Since the Ming and Qing dynasties, there is a folk song that has been widely circulated, saying that "Tianxiazhuang, count Douzhuang, Douzhuang is a small Beijing". Why is Douzhuang called "Little Beijing", and in which dynasty was it built?
There is also a saying called, "There is Suhang in the world, and there are dou zhuang in the world." How beautiful is Douzhuang? Has the Ming and Qing dynasties been preserved intact?
Douzhuang Ancient Castle is located in the southeast of Shanxi, backed by the West of Yushan, leaning on Woniu Mountain, surrounded by the qin river on three sides.
Today, Lebao takes everyone into Douzhuang Castle to explore the secrets of this mysterious rural castle.
Douzhuang Ancient Castle, located in Jiafeng Town, Qinshui County, Jincheng, Shanxi, with an east-west, north-south length of 500 meters, more than 2,000 meters of city walls, the overall layout is a "swastika" swastika, divided into four streets and four alleys in the east, west, south and north, and there are city gate towers at the junction of streets, alleys and city walls, and there are eight city gate towers in the east, west, south and north, plus the small city built by the ancestral Shang Shufu - "Urn City", a total of nine gates, so there are nine passes, collectively known as nine gates and nine passes.
The existing ancient building area of Douzhuang Ancient Castle is about 40,000 square meters, and 80% of the ancient buildings are well preserved. In addition to a large number of houses, there are also temples, pavilions, ancestral halls, study rooms, school grounds, courts, dungeons, city walls, city gate towers, arches, shops and a large number of inscriptions. Except for the main hall and the auxiliary hall of the Buddhist temple, which are Yuan Dynasty buildings, most of the rest are Ming and Qing buildings. The building has a clear vein and distinctive characteristics, and has been praised by experts and scholars who came to investigate as the most typical representative work of studying the northern residential architecture in the Ming and Qing dynasties.
Because the layout of Douzhuang Ancient Castle resembles the Forbidden City, it is commonly known as "Little Beijing" by locals.
Regarding the origin of "Little Beijing", there is also a story in the village: during the Ming Dynasty, Dou Zhuang produced a man with a career path, named Zhang Liegong, who was a famous filial piety. His mother was ill and had lived in the village for a long time. Zhang Liegong sent people to build a city, a streetscape, and a courtyard according to the pattern of Beijing City, and built a "Beijing City" in the village, so that his mother could enjoy the scenery of the capital at home.
"Shoes don't get wet when it rains, but you don't go out on the street, one door leads to hundreds of households, and a hundred doors sneak through the village." This sentence very vividly summarizes the architectural style of the entire ancient city of Douzhuang.
The large and small corridors and street buildings in the fort connect the entire ancient city and connect the courtyards. The gate of each house can enter the courtyard and pass through the streets and alleys, and the streets and alleys are connected to the city walls. Many courtyards have hidden doors, and the courtyards are interconnected, if outsiders enter, although they can twist and turn, such as entering the labyrinth. Once the enemy attacks, the villagers of Douzhuang can use these twists and turns to maneuver with the enemy, both to resist and escape, and the neighbors can also support each other.
It was precisely because of this pattern that the ancient city of Douzhuang was attacked by the Liukou four times during the Chongzhen period without being destroyed.
When was such a mysterious building built?
According to the "Dou Family Tree", during the Song Dynasty, the ancestors of the Dou clan migrated from Fufeng County in Shaanxi to Qinshui County to avoid war and chaos.
In the eighth year of the reign of Emperor Zhezong of Song (1093), the Dou family chose a place on the east side of the tomb to build the Dou Mansion, that is, dou zhuang castle (dou zhuang village). At the Urn Water Beach at the foot of Woniu Mountain, the Dou family allocated Xiquli (present-day Qudi Village) to the Tu ethnic group Zhang (the local poor) to guard the tomb of their ancestors, and the Zhang surname lived here from then on.
Therefore, the ancient castle of Douzhuang was built in the Northern Song Dynasty. At that time, the three generals of the Dou clan were built according to the five elements of bagua, and the overall elegance and atmosphere were beautiful.
In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the power of the Dou family gradually declined, but the Zhang family, which was originally a tomb keeper, was increasingly prosperous by the Zefu of The Feng Shui of The Tomb, and the nomination of the Golden List continued endlessly.
In the last years of the Ming Dynasty, the officialdom was corrupt, the people were not happy, and peasant uprisings broke out one after another. In order to defend his homeland, Zhang Wudian, who had been the official who lived in the Dali Temple Zhengqing, presided over the construction of Douzhuang Castle after returning to his hometown, which lasted for 3 years.
After his death, it was presided over by his daughter-in-law Zhang Quan's wife, Mrs. Huo, which lasted for 9 years and was completed in the second year of Chongzhen. Later additions, extended along the main street, were arranged in an orderly manner outside the city, forming the current grandeur and spectacular atmosphere.
During the Rebellion of Liukou at the end of the Ming Dynasty, Zhang's mother and son and female dependents and child servants resisted the enemy and defeated Liukou's attacks three times, so Dou Zhuang was also known as "Lady City".
Douzhuang City has a full range of functional facilities, including politics, military, justice, economy, culture, etiquette, worship, tombs, etc., the most distinctive are public halls, dungeons, city walls, city gates, Tibetan soldier caves, martial houses and so on. These are very precious historical empirical evidence and historical and cultural heritage.
