On October 4, 2020, the 111th anniversary of Zhang Zhidong's death, the author and the "Humanistic Wuhan" cultural protection volunteers paid homage to Zhang Zhidong Cemetery in Nanpi County, Cangzhou City, Hebei Province. In the late Qing Dynasty, Zhang Zhidong oversaw 18 years, leaving a deep imprint in Wuhan, and those of us in Wuhan were warmly received by the cultural and historical department in Nanpi, especially the teacher Ye Shulong who participated in the search for Zhang Zhidong's remains, and learned about many little-known secrets.
On October 5, 2020, humanities Wuhan Cultural Protection volunteers visited nanpi Zhangzhidong cemetery
On October 4, 1909, on the 22nd day of the eighth lunar month of the first year of the Qing Dynasty, Zhang Zhidong died in his residence at No. 11 Baimi Xie Street in Beijing at the age of 73. On October 6, Emperor Xuantong sent the county prince Belle Tou to the shrine. Zhang Zhidong's death has attracted attention at home and abroad, and his coffin is made of agarwood. Zhang Gonggong was loyal to the country, honest and selfless, and "his family did not increase by one acre", which was the good coffin that Zhang Biao, then the commander (division commander) of the Eighth Town of the New Army in Hubei Province, spent 12,000 taels of silver to buy him in Jiangnan.
At that time, colleagues in Hubei, Beijing and other places, Meng Gu effectively imitated Zhang Biao to help, and Zhang's family received a total of 20,000 taels of silver to buy funerals. When Zhang Gong was buried in Nanpi, his close friend Chen Baochen wrote an epitaph, covered by Xu Shichang, the minister of military aircraft (who later served as the president of the Republic of China), and the inscription was written by the famous calligrapher Hua Shikui in Tianjin. On January 25, 1910, the Zhang family was mourned, and the cemetery was located in the northeast of Shuangmiao Village, southwest of Nanpi County, where the fifth ancestor of the Zhang family was buried in the Imperial History of Zhang Huai, the military minister of the late Qing Dynasty, Zhang Zhiwan, the father of Zhang Zhidong, the prefect of Xingyi, and other ancestors. In front of the tomb, there are burial tablets, Shinto monuments, and relics monuments.
Humanistic Wuhan Cultural Protection volunteers bowed three times in front of the tomb to worship a generation of famous courtiers Zhang Zhidong
After the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, the Red Guards of Nanpi Middle School and Nanpi Nong School decided to carry out a major operation to break the four olds - to excavate the tomb of Zhang Zhidong. Nampi Middle School was formerly known as the Ci'en Academy founded by Jang Zhi-dong. On the day of the excavation, when the Nanpi gathering was held, the scene was crowded with people, and sometimes the rebel faction of the workers of the Nanpi Machinery Factory came to help with pickaxes and other tools. At about 8 a.m. on October 10, when people were about to excavate, Gao Molin, then deputy governor of Nanpi County, and three cadres squeezed into the crowd to dissuade the Red Guards from digging graves, but they did not listen. As soon as the county cadres left, dozens of people dug up with iron catalpas. Soon the tomb was flattened, revealing a large brick set bonded with white ash and egg white, and under the blow of the hammer and steel braze, four rows of arched green brick sets were exposed, and four brick sleeves were opened to reveal four coffins. These coffins were very strong, and it took a lot of effort for people to open the first coffin on the northernmost side, which was the original wife of Zhang Zhidong, who died at the age of 29.
Zhang Zhidong's agarwood coffin is the "Three Seven Coffins", which is harder than iron and stone. The rebels of the machinery factory used all their strength to rush open the coffin with steel brazes, and they removed the wooden planks, only to see Zhang Zhidong's body lying on his back, covered with six or seven layers of quilts. Peeling off the quilt, Zhang's face was dry, but it was not rotten, and he wore a pint on his head, a necklace hanging from a bead, and a Qing Dynasty official embroidered with a crane. Sun Qingrong of the prefectural cultural center used a camera to photograph the scene, but unfortunately the photos could not be found later.
After the burial materials were cleaned up, several workers' rebels dragged Zhang Zhidong's body out of the coffin and threw it on the east side of the grave. Seeing that his corpse was not bad, some people thought that there was a jewel in his mouth, and pried open his mouth with an artifact, and this once-popular court official was forced to cut off several teeth, and did not find any jewels! The third coffin in Zhang Zhidong's tomb is his successor Tang clan, and the fourth coffin is his successor lady Wang.
A few days later, Ye Zuyu, a student of Nanpi Nong School who was at the scene of the tomb digging, passed by the excavation site and saw Zhang's naked body lying on the west side of the north-south dirt road from the county town to Shuangmiao Village, his stomach was opened, and there was a naked female corpse next to the grave, and two other female corpses were thrown nearby. A few days later, when he went to see it again, Zhang's body was lying on the east side of the dirt road facing south, and he had a sorghum apple more than a foot high inserted on his body, and he felt that he could not look at it, so he pulled out the apple and dragged the body to the wave nest (a puddle washed out by the side of the road) that was more than two meters long and more than half a meter deep on the side of the road. A few days later, when Ye Zuyu passed by the roadside at school, he saw that someone had buried the body in the wave nest with soil, and his heart was happy, and he thought that someone really did this good deed!
