Chapter 15 12.Joint investigation in Shanxi
Despite extensive searches in northern China, Liang Sicheng's dream of discovering a Tang Dynasty wooden temple that survived into the 20th century never came to fruition.He understood now that, if it existed at all, it must be somewhere remote from the world, where it could escape the menace of man-made and natural influences that destroy buildings.
The mountainous Shanxi province west of Beijing, to the north of which Sicheng has conducted some expeditions, is a possible target for his search.When he heard that Fairbank and I were preparing to spend the summer of 1934 in central Shanxi and wanted him and Whein to visit us there, he was able to accept us without fear of leaving his basic goal invite.
They arrived in August, and we had settled down in an old stone mill near Fenzhou (now Fenyang) by the banks of a gurgling brook and valley.Our good friend, Dr. Arthur Hammer, lent us a mill which had been their home for many years to use that summer.He is a well-respected ecclesiastical scholar and historian who has just been appointed director of the Oriental Department at the Library of Congress.The mill was a humble one-story house set around a pleasant square patio.In the past there were many such small mills by the mountain stream, but the development of Fenzhou's flour milling industry using modern machines has brought most of them out of business, including ours.A kind of noodle sold locally, indicating that some mills are still in operation. This kind of noodles is very delicious, but it is almost always mixed with sand from the mill.
The valley through which the stream flows from the nearby hills is overgrown with poplars.The mottled tree shade, the flowing water and the thick stone walls of the mill can ensure that the people living inside enjoy coolness even in the hot summer of North China.Foreign missionaries discovered the place and built themselves a small summer retreat above the canyon.There they traveled from all over North China for a summer holiday party before returning to their scattered and often lonely lodgings.
From Beijing we brought Chinese textbooks and homework, dictionaries and other books, boxes of "square characters," stacks of construction paper, paints, and by special arrangement a guide who used to be a member of the Beijing government. A petty official who was able to serve as an assistant to my husband in his research on Qing documents.He's a total city guy who's uncomfortable in the country.He taunts the natives, dismissing their dialect as "bird calls".He was faithful to his duty during the day, and his best hope was to stay out till sunset and get a mug of Fenzhou Stout.He's experimental (for us), but also a great storyteller.After drinking in the evening he told us the trial and other old stories.We trust his words, which are all in Chinese.The arrival of the Liangs had greatly enlivened his life, but they did not come here to please him after all.When the four of us soon began to invest in architectural investigations, he happily returned to Beijing.
We all especially like the main local dwellings - those cave dwellings on the high slopes of the loess.The yellow earth is a unique landscape in many parts of northern China. It is formed by dust blown from the Gobi Desert over countless centuries.That same particle sticks together so tightly that it becomes an easy-to-work medium in archaeological excavations, and its great advantage is that when a piece is cut or shoveled off, it forms a section that goes straight up and down instead of sliding down to become a slope .Our canyon wall is a room with a cylindrical vault dug out of a steep loess cliff, or even a house composed of several such rooms, and the sides are built with bricks.These make up our villages, from which the farmers come out to the top to sow their crops.
The cliffs on both sides of this canyon are cut by the torrents pouring down from the mountain, and the top is flat, which reminds me of Fangshan in northern New Mexico.The terrain here is very similar to the entrance to Los Alamos, with Mount Yemez on the top, looking down the canyon as far as the eye can see, and beyond the plain is the San Cristobal Mountains.
Life in the Canyon is full of simple and clever little gimmicks.Small children herd the chained family flock from one grazing field to another.The rushing stream was no hindrance to them.Goats and children cross on bridges that are neatly lined up with two or three logs and covered with a thick layer of grass mud.As for grown-ups, tending the land, mowing, and harvesting are all manual labor.American family growers should learn from them some of China's advanced technology.When they bent over rows of crops with a small curved sickle in their right hand and weeded the rows of crops, they held a foot-long stick in their left hand to support their whole body weight. As a result, their work progressed and their backaches eased.
