the capital city, not only with a beautiful appearance, but also with a brilliant talent. Before getting married, she often peeked at her father's military books with great interest and never forgot them, so that when she discussed war strategies with Zhu Di, she always admired Zhu Di. Later, Zhu Di was made the King of Yan, and Xu Yihua also followed him to the northern fiefdom and guarded the frontier with her husband.

The affairs of the Yan King's Mansion were complicated, and under Xu Yihua's meticulous care, everything was in order. In the Yandi of that year, whether it was the royal palace and the military camp, or the city well home, there was a harmonious atmosphere everywhere, which was inseparable from the exemplary role of the Yan Wang and his wife. Due to the political integration and people, the economy of Yandi was able to develop rapidly and the military strength gradually grew, thus laying the foundation for Zhu Di's great victory in the Battle of Jingnan. If behind every successful man there is a woman of selfless dedication, then Xu Yihua is the person behind Zhu Di.

After the early death of Crown Prince Zhu Biao, Zhu Yuanzhang made Zhu Biao's son Zhu Yunjiao the emperor's grandson. At the beginning of His reign, Zhu Yunjiao carried out drastic efforts to reduce the power of the local clan kings and strengthen the centralization of power. This angered his fourth uncle Zhu Di, and the Battle of Jingnan broke out. When Zhu Di went to the fiefdom of Zhu Quan, the King of Ning, to negotiate and discuss joining forces to fight against the imperial army, Zhu Yunjiao took the opportunity to send troops to attack the Yan King's mansion in an attempt to destroy Zhu Di's old lair in one fell swoop. Before leaving, Zhu Di had already entrusted the defensive responsibility to his eldest son, Zhu Gaozi. Whenever there was a major event to be carried out, Zhu Gaozi must first order the Princess Xu of Yan, so it was Xu Yihua who really commanded the battle behind the scenes. In the face of the 500,000 troops of the imperial court, Xu Yihua was not afraid of danger, while guiding his son Zhu Gaozi to line up troops, and on the other hand, he personally went to the battlefield to boost morale. Xu Yihua's wisdom and boldness have won the trust of the military and the people, and her calm and unhurried general style has stabilized the hearts of the army in time. The morale of Yandi was high, and all the people were soldiers, not only defending the Yan King's Palace, but also creating fighters for the counter-attack on Nanjing. Therefore, Zhu Di was called emperor, and Xu Yihua's contribution was indispensable.

After zhu Di ascended to the throne in Nanjing, he carried out a bloody suppression of those former courtiers who opposed him, and the people of the court were panicked. At this time, Xu Yihua, who had become an empress, once again played the role of stabilizing the situation, and under her euphemistic persuasion, Zhu Di finally put down the butcher's knife, and the reading books she organized and compiled, such as "Internal Training" and "Book of Persuasion", calmed the people's hearts and created a relaxed social atmosphere. The Yongle prosperity of the Ming Dynasty, although it benefited from Zhu Di's governing strategy, was also inseparable from Xu Yihua's careful assistance. Unfortunately, Xu Yihua only served as empress for four years before she died of illness. After that, Zhu Di never made a new empress, because in his mind, Xu Yihua was the only one.

After Xu Yihua's death, Zhu Di did not bury his beloved wife in Nanjing because he had decided to move the capital to Beijing. His future destination is in Beijing, and Xu Yihua will also be buried in Beijing. As a result, the Tianshou Mountains in Changping, Beijing, had the Ming Dynasty's Thirteen Tombs centered on the Changling Tombs. There are many reasons why Zhu Di moved the capital to Beijing, and one thing is certain, there are his and Xu Yihua's Fanghua years.

The Daxi Mountains in Beijing, where I often wander, stretched for 3,000 square kilometers, were Zhu Di's fiefdom. As the King of Yan, Zhu Di's footprints were all over the Great Western Mountains, and as the Xiannei assistant of the King of Yan, Xu Yihua's footprints were also left there. In the majestic Daxi Mountain, Zhu Di and Xu Yihua's good stories are collected by the mountain winds of the past.

