Zhuxi photography branch

Text/Nanpuyun? Figure/Kan Xiaohui author (outside the logo)

This 500-year-old city gate stands tenaciously and becomes the last historical witness of a county.

This bell and drum tower, which has stood for 500 years, permanently records the long cultural memory of a mountain city.

This 500-year-old street bears the deep homesickness of Zhuxi people.

Thanks to these taupe stones from the mountainous areas of northwest Hubei. With tough texture and superb skills of craftsmen in Qing Dynasty, they set up an arched doorway intimately, quietly and persistently.

Although the color is dim, the light and shadow are mottled, and the appearance is outdated due to wind and rain erosion and years, it still presents an arc-shaped aesthetic feeling, and with strong strength, it carries a long time and props up a quaint space.

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This East Gate has witnessed the history of Zhuxi County for hundreds of years. In the 12th year of Chenghua in the Ming Dynasty, namely 1476, the first magistrate of a county once founded Tucheng and built four gates.

So far, Dongchengmen is the only survivor of the ancient city wall. The existing Shichengmen was built in the sixth year of Jiaqing in Qing Dynasty (180 1), which has been more than 200 years since.

According to the records in the old and new Zhuxi County Records, the stone city walls, including Dongcheng Gate, played an important role in resisting the remnants of Anbaili Uprising in the middle of Qing Dynasty and defending the soldiers and bandits in the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China.

Dongcheng Gate consists of a city gate cave and a tower, which is a stone platform and a rolling arch. Its city gate cave is made of rectangular stones, with a width of12m and a depth of16m.

The gatehouse is a columnless building, made of earth, stone, brick and wood, with brick ridges and fish kisses at the four corners. Now, except the lattice window in the west, all the other decorations of the tower have been destroyed. These towers and their surrounding areas have been rebuilt or newly built to become various civil buildings.

On the forehead outside Dongcheng Gate, there is a stone tablet of "Dongping Gate". On the stone tablet now, it is the word "No.4 Town". This is related to a movie.

It turns out that from the end of 1985 to the beginning of 1986, Hu, a famous director of Zhujiang Film Studio, once directed a film called Villagers. The film is adapted from Jia Pingwa's novella "The First Day of the twelfth lunar month", which tells the story of rural areas in the Qinling Mountains.

In order to be faithful to the original work, the director group searched everywhere for old streets and houses in the border area of Qin Chu, and visited Zhuxi in the border area of northwest Hubei.

The East Gate and East Gate Street in Zhuxi County have become the main locations of the film. The existing stone tablet of "No.4 Town" in the East Gate is a legacy of the location arranged during the filming of the play.

In the East Gate, at the west end of Dongmen Street, there is the Bell and Drum Tower with a history of more than 500 years. In the fifth year of Hongzhi in the Ming Dynasty, namely 1492, Wu Kui, then the magistrate of Zhuxi County, presided over the renovation of the East Gate Tower.

Because there were drums and no bells in this building at that time, Wu Zhifu spent his own salary and donated 1500 Jin of iron to cast the bells. Since then, the morning drum and dusk bell of the watchtower have been used as the work and rest orders of the county. Later, this building was also called the Bell and Drum Tower.

The bell and drum tower in Zhuxi county in history has attracted much attention because of its "powerful" status. Therefore, the Bell and Drum Tower was rebuilt twice in the eighth year of Jiaqing in Qing Dynasty (1803) and in the fourteenth year of Guangxu (1888), both of which had inscriptions and inscriptions.

For example, in the "New Drum Tower" in Jiaqing period of Qing Dynasty, "Today's drums are more valuable, and the bells are faint, so that a city knows more about salt, and then it knows the festival by smelling the bells and drums. In case of police, ring the bell and beat the drum. As for peace and tranquility, ... if you climb the stairs to make a Range Rover, the stream will flow back, and it is close to the inner belt ... The southwest of the city is inclined to the top of the mountain, and the slope is not straight ... That is, the statue of Kuixing is built upstairs for entertainment. Are the scholars in the city naturally revitalized? "

Obviously, the bell and drum tower in the past was not only endowed with military and political uses, but also had special cultural values. As a cultural relic and spiritual coordinate, it has long stood in an important position in the county.

The bell and drum tower is built on the flat ground, with tall masonry abutment and arched doorway. Above the abutment, there are three high-rise buildings with double eaves and brick-wood structure at the top of the ridge, which are eight meters deep and spacious.

The building has four pillars, supported between the eaves, stable and open. The building is surrounded by wooden doors with shuttle-shaped lattice windows, which is simple and charming. Upstairs cornices are tilted and lined with canopy cornices. The baffles, billboards and algae wells under the eaves are decorated with floral reliefs and various patterns. ...

The whole bell and drum tower, with its towering foundation and exquisite beam frame, is simple and elegant, solemn and beautiful. After hundreds of years of wind and rain erosion, it was still generally intact until the 1980s.

As a well-preserved landmark building reflecting ancient culture in Zhuxi County, it has high historical value and was announced as a county-level cultural relics protection unit in 1986.

The present Bell and Drum Tower was funded by Zhuxi County People's Government and rebuilt from 1989 to 1990.

After reconstruction, the Bell and Drum Tower has maintained the basic form of the original building, and it is still a two-story building, reinforced concrete structure, blue-gray wall, yellow glazed tile and cornice.

Compared with Gu Lou, the new building is taller and more spectacular. Since then, as a historical and cultural symbol, it has remained in the homesickness memory of Zhuxi people.

There are also two ancient and deep alleys, located in Dongmen Street, commonly known as alleys and hutongs. In one of the alleys, there is a well-managed mosque.

