Riding the wind of rebirth

Chapter 1451 Shi Family Ancestral Hall and Yu Palace

The riverside villages and towns in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River have a unique layout, and the houses are basically similar in shape. Zhenxi Town and Rongshan Town and Baisha Town in Jiachuan, which Zhou Zhi is familiar with, also look almost the same.

Basically, there is a road along the river and to the west. Both sides of the road along the river are old houses with brick and wood structures. There is also a stone-step road along the pier, leading to the top of the hillside. There are usually palaces on it. Look at buildings like temples.

Zhenxi is indeed unknown. People from the Fuling Cultural Center were already waiting for Zhou Zhi and his party at the pier. Zhou Zhi was shocked when he heard the introduction. It turns out that this place is said to be the home of a famous pre-Qin figure, Ba Qing, also known as the Widow. The birthplace of Qing Dynasty.

Ba Qing was a great industrial and commercial owner during the Warring States Period, and could be called the earliest female entrepreneur in the world. She provided a large amount of mercury for the Mausoleum of the First Emperor of Qin. Because of her special political and military status, she was married to another great businessman and herdsman, Wu Shiluo. Being treated as a distinguished guest by the country. Later, Qin Shihuang left her as a guest in Xianyang to take care of herself. After Ba's death, the First Emperor of Qin, in recognition of her chastity, named her a chaste woman and ordered the construction of a "Nvhuai Qingtai" at her burial place to make it known to the world.

Ba Qing is not well-known in China now, and will only become widely known after Huang Yi's "Looking for Qin" becomes popular all over the world and is made into a popular TV series by TVB.

With such a background, Zhenxi had nine palaces and eighteen temples built during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, as well as the "Eight Scenes of Zhenxi" based on the popularity at that time.

Many of them have disappeared by now, but places such as Wantian Palace, Yu Palace, Shi Family Ancestral Hall, and Yan Family Courtyard are still there.

In addition, there are many Han tombs.

Zhenxi is a small river like Gaodong River in Jiachuan. The river also has several small tributaries such as Xiaozhenxi, Quxi and Bixi. It is surrounded by green trees and is warm in winter and cool in summer. When everyone walks together After crossing the stone road, I can no longer feel the heat even in the scorching heat.

"This place is really nice. It will be developed into a place of cultivation in the future. It will be warm in winter and cool in summer. It will be very comfortable." Zhou Zhi felt physically and mentally happy.

"Don't mention this in front of the folks." Mr. Xu from the Fuling Cultural Center who was in charge of the introduction smiled and said: "Warm winters and cool summers mean no harvest. A few years ago, teachers from the Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences came to inspect our place. It can be said that the relict plants here include Astragalus, Liba, golden retriever, fern, stone pine, sea golden sand, metasequoia, ginkgo, etc. It can be called a 'Tertiary plant refuge'. "

"It's a big glacier, a place where heavy winds and snow can't come, right?" Zhou Zhi changed his mind, understood what Lao Xu meant, and smiled.

"Now everyone is waiting to be relocated. Those places of interest and historical sites were not able to be protected before, and they focused on maintaining them in their original state. Now, there is no hope for them."

After speaking, he made a rough gesture with his hand: "There, from the area below Xuejia Village at Quxikou to the area upstream of King Yu's Palace, the side facing the river will all be flooded."

"The city has learned that the inundation area will submerge two cities, 11 counties, and 114 market towns, and more than 1.2 million immigrants will need to be relocated. Just looking at this number, we know that the country is I’ve made a big decision.”

The Shi Family Ancestral Hall is a Qing Dynasty building, an ancient building that combines traditional residences with ancestral hall statues. It covers an area of ​​more than 1,000 square meters and has a construction area of ​​nearly 700 square meters.

The entire building is of brick and wood structure, facing south and facing the Yangtze River. It is three bays wide, with four steps and three floors in the north and south, forming a layout of a courtyard with three entrances and three wells.

There is a screen wall in front, a cloister inside, and more than 20 large and small rooms. It was built by Shi Jiyun and Shi Yu, the local Jinshi scholars and Hanlin Academy editors in the Qing Dynasty, after their father and son became prosperous.

This residential house is quite complete, but the Shi family seems to have adhered to a low-key style. Although the scale is complete and grand, there is no excessive decoration, and the overall look is simple and solemn. The meaning of simplicity and solemnity is that this place has research value for studying the Qing Dynasty southern Sichuan dwellings, the pattern, orientation, regulations of ancestral halls, etc., but it is lackluster in terms of collection value.

The only two places are the screen wall in front of the door and the unique ship-shaped stone gate tower on the head of the ancestral hall, which is rare to see elsewhere.

There are five exquisite brick carvings on the screen wall, and there are also couplets on both sides made of blue and white porcelain fragments.

The top of the ship-shaped stone gatehouse is carved with many dramatic figures, and the bottom is carved with auspicious beasts and spiritual grass. It is very top-notch in terms of craftsmanship, and it is also the only two luxurious places in the entire Shi family courtyard.

With the capacity of the Three Gorges Cultural Preservation Fund, it can only demolish these two places. The only thing left is to take away the valuable wood. If there is an opportunity to sell it in the future, it can also offset part of the cost.

Yes, Zhou Zhi has set such a path for the Cultural Preservation Fund from the very beginning. The foundation will also collect materials that are clearly going to be flooded and damaged, and no organization is willing to take over, but are not without value. They can be used as materials to build the Three Gorges Residential Museum in the future, or they can be resold after the property appreciates in value to raise funds.

Including some porcelain, metalware, statues, architectural components, etc. that are currently difficult to be included in the protection level of cultural relics, the same treatment will be done.

The most abundant wood in Shu is golden nan, and other rare woods such as rosewood, huanghuali, rosewood, wenge, iron wood, ebony, ebony and mahogany have also been preserved or imported in various historical periods.

In the Palace of King Yu in Zhenxi, Zhou Zhi discovered an ebony throne and a statue of King Yu.

Ebony is actually the product of wood sinking into water. After millions of years of erosion, the cavities in the wood cells are filled with minerals. It has a fine and even structure, a hard and heavy material, and has no smell of wood, but it has a lustrous and greasy feel. When it sinks in water, it becomes as black as red sandalwood and more fine-grained. Another biggest feature is that it will not rot in water.

The construction site of King Yu's Palace is very close to the water. According to Lao Xu, the statue of King Yu here was often submerged by the river, and it was also damp and humid near the river. The doors and windows of the main hall were often replaced, but the statues and shrines were never corrupted. The villagers thought it was supernatural. Therefore, it has always been worshiped throughout history.

It turned out to be made of ebony, so it’s no wonder that it didn’t rot. Zhou Zhi had solved a case.

This shrine with the statue is considered valuable, and there is a stone-carved divine turtle underneath. Unlike the ordinary dragons who carry stele, this divine turtle also holds a scroll in its mouth.

This is an allusion to Dayu's control of floods and his visit to Luoshui, where a divine turtle presented a book. Together with the picture of Fuxi encountering a dragon and horse in the Yellow River, it is collectively called the "River Picture and Luoshu".

There are palaces of King Yu all over the country. Because King Yu once allied with the princes in Tushan, the palace of King Yu is also called Tushan Temple. Usually, King Yu and the Tushan family are worshiped together. The more likely the place is to be flooded, the more people pay tribute to Yu. The construction of the palace became more and more grand, hoping to use the magic power of Dayu and his wife to suppress the flood.

The preciousness of Zhenxiyu Palace can only be said to be average. Only the statue shrine needs to be moved.

(End of this chapter)