The Emperor of the Qing Dynasty favored the Tanzhu Temple

In the lofty mountains of western Beijing, from southeast to northwest, there are three thousand-year-old temples - Jietai Temple, Xifeng Temple and Tanzhu Temple. If you draw a straight line, you can connect three ancient temples that are 5 kilometers apart from each other. Among these three ancient temples, the largest, highest status and longest history is none other than Tanzhu Temple.

Tanzhu Temple is named after the Dragon Pond and garnet trees. Longtan is in the back of the mountain, which is an octagonal body of water. In the past, longtan was full of blue waves, and after the two springs merged there, they flowed down the mountain, nourishing the ancient monasteries and the grass and trees in the mountains. Today, the mountain spring has almost dried up, and there is only a puddle of water left in Longtan. "How big is a puddle of water?" I asked the staff on duty at the entrance of Longtan. She smiled and shook her head, explaining that she hadn't seen it either, and couldn't say it clearly. There is a striking yellow warning sign under the stone square at the entrance - Longtan is temporarily closed due to flood prevention and emergency.

Due to the infiltration of mountain springs, garnet trees that originally grew in the south have also taken root in Tanzhu Mountain. At that time, the Tanzhu Mountains were full of lush garnet trees. The fruit of this small mulberry tree resembles mulberry, which is edible and can also be brewed, and when it is ripe, nearby villagers go up the mountain to pick it. Garnet leaves can raise silkworms, and garnets can be used as dyes. At that time, the monks' robes of the monks of Tanzhu Monastery won enough attention at the national Buddhist Festival, and those glamorous monks' robes were made of garnet silk fabric and dyed with garnet wood. It is said that garnet bark is also a magical herb that can cure women's infertility. As a result, people stripped the bark of the garnet trees, causing the strong garnet trees to wither and die, which brought happiness to people but brought ruin to themselves. Later, the locals planted some garnet trees around the Temple, but the scene of the garnet trees full of mountains no longer exists.

Located in the foothills of Tanzhu Mountain, Tanzhu Temple is backed by Baozhu Mountain, and the surrounding nine peaks form a natural barrier to block the cold north winds and cold currents in winter, making the climate here relatively warm and humid, and the natural conditions are unique. This ancient temple, known as the "first temple in the world", was founded in the Western Jin Dynasty, and has been known for more than 1600 years, and the folk are known as "first there is Tanzhu Temple, and then there is Beijing City". In the long historical process, the name of Tanzhu Temple has changed several times, the Jin Dynasty called Jiafu Temple, the Tang Dynasty called Longquan Temple, the Jin Dynasty called The Great Wanshou Temple, the Ming Dynasty successively restored the old name of Longquan Temple and Jiafu Temple, and in the Qing Dynasty, the Kangxi Emperor gave the name Xiuyun Temple. In the folk, due to the existence of Longtan and Garnet Trees, people have always been called Tanzhu Temple.

In addition to its long history, the architectural scale of Tanzhu Temple is also second to none in the temple community in the Beijing area. All the halls are built according to the mountainous terrain, staggered, a central axis runs through it, and the buildings on both sides are basically symmetrical, which epitomizes the aesthetic principles of ancient Chinese architecture, which is similar to the city of Beijing. Tanzhu Temple has nine gates and nine passes, and beijing city has also built nine gates. In its heyday, Tanzhu Temple once had 99 and a half houses, and the Imperial Palace in Beijing had 999 and a half houses, just like an enlarged version of Tanzhu Temple.

At its largest, in addition to the temple courtyard at the foot of Tanzhu Mountain, Tanzhu Temple also has three lower courtyards, one is the Fengfu Temple in Liyuanzhuang, Yongding Town, Mentougou District, the second is the Yijiao Temple inside the Fucheng Gate, and the third is the Haichao Guanyin Nunnery outside the Fucheng Gate. At that time, the Tanzhu Temple was rich in production, with more than 43,000 acres of arable land alone, and a large number of forest areas and mountain farms. From Lugou Bridge in the east, Zhuo County in the west, Liangxiang in the south, Yanqing in the north, hundreds of miles in all directions, there are more than 400 villages where the real estate ownership basically belongs to Tanzhu Temple, so there are more than 400 villages in the folk tradition that "Zhuangzi of Tanzhu Temple is 360, and one day is enough to eat".

