The ancient city of Pingyao in Shanxi is one of the two ancient cities in China that were announced as a world natural and cultural heritage by UNESCO earlier. Since December 3, 1997, Pingyao Ancient City's "inheritance" was successfully applied, it has profoundly changed the ideas of Pingyao people, changed the development track of Pingyao, injected a strong endogenous impetus into the development of Pingyao, and opened up a new era for the people of Pingyao. The source of wealth opened the prelude to the cultural revival of Pingyao, kept the spiritual home of Pingyao people, and made Pingyao confidently go to the world.
The reporter once had the honor of visiting the ancient city of Pingyao in Shanxi twice, so he has very unforgettable memories of this place. The first time I went to the ancient city of Pingyao was in 2001. At that time, the reporter and his party participated in the "6th China Azalea Folk Drama Festival" held in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province. During the event, they took time to visit the ancient city of Pingyao for the first time.
On the morning of September 29, the reporter drove away from the Taiyuan Yingxi Hotel where he stayed and went to the ancient city of Pingyao. I remember that when I traveled to Pingyao for the first time, in addition to sightseeing, I also took a lot of material of the ancient city, and kept it as a spare reference material for the feature film of the local drama festival. In the end, I really used some of it.
It was the first time to visit the ancient city of Pingyao due to time constraints, and only watched the spectacular city wall, the ruins of the ancient city escort agency and other attractions one after another. Although I took a quick look at Pingyao, I also left some memories. Among them, the Escort Agency on the East Street of the ancient city was particularly impressive. Maybe it's because the director just recorded the TV storytelling "Money Dart" broadcast by Mr. Yuan Kuocheng not long ago.
When I visited the Escort, I learned that the Escort, as the early insurance industry in our country, also has a lot to say. It developed with the development of commercial trade in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and its function was to deliver bulk cash to industrial and commercial customers. According to "Wushu Huizong", Zhang Heiwu, a Shanxi native who is known as the invincible fist, led the first "Xinglong" bodyguard agency to be opened on Qianmenwai Street in Beijing during the Qianlong period.
Later, with the development of industry and commerce, in order to meet the needs of the localities, escort bureaus were successively opened in various places. Dart, look at the characters, next to the gold character on the left, it means 18 kinds of weapons, and the character on the right represents the ticket number, silver and gold tickets combined into a dart, which is to use force to ensure the safety of money.
The six major darts of the Escort Bureau are: letter darts, silver darts, ticket darts, grain darts, material darts and personal darts. Escorts used to be martial arts practitioners, and weapons were indispensable. When visiting the Pingyao Ancient City Escort at that time, those "weapons" made people reproduce the unique style of our country's Escort since Qianlong in the Qing Dynasty.
The second time I came to Pingyao was four years later, on September 2, 2005. The reporter was invited to participate in a self-driving trip to Shanxi organized by Beijing Love Car, and the ancient city of Pingyao was the first trip. At 5:30 in the morning, more than 20 vehicles from all directions in the capital gathered on the square in front of the CCTV Tower. At 6:10, the team participating in the self-driving Shanxi tour drove away from the quiet capital and embarked on a journey to Shanxi. The convoy drove along Jingshi, Shitai, Universiade and other expressways. After about eight hours of travel, they arrived at the first scenic spot of the Shanxi tour - the ancient city of Pingyao at 2:30 p.m. on the same day.
The spectacular scene of the convoy entering the ancient city of Pingyao attracted the attention of many local people and tourists. In the parking lot in front of the Pingyao Grand Theater, more than 20 vehicles in the convoy occupied nearly one-third of the parking lot. The convoy stayed in a Fengyichang Folk Custom Hotel on the Ming and Qing Ancient Streets in Pingyao.
The travel itinerary was quite tight. Before the car lovers put down their bags and tasted the hotels similar to inns, they took a sightseeing bus and started the tour of Pingyao. When the reporter interviewed the "Sixth National Azalea Local Theater Festival" four years ago, he took time to visit here. It's a pity that in the one and a half hours planned at that time, I only went to Pingyao Ming and Qing Ancient Streets before returning home. And this time finally made up for the regret of last time.
According to data records, the ancient city of Pingyao, located in Shanxi, is a famous cultural city with a history of more than 2,700 years.
The ancient city of Pingyao was first built during the period of King Xuan of Zhou from 827 BC to 782 BC, and it was built here for the garrison of Yin Jifu, a general of the Western Zhou Dynasty. Since 221 BC, when the government of the Qin Dynasty implemented the "prefecture and county system", Pingyao City has always been the seat of the county government and has continued to this day.
