Guizhou Tour 6

Tianlong Tunpu

Our next attraction is the ancient town of Tianlong Tunbao, which the tour guide repeatedly mentioned on the road. Tianlong Tunbao was originally the name of a village, and there are now 1,200 households in the village. It is 60 kilometers away from the provincial capital Guiyang in the east. Guihuang Expressway, Guizhou-Yunnan Highway, Guikun Railway and Qinghuang Expressway under construction all pass through Zhaibian. It is known as "the throat of Yunnan and the belly of Guizhou". It is also the throat of Yunnan in the west. In the Yuan Dynasty, it was the famous Shunyuan Ancient Post Road. Tianlong Tunbao Ancient Town was originally a post station on the Shunyuan Ancient Post Road, named Fanlong Post. Due to the important military location, a large number of troops have been stationed here and around since the Ming Dynasty, and it is still an important place to garrison troops today. In the Ming Dynasty, after Zhu Yuanzhang conquered the former Liang King in the south, in order to control the southwest for a long time, he recruited soldiers in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and asked them to move to Guizhou with their wives and children, and live in various guards. Cultivate the land and be ready for battle at any time, so you have a Tunbao. After more than 600 years of inheritance and development, Tunpu, which has lasted for nearly 20 generations, has gradually evolved into a unique folk culture unique to the surrounding ethnic groups (Miao, Dong, etc.).

During the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty, Fan Chengxun, governor of Yunnan and Guizhou, was ordered to "reform the land and return it to the locals", and the people in Tunpu changed from military households to ordinary people. The ancient town of Tianlong Tunbao was renamed "Fanlongpu". Due to the importance of its geographical location, it was still a post station and an important place for troops of the Qing court. At the beginning of this century, several well-known Confucian scholars in Tianlong felt that the word "fanlong" in Fanlongpu was indecent. They proposed to take the word "heaven" from Tiantai Mountain and "dragon" from Longyan Mountain as the name of the village. It is the origin of the word "Tianlong" in Tianlong Tunbao Town.

The garrison troops of all dynasties have left historical relics on this land. When you get off the car, you will see a huge gate, just like the gate of the ancient garrison village in TV dramas. This may tell us that this place was once a place where soldiers were stationed. A little tour guide in blue Tunpu costumes came to welcome us. It has long been heard that Tunpu women are loyal guardians of Tunpu culture. Their strange "Fengyang Han costumes" have been worn for more than 600 years. It is said that in the early days of the "Cultural Revolution", some rebels came to force them to take off their "exotic clothes", but as soon as they left, the women continued to wear Han clothes.
Up to now, the orthodox attire of women in Tunpu is still wearing silver earrings and combing their hair in three locks, which is a hairstyle with high front hair and looks like a phoenix head. She was wearing a long blue dress with beautiful lace on the placket and large cuffs. Young unmarried women wear white handkerchiefs with a belt tied on the left side; married women wear green handkerchiefs with a belt tied behind their backs, black with many tassels, like a horse's tail. Their shoes are also very particular: the cloth sole, the upper are crescent-shaped, the toe is turned up and decorated with flower and bird patterns. This authentic attire of the Han women in the south of the Yangtze River in the Ming Dynasty was once mistaken for "crested seedlings", and even the Tunpu people were once regarded as a minority and discriminated against. Even so, Tunpu people still maintain a sense of superiority of "Han orthodoxy". Not only do they not change their costumes, but they also strictly prohibit intermarriage with local people, which has allowed Tunpu culture to be passed down from generation to generation. Whenever someone asks what ethnicity they belong to, they will proudly tell you that they are the majority ethnicity and the real Han nationality. Indeed, in other places, the culture and living customs of the Han nationality have long been evolving and changing in the continuous wind and rain of history, and have gradually weakened their own characteristics through blending with other ethnic groups and even Western culture. However, the Tunpu culture hidden in the depths of the karst mountains, just as it was more than six centuries ago, sticks to its original simplicity and style, forming a sharp contrast with today's Han culture. Maybe we can see the real legacy of Han culture here.

