Baima Temple and Yuanan Pavilion

February 6th, 25th of the twelfth lunar month, just after beginning of spring. Li Xie-zhen, a 56-year-old villager, got on a motorcycle early in the morning and came to the litchi orchard on the mountain to trim the branches and leaves. His car is parked in the far pavilion at the entrance of the orchard. From here, walk along the narrow mountain road for 8 meters, and you will arrive at Baima Temple.

This Baima Temple is the rumored Shuikou Temple of Irrigation Cave, and Yuan 'an Pavilion is the legendary Yuan 'an Tea Pavilion. And this mountain is the "Baizu Mountain" (also known as Baizuling and centipede ridge) which is surrounded by the four administrative villages of Nanxing Village, Xintian Village, Shinan Village and Shihai Village in Conghua Hot Spring Town and hides the ancient post road of irrigation holes. Both Baima Temple and Yuan 'an Pavilion are on this mountain, and the most essential and mysterious section of the ancient post road is also here.

my friend Xiao Li and I are here for this purpose. We chose to start from Gaowei Society in Xintian Village, and go to Baima Temple and Yuan 'an Pavilion along the Shuidong River (also known as Xikeng Sea) and beside the mountainside of Baizu Mountain. ?

The mountain road to Baima Temple is very narrow, and only two wheels can pass, so we have to park our car by the irrigation tunnel and walk across the bridge. This small bridge is about 1 meters long and 1 meter wide. It should be a cement bridge rebuilt by villagers in 28. It is said that there used to be a Liang Shi flat bridge with two piers and three holes near here. The stone slab bridge is 18 meters long and 1 meter wide, and it is made of nine granite slabs, and the pier part is built with red sand rocks. There is a guiding stone tablet on the bridge head, engraved with "Left through the street, right through the mountain". Later, the ancient bridge disappeared, and the guiding stone disappeared.

We sighed while crossing the bridge and officially entered the mountain. On the right-hand side of the bridge, golden sugar orange and Emperor Citrus are covered with branches, and the citrus orchard is celebrating a bumper harvest. On the left-hand side of the bridge, between the bamboo forest on the river bank and the forest on the hillside, a narrow and gentle mountain road extends forward, with a width of less than two meters and a height of several meters from the river. In order to facilitate motorcycle travel, the villagers paved a thin layer of concrete on this mountain road, through which you can vaguely see some traces of the ancient post road, such as some maroon stones. In the crowing of birds in the jungle of Shan Ye, we unconsciously walked more than 2 meters and came to the White Horse Temple.

Baima Temple stands abruptly in the middle of the ancient post road and on the mountainside of Baizuling, guarding the mouth of the irrigation hole between Baizuling and Qinghedang. Being there, I finally understand why there must be temples at every Shuikou in ancient China. The site of Feilong Temple found in Lutian Town, Conghua, is also located at the downstream of the drift of Anshan Canyon! In ancient Conghua, there was a paper cave (Lvtian) Feilong Temple in the north and a white horse temple in the south. It is wonderful that one guards the upper reaches of Liuxi River and the other guards the middle reaches of Irrigation Cave River.

However, Xiao Li and I haven't verified whether the Baima Temple existed in ancient times and whether this place is the site of an ancient temple. Xiao Li is crazy about taking pictures with a SLR camera, and he is really a photographer who is keen on humanities and history. I'm not in a hurry to take pictures. First, I carefully observed this simple little temple: it faces the irrigation river and faces south. It is a new building raised by villagers and looks less than 2 years old. Even with the balcony in front of the door, the total area is less than 8 square meters. It's not high, it's a bungalow, but the top of the temple is decorated with golden glazed tiles and a pair of auspicious beasts. The temple is lined up with nine big gods, such as Guanyin, God of Wealth and Guan Gong, but it also adds a bit of strictness to the temple.

The middle gate of Baima Temple is wide open, with no cover. At the lintel of the middle gate, five characters "Shuikou Temple of Irrigation Cave" are written in regular script, and a pair of couplets "A fragrance is fragrant, and all the immortals call for good luck" are engraved on both sides. There is a big red cloth hanging across the main background wall of the temple, on which is written "peaceful country and peaceful people" in Chinese calligraphy. The simple four characters reflect the simplest and most sincere wishes of the people. On the right wall of the entrance, "White Horse Temple Building Donation Name" is posted, and on the left wall, "Donation Money for Road Building Name" is posted. I saw many names and donations written on it. Most of them were villagers named Guan, Chen, Zeng, Su, Li, Li and Liu in more than ten natural villages nearby, with more than 4 people! The White Horse Temple, hidden among the green mountains and green waters, deserves to be a place where the villagers are entrusted with their simple and kind thoughts.

Baima Temple is lucky. It has been supported by believers for so many years and is full of incense. Just the far-off pavilion hidden behind it, it is not so lucky.