Hui Yin was the drafter of the report on this field trip in the "Hui Kan".Like everyone new to the canyon, the first thing she talks about is the amazing presence of running water in this arid region.Of course, there will be myths about it, "Since Song Taizong's horses kicked out the sweet spring and saved the thirsty army, this spring has not stopped flowing, and it has provided the driving force for dozens of mills along the stream for thousands of years... .(Note 1.)”
Our time with Sicheng in Beijing was very limited, but in Yudaohe he was one of us.The four of us ate three meals a day together, and the first day we found out that he liked dishes with chili.The taciturn man was a man of great talent at the dinner table.There was always a lot of noise when we ate.After the meal, he concentrates on studying the local architecture, looking for ancient buildings, or reading the history and geography books he brought to prepare.He drew up an expedition plan, planning to search 8 counties in total from Taiyuan, the provincial capital about 90 miles north of us, down the Fenshui River to Zhaocheng.
The four of us happily inspected the nearby temples on foot or by donkey, and we rented missionary cars to go to places farther away.Fairbank and I quickly became familiar with simpler tasks such as measuring, while Sicheng took pictures and took notes, and Huiyin copied important inscriptions from stone carvings in temples.
Whein begins her article by talking about some nearby temples and pointing out an interesting new discovery.She said that Longtian Temple has a long axis running north-south, with the gate tower as its southern end.This pattern is similar in every temple.But when we walked through the round arch in the gatehouse and looked back, we saw an open-air stage above the arch facing inwards towards the courtyard.Huiyin wrote:
"The temples we have seen in the south of central Shanxi are mostly attached theater buildings. In the layout, there are outward-facing
Stretched stage.The lower part has a solid pedestal, and the upper part has three walls, one of which is open, facing the main hall, that is,
For the stage.There is a row of mountain pillars in the middle of the platform, which can be divided into front and back when the curtain is hung.There is a stone gate on the left side of the building.
More than ten levels can be up and down.In Longtian Temple, this theater building is blocking the entrance of the mountain gate to form a large screen wall. (Note 2.)"
Chinese opera troupes traveled all over the countryside to perform for the villagers.It is an ancient tradition that makes those operas popular and beloved.The stage in the temple facing the inner walled courtyard provided suitable space for both performers and audience.
Sicheng thought that our nearby investigation was useful training for us, but he was eager to pursue a bigger goal.Just a little over a year ago, the Song version of the Canon (one of the earliest surviving publications) was discovered at Guangsheng Temple near Zhaocheng, about 70 miles downstream from us, making the temple famous in the academic world. name.If the publication is from the Song Dynasty, the monastery itself is most likely also from the Song Dynasty.That's exciting enough.
That distance seemed insignificant.We planned to rent a car and be there that day.Unbeknownst to us in the remote canyons, workers have gone to work to shorten the journey south.Shanxi warlord Yan Xishan was preparing to counter the military invasion of Chiang Kai-shek's Nanjing government forces northward to conquer Shanxi.In order to break this threat, Yan Xishan cunningly purchased a complete narrow-gauge railway system from Germany, including tracks and trains, which was a relic of the First World War.The only way for the troops coming from the south is the road on the east bank of Fenshui.Yan Xishan decided to deal with Chiang Kai-shek by using his provincial troops to lay railroad tracks on the road embankments.The plan is to prevent the entry of standard-gauge vehicles and block car traffic at the same time.
The warning message that finally came did not weaken our determination to go to Zhao City.We did hire a car from a missionary, with a jovial American driver, and we loaded it with cots, bedding, canned goods, construction equipment, and personal luggage, but the torrential summer rains had put the The loess road turned into a muddy pond.We had only traveled 10 miles by sunset and hadn't reached the river yet.So we had to unload the car and wish the driver a safe journey back.Nearby is a temple that we had photographed a few days ago during a carefree architectural inspection. We moved all our things there, and set up cots in the open air in the corridor of the courtyard. Blocked the curious audience outside for us.They soon discovered that the low wall over the opposite gate was an ideal vantage point from which to observe us, but by then we were too tired to bother with it.
