Wangcong Temple
The only "one ancestral shrine and two masters" imperial tomb in southwest China
Nine days out of Chengdu, thousands of veins from the source of the cluster. Wangcong Temple is located in Pidu District, Chengdu City, is respected as "the forerunner of Tianfu, the pioneer of Shu" Wangdi Du Yu and Cong Emperor turtle Ling's joint sacrifice shrine, is also the only one in southwest China to worship two masters, by hanging the largest emperor tomb of the Shu people, has a history of more than 1,500 years, one of the famous places of interest in the country, included in the "Dictionary of Chinese Famous Places", listed as the key cultural relics protection unit of Chengdu and Sichuan Province.
The two emperors of the two emperors of the Hope Cong have made brilliant political achievements
Wangcong Second Emperor (near and far photography).
The ancient Shu Kingdom has been ruled by five clans: silkworm cong, cypress irrigation, fish fish, Du Yu and enlightenment, and people generally call the five generations of ancient Shu kings "three kings and two emperors". The "three kings" are silkworm cong, cypress irrigation, and fish cong, silkworm cong teaches the people to sericulture and weaving, cypress irrigation teaches people to plant, and fish and fish teach people to fish and hunt. In the era of the "Three Kings", although some mountain people moved to the plains to try farming for the first time, there were many droughts and floods in Shu, and the people's livelihood was difficult. The "two emperors" are Emperor Wang and Emperor Cong。About 2,800 years ago, Du Yu, the leader of the southern tribe, led the people to the north and overthrew the declining Yuyi Dynasty, so as to "move to Piyi, or govern Qushang" with Piyi as the center, which opened the era of "two emperors" in which Du Yu was called emperor and turtle Ling succeeded, and made immortal contributions to the agriculture, water conservancy, political civilization, ethnic history, and spatial expansion of the Chengdu Plain.
Emperor Du Yu, the first person to be called the emperor of ancient Shu, he came to Shu from Yunnan and belonged to the earliest batch of "Rongpiao". Du Yu led the ancient Shu people to change from the backward production and lifestyle of fishing and hunting to more advanced farming, pioneered the system of farming according to the agricultural season in Shu, constantly created and improved agricultural tools, and personally taught the people to farm, and was worshiped as the "god of agriculture" by future generations. Since then, the Shu people have a fixed place, food in the belly, and clothes in their bodies, and people do not have to worry about food and clothing, creating a precedent for ancient Shu civilization.
Hanjiang Grain Economic Compound Modern Agricultural Industrial Park (**Pidu release).
But the farming culture depends on the sky to eat, the wind and rain are good, the spring planting and autumn harvest, the fierce year and the hungry year are not harvested, the country of abundance is plagued by floods and droughts, and the emperor Du Yu is bitter and can not be cured. Turtle Ling, who was the prime minister at the time, was entrusted with the important task of controlling the water, "breaking the Yulei Mountain to remove the water disaster", which successfully quelled the flood and allowed the people of Shu to live in peace. Turtle Ling was the ruler of the Minjiang River basin earlier than Li Bing, and later had the feat of "enlightened and enlightened, Li Bing gathered the greatest". Because of his merit in controlling the water, the turtle Ling won the throne of Emperor Wang, became the successor King of Shu, known as Emperor Cong, and established the Enlightened Dynasty, which was also the last dynasty of the ancient Shu Kingdom. Emperor Cong inherited the national policy of Emperor Wang, and continued to vigorously develop the country, so that Pi could compete with Qin, a powerful neighbor in the north.
After Du Yu retired to Xishan, he still remembered the people's farming, so he turned into a cuckoo bird, and every time he ploughed in spring, the sound of the cuckoo urged the people to farm. The late Tang Dynasty poet Li Shangyin wrote "Jin Se": "Zhuang Shengxiao dreams of butterflies, and hopes that the emperor will trust the cuckoo in spring." It is from this allusion.
The two ancestral halls merged, and the two emperors of the ancient Shu Wangcong had a total of one ancestral hall
Above: Snow scene of Wangcong Temple (photo by Du Yue) Below: Wangcong Temple (photo by Fang Tiande).
