Nanxiang.
In the northwest suburbs of Nanchang, where I have lived for 20 years, there is a Meiling, which is surrounded by mountains and green, which together with the Tengwang Pavilion on the side of the Ganjiang River, was included in the list of national scenic spots in 2004. I have been thinking about it, and what I have always wanted to explore is another Meiling - Da Yuling at the junction of Jiangxi and Guangdong, also known as Meiling.
A few friends and I drove from Shenzhen to Dayu County in southern Gannan, but it took only 5 hours. For this moment, it is the 25th year since I was transferred from Nanchang to Shenzhen. This is the Meiling of Su Dongpo, who "does not give up being a Lingnan person", "does not take advantage of the green plum to taste the cooking wine, but wants to see the drizzle ripe Huangmei", and this is also the Meiling of Huang Tingjian, who went to Nan'an (the old name of Dayu in the Yuan Dynasty) as the chief examiner, "Zhangchuan Gongchuan knotted the belt, Meiling Guiling came to the dynasty", and this is still the Meiling of Tang Xianzu, who was degraded to the history of Xu Wendang, "the color of the mountain is accompanied by the line, and the river is full of guest clothes".
The season is the beginning of spring, we brave the cold wind and drizzle, and march to Meiling - "Meiguan and the ancient post road" is one of the two national key cultural relics protection units in Dayu, and there is also a Jiayou Temple Tower in Shuikou Mountain, the southeast corner of Nan'an Town. There is a pass in Meiguan from afar, and the two walls are sandwiched, and the shadows are full in the mist. The plum trees with not very thick black trunk branches seen on the roadside, some of them are red and white, and they exude a fragrance that is like nothing; Some of them have already blossomed and are full of leaves, and the new green is like thousands of pink butterflies falling on the branches. A local friend told me that the time to enjoy the plum blossoms depends on the weather, and the flowers are in full bloom when the weather is cold. The flowering period is also divided into early, middle and late because of the tree, the early ones have withered leaves, the middle stage only begins to bloom, and then there is a group of flowers.
Although plum blossom is one of the longest-lived flowers in China's traditional famous flowers, the plum trees on the ancient post road are rarely coarse, and most of them have been planted in recent decades. In the resting place on the way, a maple fragrant tree is majestic among the trees of many juniors, old and strong, which makes people look up to it in amazement. This 1400-year-old tree with a high lifespan, it takes four or five people to hold hands to be able to enclose it, and there are six red big characters tablet set up by Jiangxi Greening Committee and Jiangxi Forestry Bureau on the side: Jiangxi Sweetgum Tree King. The reason why maple is specially labeled instead of maple trees, my friend said, is because this maple is not another maple. Sweetgum and maple share the same word maple, but they are two species that exist separately. On an ancient post road, Huo Ran stood up a towering tree, so big that even the exposed rhizomes on the ground were like boulders. I seem to hear the whirring sound of carriages and horses more than a thousand years ago, and the crackling sound of porters sweating like rain, which makes people remember and revere memorably.
Of course, the ancient post road is not paved with stones, nor is it cobblestone. I think of Yichun, Jiangxi Province, where I have lived for many years, there were many bluestone roads that were deep and long, the rolling groove of a wheelbarrow in the middle, the sound of squeaky wheelbarrows rushing to the market and the cheers of livestock often come to sleep. The Meiling Ancient Road we walked on was paved with pieces of blunt gravel, ranging from half a foot to a fist, or lying on its side or lying down, jagged and embedded in the soil. There is an introduction of "horseshoe prints" on the side of the road: "A large number of cars and horses make the road surface uneven, the ground is potholed, and the slope slope leaves a pit that seems to be round and non-round, with circular horseshoe prints and oval cone holes, which record the prosperity and decline of 2000 years in the way of matter." "We walked slowly along the curved ancient post road, and on the stones under our feet, a little petal was sprinkled, like the random dye of the flower fairy in the clouds, and we couldn't bear to trample on it. The stone path, three meters narrow and seven meters wide, has a dividing line in the middle, made of larger stones. Thinking back then, the convoy of people and horses walked in the opposite direction, how lively it was. I leaned over to observe, listened intently, and the sound of the passage was yellow, and it took careful discernment to perceive the indentations of the ruts and the noise of the merchants. Over the years, thousands of mules and horses have been connected end to end. Only in this way can the bearing of the gravel road be carried out permanently. Like a frame of dripping ink, repeatedly rubbed, shaded dry and wet, blue, red, yellow, white and black, superimposed on each other, full of paper.
Climb to the highest point of the Meiling Ancient Road - Meiguan. To the south is Nanxiong in Shaoguan, Guangdong. This pass is the watershed of the two counties and two provinces.
The original building was a two-story building, with the upper floor being a pavilion and the lower floor being a post road passage. The vicissitudes of wind and rain, now the upper floor has collapsed, and only the door is closed. The door hole is more than 5 meters deep, and the walls on both sides of the door are left with the gate and the latch door hole, indicating that the door is also overlapping several layers, which can be described as "one man is the pass, ten thousand people are invincible". The existing Guan Lou was built in the fifteenth year of Ming Chenghua (1479), the blue brick structure, the lintel of the north and south sides of the Guan Lou are embedded with granite plaques, the title of Dayu is "Nanyue Xiongguan", the title of Nanxiong is "the first pass of Lingnan".
The Meiguan Guanlou is built in the dangerous place of the Lingshan Pass, and its function is threefold: one is to divide the two provinces of Jiangxi and Guangdong, the second is to defend the military fortress, and the third is to collect tariffs on goods. As a checkpoint for tax collection, Meiguan was an important place for the treasury revenue in the feudal era. According to history, during the Jiaqing period of the Qing Dynasty, the tax of the Great Yuling Commercial Road was twice as much as that of the Wuchang Pass in the same period, which shows that the Mei Tariff Card occupied an important position in the treasury revenue at that time, so some people say that the Mei Pass is actually the earliest customs.
Local friends explained that Meiling, because it is located in Dayu County, is also known as Da Yuling, which is the first of the five mountains. On one side of the post road, there is the ancestral hall of the Han Dynasty general Yu Shengzong, who not only came south to conquer and stabilize southern Xinjiang, but also spread the culture and cultivation technology of the Central Plains. In order to commemorate him, later generations called Dayu; In 1957, due to the obscurity of the word Yu, it was changed to Dayu.
As for the Yu of the Great Yu Ridge, the main reason is that General Yu built a city under the ridge, built a village on the ridge, and the ridge resembles a Yu (granary), so it is also called Yu Ling (Meiling). Interpretation of Yu: open-air valley accumulation. "Book of Songs": "I have a surplus in my warehouse, and I am worth billion", which means a bumper harvest of grain, piled up like a mountain. In short, the name of the Great Yuling comes from the shape of the mountain, and it is a coincidence with the Yu Sheng.
When I went down the mountain, I saw two dragon dance teams, jubilantly. This is the procession to welcome spring, and I saw the white and red plums on the side of the road fluttering and falling in the sound of gongs and drums, as if cooperating with the call of the spring girl.
The author of this article is a writer and professor at Shenzhen University).