In terms of ancestral temple architecture, Douzhuang Ancient Fort has a total of 13 ancient temples, namely the Great Temple, the Liegong Temple, the Buddha Temple, the Cai Temple, the North Temple, the Temple of Literature, the Mars Temple, the Guanyin Temple, the Yanwang Temple, the Bawang Temple, the Black Tiger Temple, and the Wudao Temple. The size of the temple varies, and there are still Buddhist temples, caishen temples, Mars temples, guanyin halls and so on.
LeBao focuses on the official building "Gugongtang" in the north of the village, "Gugongtang" is composed of two parts, the public hall and the dungeon, the center is a hall-style building, and there are 8 holes in the brick arch cave 5 meters southwest of the hall 20 meters from the hall, which is a prison building. Built-in stone mills, iron rings on the walls, brick forts built high above the entrance to guard the prison.
According to Chen Zhihua and Lou Qingxi, assistants of Mr. Liang Sicheng, a well-known expert in China, such a building predates the Hongdong Susan Prison and is a very rare ancient building of the bureaucracy in China.
Douzhuang Castle is a typical defensive castle complex. The complex spans the three historical periods of the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, and the architectural styles are diversified.
Many experts and scholars who came to investigate believe that Douzhuang Ancient Castle is the most typical representative of the study of northern residential architecture in the Ming and Qing dynasties, one of the reasons is that Douzhuang Ancient Castle opened the precedent of rural castle architecture in the Qin River Basin. Since then, xiangyu, imperial city, and ancient castles have been completed. Therefore, Douzhuang is also known as the first fort of Qinhe.
In the small castle of Dou Zhuang, there were 8 jinshi and 28 lifters, and the largest official achieved the Bingbu Shangshu. Compared with other ancient castles in the Qin River Valley, Dou Zhuang has more official residences and higher specifications, so there can be a tall and solemn city in the city such as "Shangshufu".
According to the different families and eras of construction, the houses in Douzhuang Castle can basically be divided into four categories.
The first type is the Dou family mansion, there is a quadrangle courtyard 120 meters from the southeast entrance of the Douzhuang Ancient Castle, the main room on the north side is two dark and three bright, the east and west are low rammed huts, and the words "Great Song" are written under the beam eaves.
The second category is the Zhang family mansion, built by the Dou clan shouzhi Zhang. Since the Ming Dynasty, the Zhang clan has rebuilt the mansion on the old site and built the upper and lower mansions of the Shangshu Mansion. The overall layout of the upper house is the six courtyards of the chessboard, with wufeng tower, Wanghe tower, sky bridge, large garden, small garden, with a total area of 3800 square meters, which is a large building complex. Facing east, the gate is 9 meters high and 5 meters wide, tall and majestic, the door head is decorated with brick carved bucket arches, and the stone plaque is inscribed "Shangshufu". The lower mansion consists of three courtyards. The overall building is lavishly decorated and tall and majestic.
The third category is the Chang family mansion, a mansion compound in the late Qing Dynasty when the bureaucrat Dou Zhuang Jia Fourth Master married his daughter in order to repay the favor, which is a combination of Chinese and Western, very beautiful. Legend has it that at the end of the Qing Dynasty, Jia Siye was high and his family was poor, just in time for the year of the imperial examination, he wanted to go to the Capital Examination to get a meritorious name, suffering from not being entangled, he had borrowed money from the abbot of Yushan Temple many times, but he could not do as he wished, although the Chang family was not a hugely rich household at that time, but he decided that Jia was a talent that could be created, so he helped each other, and after Jia really achieved success, in order to repay the favor of the Chang family's support, he married his daughter to the Chang family as a daughter-in-law, and invested in a huge amount of money to build a mansion, investing fifteen thousand to work for three years, and sent it to the Chang family as a dowry.
The fourth category is the Jia's mansion, which is a three-courtyard concatenated building with exquisite architecture. The treasure house in the mansion is where Jia's precious items are stored, and the site selection and design are careful and ingenious, this building is alone, not connected to any building, and the building is smooth to prevent thieves from climbing into the house. The structure is designed as two floors above ground, one floor in the underground darkroom, and the entrance and exit are camouflaged with the indoor floor, which is indistinguishable. The overall foundation is constructed of boulders, the wall is green brick solid, white ash filling, the wall is five feet thick, the building is "T-shaped", the caves support each other, no beams and no purlins, no flammable building materials, which is really a painstaking work.
This article is written and arranged by LOHAS Shanxi, and the pictures are from the Internet.
Scenic address: Jincheng City Qinshui County Jiafeng Town Douzhuang Village
Transportation Information:
Self-drive route:
1. From Taiyuan and Changzhi, drive along the g55 (Too Long Expressway) to Jincheng, take the Gaoping exit under the highway, and then drive along the first-class highway leading to the direction of Duanshi to reach Douzhuang Castle;
2. From Taiyuan and Changzhi, drive along the g55 (too long expressway) to Jincheng, then turn to Jinyang Expressway, drive in the direction of Yangcheng, run north of the expressway, and then drive along Duanrun First Grade Road to Douzhuang (Jiafeng Toll Station) to arrive.
public transit:
Take the bus from Qinshui County to Jiafeng Town, and Get off at Douzhuang.