The ancient city of Pingyao has gone through vicissitudes and changes several times, and has become the most complete prototype of an ancient Chinese county in the Ming and Qing Dynasties in China. The ancient city seen now is the appearance of the expansion in the third year of Ming Hongwu (1370). After the expansion, Pingyao City is grand and majestic, with a circumference of 6.4 kilometers. It is the largest and oldest county city wall in Shanxi and China.
Pingyao used to be called "Ancient Pottery". In the early years of the Ming Dynasty, the city wall was first built to defend against foreign disturbances. In the third year of Hongwu (AD 1370), the old wall was rebuilt and expanded, and fully covered with bricks. After that, Jingde, Zhengde, Jiajing, Longqing and Wanli dynasties carried out ten repairs and repairs, updated the towers, and added enemy towers. The ancient city of Pingyao had a considerable scale at that time.
Several sightseeing cars carrying nearly 50 members shuttled through the ancient city of Pingyao. Pingyao is centered on the city buildings on the ancient streets of Ming and Qing Dynasties. There are four main streets, eight small streets and seventy-two alleys intertwined in longitude and latitude. They have distinct functions and an orderly layout. The ancient residential houses in the city are all courtyards with blue bricks and gray tiles, with a clear axis and symmetrical left and right, especially the brick cave-style houses have a strong local flavor. These quaint buildings along the way make riders dazzled.
The sightseeing bus first came to the north gate of the ancient city to visit the ancient city wall. In the forty-three years of Kangxi (1703 A.D.), the emperor built four large towers to make the city more spectacular as he traveled westward and passed through Pingyao. The total circumference of Pingyao City Wall is 6163 meters, and the wall height is about 12 meters. It divides Pingyao County with an area of about 2.25 square kilometers into two worlds with different styles. I remember that when I first came to Pingyao, the first thing I saw was the ancient city wall. I saw that the streets, pavements, and market buildings within the city wall retained their Ming and Qing styles; outside the city wall, they were called Xincheng. This is a beautiful place where ancient and modern buildings are integrated, complement each other, and make people think endlessly.
If you look down on the ancient city of Pingyao from a high place, you will see this flat square city wall, shaped like a turtle. There are six gates in the ancient city, one in the north and one in the south, and two in the east and west. The south gate of the city is the head of a turtle, and the two wells outside the gate symbolize the eyes of the turtle. The north gate of the city is Gumi, which is the lowest point of the whole city, and all the accumulated water in the city must flow out from here.
There are four urns in the east and west of the city, facing each other. The gates of the upper west gate, lower west gate, and upper east gate all open to the south, resembling tortoise claws stretching forward, but the outer gate of the lower east gate opens directly to the east. Fearing that the tortoise would crawl away, he straightened his left leg and tied him to a platform twenty miles away from the city. This seemingly illusory legend reflects the ancient people's extreme admiration for tortoises.
The tortoise is a long-lived thing, and it is as holy as a god in the eyes of the ancients. It embodies the profound meaning of hoping to use the power of the turtle god to make the ancient city of Pingyao as solid as a rock, safe and sound, and last forever. There are also 72 watchtowers on the city wall, and there are 3,000 crenels on the outside of the top of the wall. It is said that it is a symbol of Confucius' 3,000 disciples and 72 sages.
After coming down from the city wall, the riders came to visit the Pingyao County Government in the ancient city. According to relevant records, the county government is the grassroots unit of local administrative agencies in my country. It originated in the late spring and autumn. In ancient times, the county was always the grassroots organization of the feudal regime, and the officials in charge of the county government were also called the local "parent officials". The surviving ancient government offices in my country are rare. Except for the Zhili Governor's Office, Nanyang Government Office, Huozhou Office, and Neixiang County Office, Pingyao County Office is one of the well-preserved ones.
This ancient county government office is located in Government Street (formerly known as Yamen Street) in the southwest of Pingyao City. It faces south from the north, with a north-south central axis of more than 200 meters and covers an area of more than 26,000 square meters. There is no research on the date of the first construction. According to the old county annals, there were large-scale additions and reconstructions in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and it became the later scale.
Outside the yamen, there is a Fengshui building in the east and a screen wall in the south. Inside the yamen along the central axis from south to north, there are gates, Yimen, archway, six rooms, lobby, house gate, second hall, inner house and other buildings. On the east and west sides of the central axis, there are land temples, theaters, food halls, supervision halls, prisons and other buildings. The order of masters and slaves conforms to the characteristics of the pattern of government offices in the feudal era.
Among them, the lobby is also called the public hall and the main hall. This is the place where the county magistrate holds important ceremonies, hears important cases, and welcomes superior officials. It is the main building in the entire county government. It stands on a platform base more than 2 feet above the ground. Majestic.