During the reign of Emperor Wangcong, Emperor Cong implemented good governance internally, actively forged ahead externally, made great efforts, and left love to the people, and was respected by future generations. In the past, the Wangdi Temple and the Cong Emperor Temple were set up separately, and the original foothold of the Wangdi Temple was not in Pidu, but the Erwang Temple in Jiangyan today, and the descendants built the "Zhengde Temple" of the integration of the ancestral tomb for the Emperor Wangdi Du Yu. After the death of Emperor Cong's turtle spirit, the descendants built the "Cong Emperor Temple" for him in Pidu. During the reign of Emperor Qi Ming of the Southern Dynasty, Liu Jilian, the assassin of Yizhou, moved the Wangdi Temple from Dujiangyan to Pidu, adjacent to the Congdi Temple. During the Northern Song Dynasty, people merged the Wangdi Temple and the Congdi Temple, so it became today's "Wangcong Temple".
Wangcong Temple has gone through more than 1,500 years of wind and rain, during which it has been repeatedly destroyed and built, and was burned in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties because of the war, and it was almost annihilated at the beginning of the first century. In 1919, Xiong Kewu, the overseer of Sichuan, was stationed in Pi, and once again allocated funds to repair the temple, and personally erected the tombstones of "the tomb of the ancient Wangdi Wang" and "the tomb of the ancient Cong emperor", so that the Wangcong Temple was relatively intact.
Panorama of Wangcong Temple (photo by Meng Fanqiang).
Wangcong Temple originally covers an area of 22 acres, the front of the temple is a wall, and the three words of "Wangcong Temple" of Mao Xin book are engraved on it. The ancestral hall is the worship hall, and the statue of the two emperors is sitting. Behind the palace, the right of the hall is the mausoleum of Emperor Wang, Emperor Cong, and the two tombs are facing each other, like a hill. After 1983, Pidu carried out the largest expansion of the Wangcong Ancestral Hall, expanding the area of the ancestral hall to 905 acres, and repair and restore the buildings and scenic spots in the ancestral hall. In 1991, it was announced as a provincial cultural relics protection unit by the people of Sichuan Province. After 2000, the Wangcong Temple was repaired several times, and the Wangcong Cultural Square was built in front of the gate, so that the ancient Shu culture of the Wangcong Temple was more prominent, and the garden scenery was more charming.
Wangcong sacrifices to the Shu people's great ceremony of seeking their roots and asking their ancestors
The scene of the sacrificial ceremony (according to Tianfu Pidu).
The ancient Shu Kingdom, especially during the period of the Second Emperor Wangcong, although it did not have the splendor and tragedy of the Minyue Kingdom, and the charm and bizarre of the ancient kingdom of Loulan, it had the moving poetry of the inheritance and the reputation of the rest that surprised future generations. The second emperor of Wangcong created an agricultural society in Shu that replaced fishing, hunting, reclamation and animal husbandry with pastoral crops, which was of epoch-making significance, and was respected as the "teacher of opening the heavens" and was respected by the descendants of the past dynasties.
Wangcong sacrifice "is the traditional folk activities of the Chengdu Plain, in order to commemorate the great achievements of the two emperors of Wangcong, the officials of the past dynasties regularly hold the condolence ceremony in the Wangcong Temple in the spring and autumn seasons every year: the spring is the third day of the first month of March, which is the traditional Chinese festival Shangsi Festival, which opened the prelude to spring ploughing production; Autumn is the ninth day of the ninth month of September, which celebrates the harvest of the year. It is said that when Dujiangyan released water to cut the ribbon, the local ** of West Sichuan Province and the provincial water conservancy ** must first go to the Wangcong Temple to worship the two emperors, "Pixian Chronicles" contains, "every year Dujiangyan releases water, Cheng, Mian, Long, Mao Daotai, through the Pi realm is sacrificed, the old example is also." After the ceremony, Fang went to hold a grand Dujiangyan water sacrifice ceremony, cut off the "horse cha", put down the water storage, and announced the official start of the annual spring plowing and spring sowing in the Chengdu Plain.
The scene of the sacrificial ceremony (according to Tianfu Pidu).