The temple was built in the 20th year of Jiaqing in Qing Dynasty (18 15) and rebuilt in the Republic of China. The original site is adjacent to the former site of Zhuxi No.1 Middle School (now Chengguan Middle School) and moved to the present site of Xiaoxiang on 1952. Its total area is 1 100 meters. There is a worship hall in the hall, as well as a number of ancillary buildings such as conference rooms, reception rooms, water rooms and houses.

The whole mosque is beautifully laid out, the main hall is solemn, the sculpture is simple and the environment is quiet. The plaques and woodcarving couplets in the temple are written and engraved in Arabic, which are the artistic treasures of Hui culture.

This mosque is a historical witness of the settlement life of the Hui people in Shaanxi, Gansu and Zhuxi during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and their religious beliefs are protected and respected. It has precious cultural value.

Between Dongcheng Gate and Bell and Drum Tower, it is the main body of Dongmen Street. As the only remaining relic of ancient streets and lanes in Zhuxi County, it embodies the historical characteristics of this ancient mountain city.

Therefore, as early as 1985, when the Hubei Provincial People's Government approved the urban construction plan of Zhuxi County at that time, it instructed the Zhuxi County Government to keep the streets in the east gate intact.

Today, Dongmen Street can be regarded as an ancient residence, with only two rows of old houses more than 300 meters long and close to the city gate hole. The front of the old house is paved with a back cover.

Qiandian, a storefront with door panels, is now mostly changed into a rolling gate; Houzhai is an urban residence in A Qing era, with deep aisles and multiple patios. If you look up at those narrow streets, those rare tile roofs today, those few remaining earth walls and those dim wooden cornices, you can still vaguely see the old faces of many ancient streets. ...

This dilapidated Dongmen Street seems to have been abandoned by the times, but it is still very grounded and very popular. Although it has not recovered its early prosperity, hundreds of meters of old streets are run by shops, and every household sells daily necessities, clothing, shoes and socks, feed, farm tools, vegetables and so on. These goods, with low prices and low grades, are close to the lives of ordinary people.

This shows that Dongmen Street still carries ordinary but active people's livelihood with tenacious vitality and lukewarm temperature, and continues ordinary but precious folk customs.

In fact, the most dynamic time and space around Dongmen Street is outside Dongmen every morning. This is good morning street. The bowl cakes are white and full, the fritters are fragrant, and the biscuits are crispy inside and yellow outside. In the breakfast shop opposite Chengmendong, the milky white and green "mixed dregs" are poured with Chili soup, which is the favorite of "precocious" Zhuxi people.

The more extravagant "premature" is to go to the "Wang Xiao Zao Zao" shop on the west side outside the city gate cave, order a bowl of spicy Zhajiang Noodles, add a cage of "Gegeer" (steamed pork ribs with potato chips at the bottom or pork intestines) and a cup of soybean milk, which can be full or exciting. ...

Nowadays, it is still the choice of many people in Zhuxi to go to the East Gate "too early" every morning. Everyone who has been there will be moved by the steaming atmosphere and some feelings caused by it. ...

As a result, these breakfasts outside the East Gate, together with the beautiful proprietress and salesgirl in the breakfast shop, were repeatedly followed by photographers in Zhuxi and distributed to various media and even official media. As a result, these good-looking women who sell breakfast won the nickname "East Gate Beauty" and became temporary network celebrities.

After a long time on Dongmen Street, there is a strong human fireworks. Therefore, in addition to the deep city gate cave and the quaint bell and drum tower, the temperature and vitality of Dongmen Street are unforgettable for Zhuxi people.

Dongchengmen, Bell and Drum Tower and Dongmen Street, a three-dimensional history book and a living file, store the cultural information of the county and witness Zhu Xi's historical footprint.

Architecture and customs, with their folkway and charm, carry an insurmountable long history, cherish a culture, continue a tradition, contain a spirit, and exude a strong sense of history and vicissitudes, which always reminds people of Zhuxi of their homesickness and makes passers-by stop to miss them.

However, time is ruthless and the old street is declining. As cultural scholar Yu said, "the vitality of any culture lies in innovation, not nostalgia." In the process of modernization, cities need to be constantly updated and developed in order to maintain their vitality.

We can't stop the pace of time, but we should try our best to care for ancient streets and ancient buildings, and make them suitable for modern life and modernization process while retaining their historical features through scientific and reasonable transformation.

In fact, the area outside the East Gate is rich in landscapes and cultural relics. About 1000 meters from the east gate, there is a north-south mountain ridge, which is small and strange, extending like a dragon and lying like a case. Therefore, the ancients called it "Longshan" or "Orange Mountain", commonly known as the mountain ridge of Dimu Temple.

During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, buildings with cultural and educational functions, such as Wenchang Pavilion and Wufeng Academy, were successively built on the mountain, and temples such as Wang Yao Temple and Moody Temple appeared. Zhuxi River from the west once flowed between Longshan and Dongmen. In the 1950s, it was diverted manually and headed east. People built the old river channel left outside the east gate into an artificial pool, which looks like a crescent moon and is named "Moon Bow Pool". There is an antique cement bridge in the pool, named "Gong Yue Bridge". ...

With the comprehensive protective renovation and construction of Dongmen Street, Dongchengmen and Bell and Drum Tower, these scenic spots outside Dongmen will present a beautiful face and glow with new vitality.

Dongmen Street in Zhuxi County has a long ancient charm and a legacy of Ming and Qing Dynasties. Spanning hundreds of years, it leaves behind not only the nostalgic memories of mottled vicissitudes, but also the cultural blood that needs to be inherited and innovated.