The daughter country mentioned in the Journey to the West makes many men think that it is heaven. But there is no daughter country in the world, but there is such a man country, there is no woman in the country, women want to enter here is as difficult as ascending to the sky, the first Greek player to win the title of "Miss Europe" Aliki, once in 1930 women dressed as men mixed in, shocking the whole of Greece.
This "man's country" is called the Theocratic Republic of Assus, located in the Greek Orthodox region of the northeastern Greek province of Macedonia, on the Aegean Coast, and consists of Mount Athos and the Peninsula of the Holy Mountain. The original name of the Sacred Mountain Peninsula was the Athos Peninsula, and the name comes from the hero Athos in Greek mythology. In the middle of the 11th century AD, the Byzantine Empire approved the renaming of the Athos Peninsula to the Sacred Mountain Peninsula. For more than a thousand years, the sacred mountain peninsula has inhabited only a group of Orthodox monks and hermits.
In 1927, recognized by the Greek Constitution, the Sacred Mountain Peninsula had jurisdictional autonomy and had its own laws and visas, and the Sacred Mountain Peninsula became a Greek republic, the only monastic autonomous region in the world, officially named the Theocratic Republic of Assus. With an area of about 390 square kilometers, the entire peninsula is nearly 60 kilometers deep into the hinterland of the Aegean Sea, with a width of 7 to 12 kilometers, and the island has many reefs and rugged terrain.
Even after becoming an autonomous state, the monastic life on the Sacred Mountain Peninsula was not changed by half a point, and they did not form a systematic system of rule, but still followed the style of church governance, even in timekeeping, using Byzantine time.
The daughter kingdom in Journey to the West did not refuse men to enter the territory, and even the king personally greeted the Tang monks and their entourage. However, the reality is often harsher than the myths and legends, and the Theocratic Republic of Assus not only did not allow women to enter the country because of the lack of women, but also improved the population structure of the island, but instead strictly banned women from entering.
In the inspection of the island, these devout monks are very strict, perhaps learning from the Aliki incident in 1930, even visitors who have been admitted to the island will relentlessly open their underwear for inspection, and will be given access after confirming the gender, and women who try to dress up as men and mix in will not pass this pass.
The Sacred Mountain Peninsula was very strict in prohibiting women, and the monks on the island who allowed women to enter the island without permission would be severely punished, or even expelled from the island. In some periods, except for hens that lay eggs, even female animals were not allowed on the island, which was beyond the scope of the "man's country". In the 1990s, even men had a hard time entering the Sacred Mountain Peninsula, and they had to hold a letter of government recommendation or a religious person of devout faith to land on the island.
Compared with the outside world, life on the sacred mountain peninsula seems to be somewhat boring, and their need for entertainment activities is far less than that of chanting and monasticism. In the course of a day, they spend 8 hours practicing, 8 hours of rest, and only 8 hours of productive activities to meet the needs of life. That is to say, this group of hermit monks who lived a hard life was not only isolated from the outside world, but also did not leave themselves a little entertainment time. They have their own unique laws, but they do not deprive the monks of the island of their monastic time.
The strict ban on entry into the island did not isolate the humanity of the monks of the Holy Mountain, who rescued the victims who drifted in the Aegean Sea, and took in some women and children during the Greek Civil War, which is the highest number of women in the island's history.
So how did the Sacred Mountain Peninsula, which has not been allowed to enter for more than a thousand years, continue the inheritance of civilization? Some people have questioned: the legendary daughter country relies on the water of the Zimu River to give birth to children, is it the man country that gives birth to children by scalpels?
In fact, the answer is very simple, the monks living on the island are living a monastic life, do not marry, do not have children, and they do not go out; so the entire population of the Theocratic Republic of Athos is an influx of monks from outside, which is called the Holy Mountain, and many monks who admire this monastic environment will take the initiative to go to Assos and become one of the hermits here, which is the main source of the Assos population; and much earlier, devout parents would send their newborn children to the island. The children who had been sent to the island for the rest of their lives and probably had never seen a single woman.
In addition to the fact that the ban on women is incomprehensible to the outside world, the quiet life on the island makes many people yearn for it. Not only was there no strife and no racial discrimination on the peninsula of the holy mountain, and Assus tolerated devout monks from all over the world, inhabited not only by native Greek monks, but also by hereditary monks from Russia, Bulgaria, and Rome.
As time went on, more and more people visited the sacred mountain peninsula, and the monks on the island had to change some of the old rules. Today, there are not so many rules on the Sacred Mountain Peninsula, as long as conditions permit, outside tourists can even board on the peninsula, but only the ban on women has never changed.
Text| Jiang Ming Picture | Network Editing | Anecdote