Wangcong Temple is a holy place for Shu people in the world to find their roots and ask their ancestors, and the incense sacrifices have been continuous in the past dynasties, and the official large-scale sacrifices have continued from the Song Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty. For thousands of years, the "Wangcong Sacrifice" has long become an indispensable ritual in the West Sichuan Plain and has been included in the Chengdu Mansion Ceremony. In 2010, Wangcong culture into the new theme, Wangcong ancient Shu cultural festival and the first world Shu businessmen conference was held in Pidu, the world of hard work of Shu businessmen elite representatives returned to their hometown, worship Wangcong, go to the green friends, the ancient and new Pidu once again attracted the attention of the world. Wangcong Temple is a place that carries the historical and cultural memory of the Shu people, and each Wangcong Ancient Shu Cultural Festival will attract Shu people from all over the world to return to their hometowns to worship their ancestors and relatives, and has become a grand event for the global Shu people and the spiritual home of the Shu people.
Song of the Hope Grove Race A song that grows in the fields
The Voice of Juancheng, Igniting the Universiade" - the 40th Wangcong Song Meeting in Pidu District in 2023.
In addition to the sacrifice, the Shu people will also gather at the Wangcong Temple on the day of the Dragon Boat Festival, and sing the blessings of the two emperors in the form of a song, which is the Wangcong Song Meeting. Pidu farmers love to sing field songs, planting seedlings to sing, seedlings to shout Yangge, forming an atmosphere. In the seedling season, you can hear the high-pitched Yangge everywhere, and over time, there are some masters who roar Yangge. After the second rice is finished, the farming is idle, and some masters of roaring Yangge are not finished, so they meet to show their singing voice at Wangcong Temple and compete with each other. Later, it gradually became a custom, because it is a "roar" song, and the voice is high-pitched and loud, so ** "Pixian Chronicles" is not without exaggeration, looking at the ancestral hall "Dragon Boat Day, visitors are like ants, farmers compete for fields, and the sound is heard for several miles".
The Wangcong Song Society originated after the Northern and Southern Dynasties. The Qing Pi people Sun Chi brothers recorded in the "Wangcong Before and After Chronicles": "May Dragon Boat Festival, Xiangchu hangs Qu Yuan, Minyang Dynasty Du Zhu (Du Yu), the villager said: The Qianqiu Festival has become a custom so far, but its details are not available. From this, it can be seen that the Wangcong Song Club has a history of more than 1,000 years.
Pixian "Wangcong Song Meeting".
The custom of Wangcong Saige flourished in the Qing Dynasty, was popular in the early ** period, and was interrupted during the War of Resistance Against Japan. In 1983, it was held again in the Wangcong Temple, and has continued to this day, with Pidu as the center to the surrounding areas, radiating Xindu, Pengzhou, Wenjiang, Dujiangyan and other places, and is the largest traditional folk song competition in southwest China. During the song party, small stalls and vendors gather inside and outside the Wangcong Temple, selling all kinds of farm tools, daily necessities, fruits, snacks, etc., and folk arts such as monkey play, acrobatics, dioramas, and quilt play also appear one after another.
In 2011, the Wangcong Song Society was included in the list of intangible cultural heritage protection in Sichuan Province. Pidu was also named by the Ministry of Culture in 2008 due to the great influence of the Wangcong Song Competition"The Hometown of Chinese Folk Culture and Art, the Hometown of Pixian Folk Songs".
Wangcong Temple, a prestigious historical site, a place that precipitates the culture and history of Shudi. Now Wangcong Ancestral Hall is a collection of "literature, show, clear, quiet" as a whole, so that the first forget to return to the classical garden, all kinds of activities are held all year round. In the park, the mausoleum of the two emperors, one before and one behind, makes people awe-inspired. Memorial Hall, Museum, Imperial Mausoleum, Ripple Garden, Zigui Garden, Tingjuan Tower, ......Every grass, tree, brick and tile, all reveal the traces of time and tell those dusty stories. For thousands of years, it has been surrounded by ancient cypresses, red walls and green leaves. People can feel the heartbeat of ancient Shu here, and they can also feel the rhythm of life that is different from modern times, and find the long-lost tranquility and serenity.
References:"Humanities Pidu", "Research on the Analysis and Innovative Development of Pidu Characteristic Culture", "Pidu Homesickness", "Overview of Pixian County", "History Lessons in Chengdu Monuments".
*: Historical Records of Pidu.