One acre of garden Niangniang Temple at the south gate of the Old Summer Palace

Mondo Tourism Updated on 2024-01-30

One acre of garden Niangniang Temple is the Temple of Our Lady of Mount Tai, located in the west of the Old Summer Palace, and the temple is the royal road of the Qing Dynasty.

Qing Historical Manuscript Lizhi II": "In the third year of Qianlong, the emperor carried out the ploughing ceremony at the beginning, and the first six days, Xingfengze Garden performed ploughing, and the day was the first to farm, and the line was four pushes. After the Qing Dynasty entered the Central Plains, it followed many ancient ritual systems, and "cultivation ceremony" was one of them. During the Yongzheng period, the "Yuan Garden" was set up in the Old Summer Palace, commonly known as the "One Mu Garden", which was the place where the "cultivation ceremony" was held. Every spring, the emperor would lead his ministers to symbolically cultivate the land in order to pray for a good harvest. Since the Yongzheng Dynasty in the Qing Dynasty, the emperor and queen come out of the garden every spring to hold a pro-ploughing ceremony. Emperor Yongzheng walked into the "one acre and three points of land" to plough, followed by the emperor of the Shuntian Mansion Yin holding the green box, the household servant held the seeds and sowed, planting rice, millet, grain, wheat, beans and other grains. Later, during the Jiaqing and Daoguang years, the gift of the emperor of the one-acre garden gradually fell into disuse.

Why is the borrowed land that the emperor "personally cultivated" not big or small, and it has to be set as "one acre and three points"?There are two versions of this. The first is to take its symbolic meaning. In ancient China, 13579 was regarded as a yang number, and one and three were the two smallest of the yang numbers. Because the emperor is the Son of Heaven, he has to plough himself but not be too tired, so he sets a minimum land area as a borrowed field, and the right is meant to "demonstratively cultivate", so it is three points per acre. There is also a theory that it is related to the administrative divisions of China at that time, and there were thirteen administrative divisions, which were called "thirteen capital divisions" at the time, so "one" and "three" were taken as the borrowed area. It is rumored that at that time, "one acre and three points of land" was 11 zhang long and 4 zhang wide, divided into 12 furrows. According to the 1928 "Beiping Special City Temple Registration File", the temple was built in the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, rebuilt in the 17th year of Daoguang of the Qing Dynasty, and during the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty, Liu Chengyin, the eunuch of the imperial seal, rebuilt the Niangniang Temple and made it Liu's family temple and residence.

According to legend, the one-acre garden Niangniang Temple is divided into East Road, Middle Road, and West Road. East Road Niangniang Temple, the full name of "Tianxian Our Lady Niangniang Temple", there is a mountain gate on the central axis. The Marshal Palace, the Guandi Palace, and the Niangniang Palace enter the courtyard three times. **In the early years, there were 49 houses, with an area of two acres and three cents and nine trees. The temple sits in the north and faces south, the four-fold layout, the two enter the courtyard, the original mountain gate, the two gates, the front hall, the apse and the east and west side halls, there are two monuments in front of the hall, and there is 1 saponaria tree in the north. There is a house garden in the west of the temple, and there is a vegetable garden behind the house, which is the old site of the former practice of cultivating the field, and now there is no existence. There are 26 existing Qing Dynasty buildings, which are cultural relics protection units in Haidian District. The street in front of the temple is the royal road of the Qing Dynasty.

Haidian Place-Names Allusions" The mountain gate and the second gate were demolished in 1949 and are now one acre garden primary school. The middle road is the house, now called the 20th of an acre garden, the large ridge gatehouse, the door post has a finch for the place, the brick wall of the entrance door, the screen door has something to match the room, the powder wall of the main house, the moon hole door in the middle, the front screen one, the brick lattice center inlaid with peony, the courtyard is planted with precious flowers and trees, and dozens of white marble carved goldfish tanks are placed between the trees. The north side of the moon cave gate is built in the east and west, and a square pavilion with a single eaves and four corners is built. Pavilion north verandah north to the hall, the hall is two volumes of the roll shed rest mountain, the door is planted with cloves before and after. The south gate of the middle road building and the north hall are all there. The southwest corner of the west road is built to rest the mountain dry Xuan, there is a curved corridor on the west side, you can reach the small pavilion at the four corners of the north, you can plant apples, pears and peaches in the garden, there are garden houses in the north, and the brick well in the west of the house is at a glance. The landlord has the East Corner Gate to connect with the Middle Road, and the West Road building was destroyed in the 40s of the 20th century. Covering a total area of more than 30 acres, it integrates temples, houses, gardens and vegetable gardens, and is unique in the architecture of Jingxi Mansion Garden. "In the Jiaqing period, the gift of the emperor of the acre garden was gradually abolished, and the Cixi curtain listened to the government during the Guangxu period, and the eunuch Liu Chengyin of the imperial palm print built the house garden and the family temple next to the acre garden, that is, the Niangniang Temple, and then gradually became a settlement, and formed a larger village after 1949.

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