One of the Eight Scenes of Wanggaota Shouguang

This temple has long since disappeared. According to the county records of the Republic of China, there are two ancient monuments in front of the tower, one of which has the words "greatly rebuilt Huazi Temple". Based on this, this temple should be built in the Jin Dynasty or earlier. Aric's predecessors still remember that another tablet in front of the tower was engraved with the words "Jin Dading rebuilt" and the inscription "County Governor hid cloth and recorded flowers", and the other words were illegible.

Wang Gaota is one of the eight scenic spots in Shouguang, which was called "Wang Yin Draft Temple" in ancient times. It has seven floors and eight sides, and each floor has doors and windows, which are made of blue bricks. The lowest floor is about 4.5 meters high. There are circular arches in the north and south, and a giant Buddha in the middle. The head and upper body are made of iron, and the lower body is made of mud, about 2 meters high. The tower gets lower and lower as it goes up. There is a boulder at the top of the tower, such as a millstone, and the protruding part at the top of the covered pebble, such as an inverted spittoon, is about half a meter high and looks like a mushroom from a distance. According to Shouguang County Records, the tower is 32.4m high, with a minimum floor diameter of11.3m, a circumference of 35.5m and a wall thickness of 2.2m.. Except for the rebuilt part, the outer tower made of lime is all made of mud, and there are wooden sticks in the wall as reinforcement.

/kloc-in the winter of 0/966, Wang Gaota was blown up by the rebels in the name of "breaking four old buildings". From the bricks of the collapsed ruins, the words "Yaerxiao built the tower" and "the first year of Zhiping" were written. Zhiping is the national title of Yingzong in the Northern Song Dynasty, which was built in 1064. This tower should be 902 years old.

It is said that the scale of the thorn temple is huge, covering tens of acres (referring to the old system of one acre about three acres). There are dozens of temples, several halls, several photo studios and nearly a hundred monks. The architecture is magnificent, there are many good men and women, and incense is constantly burning in the four seasons, especially the temple fair on April 8 (the lunar calendar) every year (it is said that this day is the birthday of the Tathagata). There are also many pilgrims from other places, such as four townships and eight villages, and Weixian and Guangrao. A sea of people, very lively. During this festival, the troupe was invited to sing a big play (Beijing Opera) for five days. Every day there are stilts, lions, magicians, acrobats and singers, all of which are complete and loud. Singing, shouting and selling, one after another, did not disperse until sunset.

Unfortunately, Huazi Temple suffered a great disaster, and all the monks were scattered, but Wang Gaota was still there, and the temple fair on April 8 every year remained the same. It was not until 1966 that Wang Gaota was bombed by reactionaries in the name of "breaking capitalism" that this monument disappeared.

The Legend of Three Treasures in Aric

The three treasures of the thorn temple are well known to many predecessors. Dragon brand, ganoderma lucidum, agate lion, shine at night. This is a jingle handed down from generation to generation in Aric, and it is also a story about Wang Gaota.

According to legend, the Huaci Temple is large in scale, spectacular in architecture, full of worshippers and flourishing in incense. Another reason is to come to the temple at the same time to see the wonders through the dragon monument. Every time this monument encounters rainy weather, Yi Long swims up and down the water, hence the name Toulong Monument, which is a treasure. There are a pair of stone lions and agate stones in front of this temple, which are grotesque and dazzling, and the scenery at night is very pleasing to the eye. This is the second treasure.

In addition to daily schoolwork and chores, monks in the temple raise chickens for themselves, and the abbot also raises chickens. One rooster and four hens in five crows lay eggs. One day after dinner, the abbot went to the henhouse to get eggs. The henhouse was as clean as washing, and no eggs were found. The abbot wondered, didn't you give birth today? Sneaking things? A mystery. The next day, when the sun was setting, the courtyard was silent. He sat indoors and looked at the hen house from the bed to solve the mystery of throwing eggs. After a while, he was surprised to see a giant snake more than ten feet long and with a thicker bowl. He winds down from the top of the tower, goes straight to the henhouse, sticks out his tongue to swallow the eggs, and then climbs back to the top of the tower. The abbot suddenly realized. The abbot found a spinning machine with red heart jujube and spun it into an egg shape. He took the eggs out of the henhouse in advance and replaced them with wooden eggs by pulling and moving flags. In the evening (referring to the fifteenth day of the lunar calendar, sometimes the sixteenth and seventeenth days), looking at the sun, the snake climbed down from the tower again, tried its old trick again, swallowed its eggs and climbed back to its original place. The abbot wants to see what happened. He saw the serpent circling the tower for half a circle on the second floor of the tower, shrinking, and suddenly fell to the ground, half dead. I woke up for a while, slowly climbed into the grass on the east side of the tower, swallowed a mouthful of grass, slowly spit out the wooden eggs for a while, and returned to the tower. At dawn, the abbot carefully looked at the grass in Tadong and found several ganoderma lucidum trees, which were three treasures. The abbot also knows medical skills and often uses Ganoderma lucidum to cure villagers' intractable diseases. After the medicine cured the disease, the abbot left with Ganoderma lucidum for some reason, and the thorn temple was destroyed by fire, and the monks dispersed.