The little tour guide speaks Mandarin very well and gave us a very detailed introduction. She told us that Tianlong Tunpu is currently the largest fort in Guizhou. Most of the Ming Dynasty’s Jiantun chose to station in the mountains where the area was concealed and easy to defend but difficult to attack. However, Tianlongtun was located among the many forts in Guizhou, and its geographical location was relatively flat. Tianlongtun has a population of more than 5,000. An artificial canal runs through the village. The village has a compact structure, with a total of 16 stone lanes. From a distance, it looks like a solid castle.
　　In this way, we walked into the ancient town of Tianlong Tunbao with unique cultural customs under the guidance of the tour guide. We walked on the stone road paved 600 years ago and looked at the still standing blockhouses and houses with lookout windows in every household. Walking into the stockade, there are stones everywhere. In the words of the local people, it is "stone tiles to cover stone houses, stone walls to stone streets, stone mills to stone mills, stone nests to stone vats." There are three characters of "Jiudaokan" written in the alley mouth. Entering the alley and ascending the stairs, the small path is only enough for two people to pass each other. Small windows, about 12 x 25 cm, appear on the stone walls on both sides from time to time. There are doors beside the windows. Only 1.5 meters high. Bending down to enter, I found that the house has two floors, the interior is a wooden structure, and the stone wall is two feet thick, like a fortress.
Listen to the introduction that the stone house here has a history of more than 600 years. Back then, every window and door here could be used for war. Small windows are easy to defend and difficult to attack, and doors are low, so people have to lower their heads to enter. In the ancient town, it can be seen that the lanes are criss-crossed. If you don't follow the guide, you will get lost soon. The deep gun holes all over the lanes, the stone arches with one man guarding the gate, and the military function of being incapable of opening, all of these show the relics of war and the thought of Tunpu people's armed forces.

Appreciating the costumes of the Ming Dynasty worn by women in Tunpu, I feel very fresh. You can take pictures with them. When you leave, a wooden pavilion appears in front of you. This is a tea station. We saw a middle-aged woman making tea. The tea here is made by themselves in a huge earthen pot with herbs. It tastes weird. It is said that it can relieve the fire. When you are tired and thirsty after walking, it happens that the tea break is free. Take a picture of the woman and the pointed embroidered shoes at the same time. Women in Tunpu also have their own embroidery workshop. In a small courtyard, we saw many elderly women embroidering shoe uppers and aprons together, but we did not see young girls. I wonder if this craft can still be passed down. how long.

While walking, I came to a courtyard with a stage, which is a place to watch local operas. "Tunpu Dixie" is an opera performed by Tunpu people in the fields, and it was brought by the Ming army when it entered Guizhou. It originated from the military Nuo ritual used in the army at that time to invigorate the military, intimidate the enemy, and ensure the smooth deployment of the army. "Nuo" is a ritual of exorcising ghosts and epidemics, that is, mask dance. So local operas are performed with masks, but these masks are not worn on the face, but on the forehead, and the face is covered with a black cloth. It is said that because in the past, people stood at a high place to watch the performances, and it is easier to watch the masks on top of their heads. The contents of Tunpu Dixi Opera are novels and novels, and it is called a "living fossil" in the history of Chinese drama. What we watched was the Three Kingdoms drama "San Ying Zhan Lu Bu". The ground opera performances are the actions of fighting and horse fighting in ancient wars, which is a simulation of the war life in those days. The action lyrics (with subtitles, otherwise you can't understand at all) are not complicated, vigorous, and very lively, suitable for people to have fun in the fields. We later saw masks on display in a showroom. The ground opera mask (called face) is a combination of bas-relief and hollow-out carving, with fine carving, complex and changeable shapes, vivid and mysterious images, and strange and exaggerated expressions, giving people a strong visual impact.

Don't think that the descendants of these soldiers are uneducated. In fact, Tunpu people value Confucianism, Buddhism, and martial arts. The Tianlong Primary School we visited is a well-known rural primary school in Guizhou Province. You can’t imagine that there is such a large primary school in such a remote mountain village. The two-story wooden structure is a bit like the old school building of Beijing Women’s Normal School. This is a provincial-level cultural relics protection unit. During the Republic of China, there was a library here, which fully reflects the cultural connotation of the ancient town.

According to the introduction, in the 14th century, Zhu Yuanzhang overthrew the rule of the Yuan Dynasty and established the Ming Dynasty. But Liang Wang Bazaci Valmy still entrenched in the southwestern border. In the fifteenth year of Hongwu (1382), Zhu Yuanzhang took Fu Youde, Marquis of Yingchuan, as the general of the Southern Expedition, led an army of 300,000, and divided his troops into Yunnan and Guizhou in three ways. In this team, there are 4 officers and soldiers from Nanjing who are brothers and sisters. They swore to be brothers with different surnames, and they were renamed Zhang Zhengding, Chen Zhengding, Shen Zhengding, and Zheng Zhengding in order of age. After the rebellion was over, the emperor ordered the Southern Conquest Army to garrison the land, and the four surnamed brothers chose a place to live together. He became the ancestor of the four surnames "Zhang, Chen, Shen, and Zheng" in today's Dragon. Local people sometimes jokingly say, "Our ancestors were the first batch of people engaged in the 'Western Development'!" They still regard Nanjing as the place where they seek their roots.
Precisely because Tianlong people emphasize culture and education, for more than 600 years, from the Ming Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, and then to the Republic of China, there have been a gathering of heroes and talents in the past dynasties. In the Ming Dynasty, the four major surnames of Tianlong were all hereditary military officials, and they were in charge of the throat; General Chen Yunyu, the anti-Japanese hero, etc. Later, many elites from prestigious schools such as Whampoa and Peking University were bred.