Later, Zhang Zhidong's body disappeared in the wilderness, where did he go?
The teachers of "Humanistic Wuhan" took soil from Zhangzhidong Cemetery and brought it back to Wuhan
In 1992, in order to develop the economy, Nanpi County "played the Zhang Zhidong card" to attract investment and engaged in a "Zhang Park" construction project with an investment of 30 million yuan, which was aborted because the target was too large. However, during the Qingming Festival in 1993, Nanpi County built an empty tomb on the original site of Zhangzhidong's tomb and held a public festival. At that time, the remains of Zhang Zhidong were not found, but the principal party was sure of whether there was a body in the tomb. Later, some people mistakenly believed that there were "people and things" in the tomb, and dug holes to rob the tomb, which attracted a report from the "Yanzhao Metropolis Daily" criticizing Nanpi County for improperly handling the remains of Zhang Zhidong.
The current situation of Zhang's tomb aroused the determination of Xing Jiaxun in Nanpi County to find Zhang Gong's remains. Since May 4, 2004, he has organized manpower and material resources to carry out the search. After years of hard work, the dawn finally came to an end in 2007. One day in April 2007, Lu Chunsheng, a villager in Cui Wei Village, approached Xiao Lixing, president of the Zhangzhidong Calligraphy and Painting Institute, and uttered a surprising sentence: "Zhang Gong's bones were buried by my cousin Zhang Zhixin, who lives in Nanguan Village. Xiao Lixing told this news to Xing Jiaxun, and Xing Jiaxun was both happy and excited after hearing the news, and hurriedly found Zhang Zhixin.
Zhang Zhixin, a villager in Nanguan Village who secretly buried Zhang Zhidong's bones during the Cultural Revolution
Zhang Zhixin, 61 years old, was only in his 20s in 1966. One day, he was pulling cotton firewood near the tomb of Zhang in the south of the village, and the bones of Zhang Zhidong and a lady were hanging in the field, and the women who were in the field were afraid and asked him to bury the bones. At that time, Zhang Zhidong's tomb had not yet been filled, so he and an old man surnamed Wang pulled Zhang Gong's bones from the east into the tomb, and then pulled a lady's bones from the west and buried them together. After they buried it, they did not leave a grave, on the surface the tomb was destroyed, but in fact, the bones were still under the tomb, and the bones of the other two ladies were missing.
After Zhang Zhixin finished this, he repeatedly told people not to speak up. People pickpocket, we bury, and come against others, the rebels know that they can't eat and go around?
On June 9, 2007, the excavation site of Zhang Zhidong's remains was photographed by Li Bingjie
On June 8, 2007, at the base point identified by Zhang Zhixin, the search for Zhang Zhidong's remains began. The excavator's large iron claws dug longitudinal trenches from north to south, but until the sun set, no bones were found. The next day was not dawn, the excavation continued, Zhang Zhixin had a vague sense of foreboding, with gloves and a spatula. When the excavator reached the 4th ditch, a piece of white frost appeared in the soil, and Zhang Zhixin shouted, "Stop! "Flying into the ditch, I picked it up and saw that it was a skull. Really hanging, the big scratch rubbed Zhang Gong's skull over, a little deeper will be destroyed, and a little shallower may also miss it!
At dawn, Xing Jiaxun and many people in Nanpi County rushed over to hear the news, and people set up a shading greenhouse for Zhang Gong, and Zhang Zhixin and others wore gloves and cleared out two complete bones from the soil, the east side was male and the west side was female, which was exactly the same as previously described. Subsequently, Zhang Zhixin, Zhang Houqian, a descendant of the Zhang Zhidong family, Ye Shulong, vice president of the Zhang Zhidong Research Association, and others placed the bones one by one in a coffin, sealed them, and sent them to the secret security office of the Nanpi County Martyrs' Cemetery for storage.
On June 9, 2007, Ye Shulong informed the descendants of Zhang Gong in Beijing by telephone, and the two sides agreed on the fact that "Zhang Zhixin's self-statement and the location and morphology of the bones found by excavation are consistent; especially in 1966, when digging a tomb, someone opened his mouth to find beads, used utensils to pry off his jaw, and the bones unearthed this time also lacked the right jaw", and finally determined that this was Zhang Gong's remains.
On October 4, 2008, the burial ceremony of the bones of Zhang Zhidong in Nanpi County was photographed by Li Bingjie
On October 4, 2008, on the 99th anniversary of Zhang Gong's death, a burial ceremony was held in Nanpi County for zhang zhidong's remains. At 10 a.m., the crane steadily placed the two coffins in the reconstructed Tomb of Zhang Zhidong. After a hundred years of wind and rain, a generation of famous ministers Zhang Zhidong finally has a stable and resting home.
On the right is Ye Shulong, director of the Nanpi County Cultural and Historical Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, a participant in the search for and burial of Zhang Zhidong's remains
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Editor: Tian Lianshen