Guangxi 700 years of history of the ancient village, family couplets carved in stone, no one lives as if exploring the mystery

Guangxi's scenery in addition to the beautiful landscape, in fact, there are a lot of human landscapes, in those weathered ancient villages often have a lot of hidden attractions, few people know, when you find them, there is always a surprise.

I heard that not far from the town of Zhongshan, Hezhou, there is a Longdao village, the village has a whole piece of well-preserved ancient houses, special features in these houses on the door couplets are carved in stone, and decided to take a trip.

From Zhongshan, I took a minibus to Coral, and after 20 minutes, the driver dropped me off at the intersection, and the navigation showed that there was still nearly two kilometers to go.

Along the road, the fragrance of rice, on the way there are a few villages, until listening to the children's playfulness in the distance, showing to the "Long Dao Primary School", I want to see the ancient building group is not far away, but walked for a while and did not see, the heart is a little skeptical of whether the message is accurate.

Walked further for a while, accidentally saw a granny in front of the house to wash the sun, there are a few finely carved stone piers placed in front of the house, it looks like the old architectural stone pedestal, and now the use should be made of stone benches, or used to put things.

A few steps ahead, you will see a large brick house next to a pool of blue water in front of the house, a very small "wind and rain bridge", while the new brick and stone structure of the new buildings nearby, the villagers chatting in the sun on the side of the bridge, see strangers barging in a few surprises, and then greeted with a smile, and took the initiative to tell me this foreign guest: "Go up, there are many more behind you."

The village built on the mountain is very imposing, and a series of square hollows are arranged on the green stones at the entrance of the alley, which should be the traces of the ancient door gates. The village was built on the mountain, and it is very imposing.

Walking into the group of ancient houses, surrounded by a surprisingly quiet, home brick walls, a clear gray roof, several families have to pay attention to the door eaves, both sides of the wood hollowed out carving a beautiful pattern, through the years but still ancient.

Try to walk into one of them, the patio and stone steps have long been overgrown with weeds, some of the wooden doors of the house have been rotten, some of the house steps have collapsed. There are a couple of big houses on the ground still residual livestock feces, may have been used as livestock, some also piled up a lot of farm equipment, it turned out that these old houses have long been uninhabited.

But the most delightful thing is that every family is a Shikumen, with the door frame made of sisal stone, and the couplets are not written on paper, but engraved on the stone door frame, and none of them is repeated, which is really "Spring Couplets are everlasting, and a picture of them will be handed down forever".

The fonts are basically block letters, the calligraphy is different, the form of carving yin carving, yang carving are available, neatly contrasting, elegant rhetoric, a faction of ancient elegance.

Couplet modeling has a flat bottom, pointed bottom, round bottom, up and down the two ends of the carved flowers and plants decorative, but **** the same thing is that there is no horizontal approval. Instead, use the gossip and dragon head flowers and plants and other patterns instead, can not help but have a question: that every year will write a cross-check on it?

In the empty old house to see, the house are two-story, the layout is mostly the same, in the patio next to the stone staircase up to the main hall, flanked by rooms, while the upstairs side of the main hall may be the kitchen, the kitchen below the space is either stacked firewood, farm implements and other miscellaneous items, or raising poultry, livestock.

Traces of murals can still be seen on the walls, the largest one wall of a mansion, there are 11 murals, the most central one can also vaguely see a "life" character, and these old houses have a characteristic, that is, households are connected to each other, and each has a side door or back door to the left and right neighbors or the alley.

From the shape of the horse-head wall, very much the ancient style of the Central Plains, and many of the walls have square holes, that is, the gun barrels on the gun tower.

The situation in the middle and late Qing Dynasty was turbulent, so the village built several gun towers and gate towers, and gates were set up inside the alleys, and even the fishponds in front of the village today were converted into trenches, all for defense purposes.

The whole group of ancient buildings, only I was a tourist scurrying around inside, all the old houses can be seen are listed as the protection of ancient buildings, the original was opened for its use of the old mansion has done some cleanup, but almost no traces of reconstruction, all the original appearance of the survival, walking in which there is a kind of mystery of the surprise, half-jokingly and half-seriously call my friend and say: "I'm in the version of the Angkor Wat in Guangxi".

And about the stone door this matter, it is said that the village out of a man, he was in the examination of the merit, but give up the career, back to the village to open a private school, dedicated to do the work of teaching and educating people, living a life of poverty and solitude. This is in the feudal society at that time, it is difficult to understand, the villagers even feel incredible.

And year after year, the old man, but he was for the village to cultivate a number of talent, the villagers understand his good intentions, to record his virtue, but also to show that their own family is a culture of poetry and etiquette of the family, so there is this "stone couplets" of the unique landscape.

The entire ancient village almost completely retained the Ming Dynasty to the present residential architectural style, most of the hermetic roof and hard roof, there are a few with the Republic of China style of building, but many of the paintings and beams have been naturally decayed, and some of the old house into a dangerous house.

With the social and economic development, modern culture and urbanization under the double impact, this very traditional heritage of the ancient village gradually with the relocation of the villagers and become a "no man's village".

Later, the information shows that the residential buildings in Longdao Village with obvious Sui and Tang Dynasty heritage is for a reason, the entire village by the descendants of Shandong Qingzhou lieutenant Tao Ying in the Yuan Dynasty (1316 AD), 700 years ago, the village was also included in the first batch of Chinese traditional villages in the protection of the directory, and these villages are also known as the "original sample of the Chinese traditional villages".