What is the origin of the name Hangzhou West Lake?

The origin of the name:

1. The lake is located in the west of Hangzhou City and has nothing to do with Xishi.

2. In fact, before the Tang Dynasty, West Lake had many names, such as Wulinshui, Mingsheng Lake, Liaoyan Lake, Jinniu Lake, Longchuan, Xiling Lake, Qiantang Lake, and Shanghu. Among more than a dozen names, the elegant name of West Lake only appeared after Su Shi's poem became widely circulated.

The allusion of the origin of West Lake:

It is said that the golden boy and jade girl in the sky, the Jade Dragon and the Golden Phoenix, picked up a piece of jade on the fairy island beside the Milky Way. After many years of polishing, it became a piece of jade. A pearl with magical powers. The luster of the pearl can form an oasis and make flowers bloom.

After knowing this, the Queen Mother of Heaven sent heavenly soldiers and generals to snatch the pearl. During the fight, the pearl fell to the human world and turned into the beautiful West Lake. This magical legend makes the beauty of West Lake even more mysterious.

Extended information:

Stories about the West Lake

1. The White Snake and Xu Xian

The White Snake, one of the four classical legends in my country In "The Biography", Xu Xian and the White Snake Empress met here and returned to the city in the same boat; later they met again here and reconciled, and they performed "Meeting at the Broken Bridge" as an excerpt of many operas in the repertory.

The Legend of White Snake matured and became popular in the Qing Dynasty and is a model of Chinese folk collective creation. It describes the tortuous love story between a snake spirit who cultivates into a human form and a human being. The story includes the story of borrowing an umbrella from a tent boat, the white lady stealing Ganoderma lucidum, flooding the Jinshan Mountain, the broken bridge, Leifeng Pagoda, Xu Xian's son Shilin offering sacrifices to the pagoda, and Fa Hai escaping into the belly of a crab to escape death.

2. Xialongwei

There is a place in Sandun called Xialongwei. Some people think that this "dragon" is written incorrectly and should be "cage", saying that there are only lobsters and no shrimp dragons. The "shrimp pot" is a bamboo cage for catching river shrimp. In the past, every household in this area weaved shrimp pots. In fact, both names are correct. What is going on?

It is said that when Zhu Yuanzhang went to the south of the Yangtze River, he arrived at Sandun Xialongwei Village one day. Liu Bowen, the counselor, looked around and couldn't help but exclaimed: "What a geomantic treasure!" But after learning that the village was called "Xialongwei", he worried that the people were still waiting to be appeased but would cause trouble, so Zhu Yuanzhang ordered to Digging river channels nominally eliminates flooding, but means cutting off the back of the "king dragon".

He also ordered the construction of two stone bridges on the east and west sides of the river pier two miles away from the village, one on the west called Wenxing Bridge and one on the east called Wuxing Bridge to completely break the feng shui.

After the bridge was built, Liu Bowen saw that it was not good. The shrimp dragon is the shrimp dragon, which is also the "lobster". The "lobster" will swim away along the river, so the emperor's "dragon throne" will not be preserved. So he asked the villagers to cut down bamboo, split it into bamboo shreds, and weave it into a gourd-like cage. He put some wheat bran as bait in the cage and put it into the river to try. Sure enough, the shrimps all obeyed obediently.

3. Jinlian Temple

One early morning during the Ming Dynasty, at the wharf beside the canal in Hangzhou, there was a Taoist-looking man waiting for the bearer of the sedan chair, preparing to ride on the sedan chair. . Just at this time, two bearers came over carrying an empty sedan. The man waved the bearers to stop, persuaded the two bearers to go on their way, negotiated the price and said they would not be treated badly, and then left the dock.

They passed through Songmu Farm, Xixi Huawu, then West and East Muwu, and carried them all the way to the big ridge of Shili Hengshan Mountain. The person sitting in the sedan chair rested for a while and continued on the road, pointing to the mountain path on the right and asking the sedan bearers to lift it up. The bearer spent nearly two hours on the dangerous mountain road, but it was very easy to carry it, as if walking on flat ground. He carried it all the way to the top of the mountain, stopped in front of a temple, and the Taoist entered the temple.

They had not seen the Taoist come out for a long time, so they went into the house to ask for wages. The strange thing was that there was no one in the temple, but they saw a statue of a god sitting in front of the hall, holding a sword in his hand and looking majestic. The two bearers had no choice but to Thinking that he was unlucky, he left the temple and prepared to go down the mountain. Just as they walked to the sedan, they saw two red envelopes placed on the sedan chairs. They found that the amount of money inside was 10 times more than they expected.

Besides, this temple is the Zhenwu Temple, and the statue in the temple is the Zhenwu Holy Emperor. This time, the Holy Emperor Bodhisattva turned into a mortal and returned to his hometown from Wudang Mountain. It is widely said among the people that this Holy Emperor Bodhisattva is very efficacious and responds to all requests. Therefore, many people go to Laojiao Mountain to offer incense and worship. Later, a group of believers were afraid that the high mountain road would be inconvenient for worship, so they deliberately invited the Holy Emperor Bodhisattva to worship near Longmenkan Village.

As a result, after resting on the hill at the foot of Laojiao Mountain, I could no longer carry it on my back. In this way, the people built a temple on the spot. From then on, the Zhenwu Temple on Laojiao Mountain was moved to the mountain near Longmenkan.

Baidu Encyclopedia-West Lake (West Lake, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province)