Nanxi River upstream ancient village

Author: Chen Zhihua
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-08-01
Features: What really draws scholars back to the Nanxi River after many years? What attracts people to love the remote and isolated small mountain village upstream? Is it simply to fill in several types of settlement? To appreciate the pastoral and landscape-like scenery? To be captivated by the rich and rustic local customs? Or to commemorate the aerial photography master who died in Lin? Faced with a landscape and culture vastly different from those of the middle reaches of the Nanxi River, it interprets the "Peach Blossom Spring complex" deeply rooted in the national spirit for over a thousand years.
Excerpt: The villagers of Lin and Shangao, regardless of age, are happy to tell outsiders an interesting story, although relying solely on oral tradition, there are discrepancies in the details, but all versions are filled with the charm of the mountainous countryside. The gist of the story is: During the Song Dynasty, Shangao produced a military official (some say a military champion), named Mao Shuqian. Once, the Empress Dowager (some say the Queen Mother) encountered a fierce tiger with its jaws wide open, lunging towards her. Mao Shuqian happened to see it and, with three punches and two kicks, killed the tiger and saved the Empress Dowager. For his meritorious service, the emperor enfeoffed him as a high-ranking official in the capital. On his way to assume the post, the emperor arranged for various grades of official hats to be displayed in the Golden Hall, allowing Mao Shuqian to choose one that suited his aspirations. Unaware of the meanings behind the hats, he saw the hats of literary officials as beautiful and chose one. The hats were adjustable in size with straps (some say high-ranking officials wore small hats, while low-ranking officials wore large ones). As an outsider, he didn’t know how to adjust the hat properly. He found the high-ranking official’s hat too small to fit, so he took a large one, which turned out to be the hat of the Gate Official, the lowest-ranking position. Thus, he became a Gate Official. The emperor, feeling pity, granted the Gate Official a special privilege: to refuse entry to visitors and to send off no one. His days were leisurely, but Mao Shuqian couldn’t stand it and requested to return to his hometown. The emperor agreed and allowed him to take whatever he liked from the palace. He saw a pair of beautifully carved stone tiger-paw pillars and bases and, using an iron-handled umbrella, carried them back. These pillars were placed under the golden pillars in the main hall of Mao’s ancestral hall in Shangao and are still there today. The villagers say that a rural ancestral hall would never use tiger-paw pillars and bases, as doing so would be a crime of disrespect to the emperor. Only with the emperor’s special permission could they be used. In reality, we see that ancestral halls in the middle reaches of the Nanxi River commonly use tiger-paw pillars and bases, but the villagers of Shangao and Lin still proudly recount the extraordinary origin of these pillars, considering them a glory of the Mao clan. There is another version of this story. Mao Shuqian was very happy as a Gate Official in the capital and had no intention of resigning or returning home. It was his mother who, longing for him day and night, urged him to come back. One day, a feng shui master from Jiangxi saw an old lady washing clothes by the river, wiping away tears as she washed, and asked her why she was so sorrowful. After learning the reason, the master told her that if she dug up the "pulse" in front of her house, her son would return. The pulse was a pair of dragons, on the south side of Dadaoyan. The female dragon was on the east bank of the river, and the male dragon was on the west bank, connected by a thousand-year-old vine in the air over the river. The feng shui master personally cut the vine, and the old mother then hired people to dig a trench on the female dragon. They dug during the day and repaired it at night, dug again, and repaired it again. The Jiangxi people then suggested pouring white dog blood into the soil as they dug, which indeed made it impossible to reconnect. After the deep trench was dug, Mao Shuqian couldn’t rest day or night in the capital and had no choice but to resign and return home. This correction is important because the female dragon still exists, and the trench is still clearly visible. The male dragon was mostly blown up during the construction of the tractor road, leaving only a large rock on the west side of the road. The local name for this area is "One Vine." The female dragon is close to a small hill, and on the hill there is a small flat area called "Daliang Sifan Jiaji" by the villagers, who say that there was once a four-sided house here, a siheyuan. The villagers say: "Where is a four-sided house? Only the palace has them. If commoners build one, they will be executed. This one was specially permitted by the emperor for Mao Shuqian!" Like the tiger-paw pillars, it was another crime punishable by death. It is said that a few years ago, some pottery water pipes were dug up near the four-sided house foundation, and it is possible that more will be found. In March 2003, on a day of relentless cold rain, I was led to the small hill. Tackling the thorns with hands and feet, I reached the four-sided house foundation. It was covered in chest-high reeds, surrounded by lush bamboo groves. Looking south, the Huangshan River flowed beneath my feet, its green water murmuring like a lullaby. Shangao village lay by the river, with smoke rising from the roofs, scattered by raindrops into a faint blue haze over the dark tiles. If this four-sided house really belonged to Mao Shuqian, his true reason for resigning and returning home was likely the beauty of this scenery.