Perhaps it is precisely because of the military background of the Tunpu people that they are also extremely tolerant in religion. Next to Tunpu, there is a day of Taishan, Tiantai Mountain, named after the shape of the mountain. Its mountain is an exquisite hill made of limestone. The mountain is about 60 meters high, and the mountain is steep, like a giant cliff protruding from the surrounding alpine valleys. On one side is a winding path shaded by ancient trees and withered vines. We walked along the mountain road and climbed to the top of the mountain to see the ancient temple complex. It is a model of Tunpu architecture and a temple integrating Buddhism and Taoism. The Sanjiao Temple in the ancient town is dedicated to Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. It should be said here Always a place of harmony and unity. Built on the top of the mountain, Wulong Temple was built in the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty. After Chongzhen and Qing Kangxi, Qianlong, Xianfeng and the Republic of China, it was repaired and expanded many times before it formed its current scale. It can accommodate thousands of people and garrison troops here. The terrain is easy to defend and difficult to attack, so it is a rare semi-military castle-style ancient temple in China. It was once praised by Mr. Zhang Kaiji, a master architect in China, as "a group of swan song of ancient Chinese mountain stone buildings." What is especially amazing is that, When the ancient temple was built, the flat ground on the top of the mountain was missing a corner, and it was impossible to build a hall of a certain scale. Therefore, stones were piled up along the steep wall from the bottom of the mountain to the top of the mountain.

When I came to the gate of the temple, I first saw the engraved stone couplet: "Clouds come from the sky, natural peaks are born, the moon shines in front of the platform, and you can watch it from the Taichung Scenic Platform." The existing two mountain gates and double temple gates seen in the mountain temple And the Great Buddha Hall, the left and right wing rooms, the inverted seat in front of the hall, the Yuhuang Pavilion and other buildings. Although the buildings in the temple are all wooden structures with buckets and stilted feet, the gables are all built of stones, and the windows are small and few, which is no different from the eye-catching watchtowers. There is a solid stone wall in the backyard, and battlements on the wall are built for military purposes, which fully shows the military construction character of the temple. According to legend, Wu Sangui once stayed in the temple and donated a sword and elephant wat to the temple, and kept replicas in the temple. This is one of the reasons why Wulong Temple is famous. The granary on the back side of the scripture building stands out like a flock of chickens, like a condescending stone watchtower. These construction features are very similar to the architectural style of the nearby "Tunpu people". There are stone mortars called "Dui Wo" all over the temple, which are relics of the war years, indicating that they were once used as military strongholds. Looking down from the wall, I can't help but tremble with fear. I can imagine the situation where one man guarded the gate and ten thousand men could not open it. On one side of the stone, there are still traces left by the gold and gunpowder in the past.

Come to Tiantai Mountain. You can also discover more interesting things. For example, there are many small sticks on the side of the road. If you ask the locals, you will know that they call these wooden sticks "general pillars". . On the way up the mountain, many small stone nests like this will be found along the way, which were used to pound gunpowder when playing sticks. Mottled marks are still left on the stone.
Passing through the mountain gate, you can see the ancient post road in front of you, climbing up the steps, moss-covered walls, narrow and long steps, without these special reminders, it is hard to imagine that this place was once an impenetrable castle 600 years ago.
In fact, the peculiarity of Wulong Temple in Tiantai Mountain is not reflected in its architectural shape, but its deep cultural connotation. Although it is named "Wulong Temple", there is a magnificent Yuhuang Pavilion built in the temple. This kind of religious state where Buddhism and Taoism merge is hard to see elsewhere. It fully illustrates the harmonious coexistence of various religions of the Tunpu people. This ancient building not only has religious features, but also has military functions. It is a castle-like ancient temple that is both literary and military, half military and half religious.
In Tianlong Tunpu, the men are dancing ground opera, the women are wearing gorgeous Han costumes of the Ming Dynasty, speaking a strong Jiangnan accent, wearing flower shoes with raised heads, and the elderly women are reciting Buddhist songs, silent and simple. In the ancient town, the lanes remain the same, the fortress stands tall, the stone houses are built, the doors are low and the windows are small. Let people feel the ancient town of Tianlong Tunpu with rich Tunpu cultural connotation. This is not a performance on stage, but a scene in real life. You seem to have entered a time tunnel and returned to the Ming Dynasty, which was far away from us.