When we left Baima Temple and walked on, we found that the cement concrete paved by the villagers on the ancient post road had reached the end. From here to the mountain road in YuanAnting, the height from the river suddenly rises, and the road becomes narrower and narrower, more desolate and more thrilling. The traces of the ancient post road are becoming more and more obvious. Occasionally, there are some polished stones at the foot, like the traces of the ancients and the unicycle "Chicken Car". Passing through an orchard where plum blossoms are in full bloom, we turned left into a lonely ancient road, carefully pushed aside the weeds in the way, and reached a litchi tree for 8 meters. Finally, we came to Yuan 'an Pavilion.

As stated in books and newspapers, Yuan 'an Pavilion is "three rooms with a width of 12 meters and two rooms with a depth of 6 meters, with a building area of 72 square meters, brick and wood structure, with plain tiles on the roof and a brick arch gallery in front of the pavilion". Although the tiles have fallen off seriously, many beams have collapsed, and the old wall is full of cracks and even roots, the wall and frame of the tea pavilion are still stubbornly standing. It's just that it's not what it was first built in the early Ming Dynasty, and it's even far from what it was when it was rebuilt in the seventh year of Xianfeng in the Qing Dynasty (1857). After all, it's been abandoned for half a century.

On the main background wall of the second room of the tea kiosk, the calligraphy of "Tian An Ting" in regular script is still very large and clear. Unfortunately, a large number of couplets and poems and paintings in the tea pavilion gradually disappeared. The couplet directly below the big character "Tian An Ting" has disappeared in the first part, and only the bottom part "An Huai Sao Ke Exempts Xun Mei" is clearly visible. On both sides of the arch of the front porch of the tea pavilion, a pair of crane-top couplets written by local literati Su Zhanhong and Chen Guolong more than 1 years ago were originally engraved: "If you are far away from the water, you will stay as an elegant guest, but you have no intention of being a good friend" (included in the Conghua Volume of Guangzhou Cultural Relics Survey Compilation), but now it has disappeared.

On the back wall of the teahouse, the most quintessential cultural relic on the ancient post road in Shuidong is the "Guangzhou-Kowloon Railway Map" (the real scene is the traditional "Guangzhou-Kowloon Road Map"). This is a traditional Chinese painting painted in 1925. It is about 3 meters long and 7 centimeters wide. It depicts the scenery along the railway from Guangzhou to Kowloon, Hong Kong, which was built in the third year of Qing Xuantong (1911). There are mountains, trees and buildings. It is simply an example of Conghua villagers looking at the world with their eyes open and paying close attention to the latest information of the provincial capital very early! No wonder a reporter commented: "In such a remote mountain tea kiosk, it is really touching that someone cares about the most advanced means of transportation at that time and makes a picture record."

What makes people feel even more is that we failed to protect these precious cultural relics. Yuan Anting's Guangzhou-Kowloon Railway Map has gradually blurred and even fallen off. In fact, there are four or five other couplets, six or seven paintings and eight or nine Tibetan poems on the wall of the tea pavilion! Those interesting Tibetan poems alone are worth pondering. For example, in this seven-verse poem, the first eight words are "irrigating the cave and sheltering from the rain", and the last four sentences include "avoiding the dust and getting tired, and the rain urges poets to gather celebrities." The tea is so strong that people are thirsty, and the pavilion Xiaofeng will go back and stay. For another example, Su Zhanhong wrote not only the couplet, but also "Where can I find green tea?"? A poem like "the shepherd boy points to the far Anting". There are also some literati who compete with each other. Some of them improvise and write down "Who is the first to sing in the pavilion?" Such a poem!

I was immersed in these poems and paintings for a while, and I couldn't extricate myself. In my mind, an article by Lu Guichang, a master of Conghua couplets, "Tea Pavilion, Temple and Conghua Couplet" appeared. I remember that the tea pavilion in Conghua was described in detail in the article: "Most of the places facing the wind that are often built by the mountains or by the water are donated by rural people or benevolent people. There is a stone bench, but there is no bed. Those rural literati used the pillars and walls of the tea pavilion to engrave couplets, poems and paintings, forming a tea pavilion culture. " Isn't the Yuan 'an Pavilion in front of you a concentrated essence of Conghua Tea Pavilion culture? Isn't this Mr. Su Zhanhong from Takada Su's family in Xintian Village, Kaidong an excellent participant in Conghua Tea Pavilion culture?

sweet they press on the old high-road, and reach the crumbling city-gate. The far-off pavilion next to the ancient post road has long been forgotten by the world. Even Mr. Lu Guichang, a senior researcher, failed to go to the scene in person to find out and write it in the article alone! As juniors, Xiao Li and I came late. Hopefully, our research and writing will help the world to re-understand Baima Temple and Yuan 'an Pavilion and the ancient post road in Conghua Irrigation Cave.