The reason why it is so rich is because Tanzhu Temple is the largest royal temple in the Beijing area, and the background is extraordinary. Known for its beautiful natural scenery and profound cultural heritage, Tanzhu Temple has been favored by successive emperors, and since Jin Xizong, there have been emperors who have continuously come to Tanzhu Temple to worship the Buddha, visit the landscape, and allocate special funds to renovate and expand the temple, and the establishment of the royal identity of Tanzhu Temple is the 36th year of Kangxi (1697 AD). In that year, the Kangxi Emperor gave the name "Shujian Xiuyun Zen Temple" to the Temple, and personally inscribed the temple, which became a symbol of the royal status of the Temple. Those six ancient characters are still hanging on the lintel of the mountain gate of Tanzhu Temple. The royal care brought Tanzhu Temple into its heyday and grew in scale to become a huge monastic landlord's manor.

In the history of the Qing Dynasty, the four emperors of Kangxi, Yongzheng, Qianlong and Jiaqing had visited Tanzhu Temple many times to worship the Buddha, and the Kangxi Emperor was particularly fond of Tanzhu Temple. In the twenty-fifth year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1686 AD), the Kangxi Emperor surrendered and appointed master Vinaya, abbot of Guangji Temple, and the Zhenhuan monk who had been friends with him for many years as the abbot of Tanzhu Temple. In the autumn of that year, Kangxi drove to Tanzhu Temple, discussed Buddhism with the Zhenhuan monk, wandered between the mountains and rivers, and stayed for several days, lingering. At the time of parting, Kangxi rewarded Tanzhu Temple with 10 volumes of the Royal Book of Diamond Sutra, 10 volumes of the Medicine Sutra, 1 Agarwood Mountain, 1 Statue of Shoushan Stone Guanyin, and 18 Statues of Shoushan Stone Arhat to express their affection for others.

In the thirty-first year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1692 AD), the Kangxi Emperor allocated 10,000 taels of silver to the Temple of Tanzhu on a large scale. Under the auspices of the Monk Zhenhuan, from the autumn of the 31st year of the Kangxi Dynasty to the summer of the 33rd year, it lasted nearly two years, and more than 300 halls were renovated, making this thousand-year-old temple look new. When the Kangxi Emperor arrived at the Tanzhu Temple for the second time, he looked at the renovated temple and was in a happy and heroic mood. He not only inscribed the temple title of "Xiuyun Zen Temple", but also inscribed plaques for the main halls such as the Daxiong Treasure Hall, the Hall of the Heavenly King, the Pilu Pavilion, the Ring Altar, and the Great Compassion Temple, thus attaching more royal labels to the ancient temple.

In the forty-first year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1702 AD), the Kangxi Emperor and his harem concubines visited Tanzhu Temple for the third time. At this time, his old friend Zhenhuan monk had died for 3 years. Seeing things and thinking of people, Kangxi was full of sorrow. Since then, in order to avoid touching the scene, he has never gone to Tanzhu Temple again. However, under the influence of the Kangxi Emperor, the harem concubines and princes continued to visit the Tanzhu Temple to worship the Buddha, tour the landscape, and reward the temple with a large amount of money. It was as if this thousand-year-old temple had become a royal back garden.

Looking back, kangxi's fate with Tanzhu Temple has a great deal of contingency. It was the twenty-fourth year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1685 AD), and when he was touring the Western Mountains, he was stationed at the Jietai Temple on Ma'anshan Mountain in western Jingxi, and the grand scale of the thousand-year-old temple made him fall for it. At the dinner party that day, he was told that compared with Tanzhu Temple, which was 20 miles away, Jietai Temple was dwarfed. As a result, curiosity made him have a concern for Tanzhu Temple. This concern is a lifetime.

(Yue Qiang)