The second hall was called Tuisi hall or Sibu hall in Ming Dynasty. This is mainly a place for dealing with general civil affairs, and it is also a place for the county magistrate to take a short break in the middle of the office or to discuss political affairs with his staff, so it is called Tuisi Hall. The inner hall is also called the inner house. The magistrate not only lives, studies, and works here, but also hears some secret cases or cases that are not suitable for public disclosure.
I heard from the tour guide that in recent years, with the rapid development of Pingyao's tourism industry, Pingyao's tourism content has become increasingly rich and colorful. Among them, the Pingyao County Government's "Ascension Hall to Trial Cases" project attracts many tourists every day.
It's a pity that this ancient "court trial record" has not been able to appreciate it. However, the ancient prisons, cruel instruments of torture, and mighty courtrooms in Pingyao County Ya Nei left a deep impression on the riders.
Leaving the Pingyao County Government, the tourist bus took the riders to visit the "Rishengchang" bank, which is known as the originator of China's financial history, and is known as "No. 1 in the world" and "Huitong Tianxia". During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, with the development of the commercial economy, some large Shanxi merchants gradually formed a business system that set up a head office in Shanxi, set up branch offices in other places, and operated across regions.
Under such circumstances, large-scale wholesale, transportation and sales bring huge amounts of cash transfer business, so a new method of payment-"remittance by ticket number" came into being. In the fourth year of Daoguang (AD 1824), on the basis of the "Xiyucheng" paint shop on Pingyao West Street, China's first "Rishengchang" bank was established, which specializes in remittance and silver deposit business.
Three years later, branches were successively established in Shandong, Henan, Liaoning, Jiangsu and other provinces. In the 1840s, its business further expanded to Japan, Singapore, Russia and other countries. At that time, driven by the "Rishengchang" bank, Pingyao's bank industry developed rapidly. In its heyday, there were as many as 22 bank accounts, and it once became the center of China's financial industry. It can be seen that Pingyao occupies a very important position in the modern financial history of China.
On the way to Pingyao, the team commander Cao Qun asked the members a question about the meaning of "iron hat and iron shoes" in Rishengchang bank. Therefore, the riders who came to the Rishengchang ticket office paid the most attention to these two objects in the ticket office after visiting. The interest in the iron shoes and iron hats inside the Rishengchang bank no doubt makes tourists remember the Rishengchang bank in Pingyao particularly deeply.
Wandering around the West Street and the Ming and Qing Streets in the ancient city of Pingyao is the last item of sightseeing in Pingyao. On these two streets, rows of quaint-style shops and various museums complement each other. Walking into any folk museum is a history showing the splendid culture of Pingyao. Pingyao's native products such as Pingyao beef, stone cake, and Shanxi vinegar can be found everywhere on these two streets. After walking down the two streets, all the riders returned with a full load.
The ancient city of Pingyao at night is even more interesting. The red lights of the shops on the street are high. The flow of people passing by is bustling and bustling. Among the shops of antiques, handicrafts and native products, there are bars, saunas, massage and beauty parlors with modern charm, adding a touch of romance to this ancient city.
Although the Fengyi Folk Hotel where I stayed that night also has a modern bathroom, the brick kang in the room, the square small table on the kang and other Chinese-style furniture make the riders feel back to basics. Many car lovers never forget this Pingyao Fengyichang Folk Custom Hotel, which only stayed for one night, during the exchanges on the return trip.
It is said that Pingyao has three treasures, and the ancient city wall is one of them. Going out of the north gate of the ancient city to the northeast, there is Zhenguo Temple, which is the second treasure of the ancient city. The Hall of Ten Thousand Buddhas in the temple was built during the Five Dynasties (tenth century A.D.) period. It is currently the third ancient wooden structure building in China, with a history of more than one thousand years. The colored sculptures of the Five Dynasties in the hall are rare sculpture art treasures.
The third treasure of the ancient city is the Shuanglin Temple located in the southwest of the city and rebuilt in the second year of Wuping in the Northern Qi Dynasty (AD 571). In more than 10 main halls of the temple, there are more than 2,000 colored clay sculptures from the Yuan Dynasty to the Ming Dynasty, which are known as "the treasure house of colored sculpture art". In fact, there are too many treasures of the ancient city.
The ancient Pingyao was brilliant, and today's Pingyao is still full of charm. At a time when many cultural ancient cities are being dismembered and destroyed for commercial development, Pingyao has been preserved so well. It shows people an extraordinary complete picture scroll of cultural, social, economic and religious development in the development of Chinese history. And the good memories of the reporter's two trips to Pingyao are still lingering. (Photo: Feng Ganyong)
