Du Fu Caotang built a new north gate
Du Fu Caotang on Qinghua Road in Chengdu is the richest and best-preserved place for Du Fu's creative creations. Du Fu Caotang in Chengdu is famous all over the world because of its poetry, and it is passed down to future generations through poetry.
On March 7, 1958, Chairman Mao visited Du Fu Caotang in his spare time before the "Chengdu Conference."
At about 3 p.m., Chairman Mao and his party entered the Caotang from the mountain gate of the former Caotang Temple. He did not let anyone say hello beforehand, and after entering the door, he strolled around the garden. He first went to the shadow wall next to the "Flower Path", and the wall stood for a long time, attracted by the two eye-catching characters of "Caotang" on the wall. It is said that when Zhou Zhujun of the Qing Dynasty wrote the word "Caotang", he did not use a pen, but grabbed rice by hand to write it, the font was thick and vigorous, and later used porcelain fragments to set it on it, which was even more chic and particularly eye-catching.
Chairman Mao took a steady step along the "Flower Path" and walked slowly, casually looking at the green bamboo, pines, and tall and tall nanmu trees around him, looking happy and peaceful. He walked across the small bridge, stepped onto the steps of the "Chai Gate," browsed the poems and stone carvings embedded in the walls on both sides of the Chai Gate to commemorate Du Fu, and then walked into the "Gongbu Ancestral Hall, where Comrade Lin Yannian of the Caotang Memorial Hall, who was waiting here, introduced to Chairman Mao the inscriptions and statues displayed in the temple.
Lin Yannian introduced that in addition to the statue of Du Fu sculpted by the Qing people in the "Gongbu Ancestral Hall", it is also lined with statues of Huang Tingjian and Lu You, famous poets of the Song Dynasty. According to the inscription in the temple, Huang and Lu matched Du Fu with Du Fu because they had the same heart and thoughts as Du Fu, and inherited du shi's style and tradition in poetry creation. In addition, like Du Fu, they were not Shu people but were exiled or eunuchs in Shu.
After listening to Lin Yannian's introduction, Chairman Mao smiled knowingly. This arrangement made by the Qing people shows a deep understanding and praise.
Leaving the Gongbu Ancestral Hall, Chairman Mao walked into the "Poetry History Hall" through the back door, saw various rubbings and portraits of Du Fu's stone carvings hanging on both walls, and asked: What is this place? Lin Yannian told him: "This is the poem 'Gong Shi Tang', which was designed by posterity to commemorate Du Fuxiu. And introduced the origin of each portrait one by one. Chairman Mao smoked a cigarette while holding a statue of Du Fu. Under the glow of the sun, today's "poetry" also seems to be full of energy.
Chairman Mao had a personal preference for poets and their works. In 1957, when he talked to the poet Zang Kejia and other comrades, he unabashedly expressed his "dislike" for Du Fu's poems. Du Fu was a great realist poet of the Tang Dynasty, and Chairman Mao liked Li Bai's works more than the Romantic poet Li Bai. However, this did not prevent him from making an objective and fair evaluation of Du Fu's poems and drawing useful nourishment from them. Comrades who had worked for a long time around him saw from the collection of his former residence in Zhongnanhai that Chairman Mao had read many of Du Fu's poems, and there were only 67 poems that had been circled, of which more than 10 were circled three or four times, such as "Two Songs of Dream li bai", "Five Songs of Yonghuai Ancient Monuments", "Shu Xiang", "Wen Guanjun Collected Henan Hebei", and "Ascending To the Heights".
After visiting the Caotang, Chairman Mao also sent people to the Caotang Memorial Hall to borrow various editions of Du Fu's poetry collection in 12 volumes, totaling 108 volumes, to read them carefully. In his letter to Comrade Chen Yi, when talking about the use of fu, comparative, and xing techniques in writing poetry, he once cited Du Fu's "Northern Expedition" as an example, and he could also recite many of Du Fu's poems. In 1964, when the chairman returned to Beijing from Hunan to Pass through the Yueyang section by train, he also gladly wrote Du Fu's "Dengyue Yang Lou" by hand.
Leaving the "Poetry History Hall" and accompanied by Comrade Lin Yannian, Chairman Mao walked along the quaint and chic cloister and walked into the Du Shi version exhibition room. Here are various editions of Du Fu's poetry collections collected by the Du Fu Caotang Memorial Hall from various parts of the country since the Southern Song Dynasty, as well as foreign translations into more than 10 languages such as Dynasty, Russian, Japanese, English, French, and German. Chairman Mao was particularly interested in the Song and Yuan periodicals, and he pointed to a copy of the Song dynasty "Du Gongbu Collection" on snow-white rice paper, asked when it was printed, and replied that it had recently been issued in Chengdu by Shanghai. It seems that the chairman wants to find out the root cause, and Comrade Lin Yannian added: "There are more than 10 films issued to Chengdu. "Too little." Perhaps at this moment, as a great man who has grown up in a deep national traditional cultural atmosphere, out of his preference for Classical Chinese literature, he also expresses his feelings and regrets that Du Fu's poetry has not been popularized among the people!
After reading the various versions of Du's poems engraved in the Ming, Qing, and modern times, Chairman Mao looked at the collection of poems displayed in the cupboard and said, "It is a political poem." Mao Zedong made a unique and profound evaluation by perceiving and understanding Du Shi from the perspective of a politician.
Chairman Mao came to the "Big Temple" and sat down on a row of "flying chairs" sitting from south to north for a short rest, and his demeanor was calm and peaceful. After a while, his gaze was attracted by a picture of the Qing Dynasty scholar Gu Fuchu hanging in the "DaXiao", and he couldn't help but get up and read softly: "At the same time as the different generations, ask such a Jiangshan, the dragon curls up and the tiger lies down a few poets;" Pondering for a moment, then said: "It is a collection of Du sentences", and then went to the west head to look at the lower link carefully: "Mr. Also Liuyu, there is a long stay in heaven and earth, and the moon white wind is a grass hall." With a smile on his kind face, he pointed at the long union and said in an appreciative tone: "Good! ”
In more than an hour, Chairman Mao visited Du Fu Caotang and shook hands with the staff of the Caotang Memorial Hall to say goodbye after parting.