The next day we rented two donkey carts and hired a ferry to cross the river, and we advanced 15 miles to Jiexiu.In the evening, we saw Yan Xishan's narrow-gauge railway there for the first time.It was a terrifying sight.The rusty tram-sized rails are installed on the railway embankment casually paved with mud on the road.Because the road foundation itself has not been rammed or flattened, the rails are up and down and crooked.Not a single worker could be seen.This section is apparently considered complete and we'll have to go further south to catch up with the ongoing railway construction.The railway here was built next to the river, forcing our open soil donkey cart, which was as wide as four planks on the four wheels, to pass through a narrow passage in the ditch behind the railway tracks.
We lodged in a good hotel and inspected the city.The temples were disappointing, but the streets and houses gave us the impression of being transplanted from central Italian cities.Narrow streets are lined with high walls with crenelated walls, and huge arches mark the intersections.We glimpsed some two-story living courtyards through open doorways, but didn't have the time or opportunity to study them.We later heard that these Shenzhai compounds were the home of 19th-century Shanxi family banks, which sold money orders to officials who wanted to move money between parts of China.This avoided the hassle of transporting silver ingots under heavy guard and allowed the rise of a new financial class.
The next day we finally met the railway workers at work in Lingshi.Now our difficulties are even greater, because we are once again competing with Yan Xishan's troops in terms of our needs.The only wheeled vehicles capable of taking us further south were rickshaws, narrow enough to fit on the local trails, with pullers capable of handling impromptu accidents.Everything was requisitioned for the railway, but a clever innkeeper got us three at a surprisingly low price.We packed up our luggage and hit the road.We needed a place to rest for the night, the monastery we stayed in was full of workers, soldiers and the local hotels were terrible.We had no choice but to go on, and when we arrived at Changjiazhuang after another 8 miles, it was already dark and we were extremely tired.We can no longer go.The high walls of the village houses are now less attractive to us than hostile.
In desperation we made a gatehouse a common refuge, and carried our luggage up to occupy room.Unexpectedly, there were soldiers living here long ago, they were very annoyed and started to yell.Finally a major came along who promised to give us a room in a private house in exchange for us vacating his house.We accept.That night we slept in an exquisite upstairs room in the high-walled mansion that we used to admire from the outside.Its windows open to an inner garden to the north, and its doors to a balcony to the south overlooking the carved beams and painted buildings in the courtyard.This was probably requisitioned by Yan Xishan from a wealthy Shanxi banking family to house his officials.
We were eager to continue south the next morning.But the Major is at it again.He was obviously moved by Sicheng's gentlemanly behavior and distinguished family background, and insisted on accompanying us to tour the town.Some ceremonies on both sides at parting delayed us further, and we were not able to get away until a long while.Trucks bringing supplies to the railroad builders turned the dirt pits of the road into bottomless mud holes, and explosions for the bends of the railroad blocked our passages with rocks and rubbish.A rickshaw damaged a wheel.Progress has of course been slow in this chaotic situation.The pullers stop every two hours to rest and eat.We were still 7 miles from Huozhou (Huo County) when it got dark.
The rickshaw drivers knew, as we were about to find out, that it would take four hours to pull the rough road in the dark.They refused to go any further.With no hope of finding a decent place to lodge, we paid off the coachmen and went on, and hired a boy to lead the way with a lantern, while we walked the whole way through the mud.A miracle happened: it was still open when we walked to the city gate at 11 o'clock in the evening.In an opium den in the city we found a man who could take us to a mission station in the interior of China, where we knocked loudly on the door and signed up.A kind old Chinese Christian woman opened the door for us.She brought us bowls of noodle soup to cheer us up for a while, and then we were too tired to move in our cots.
The missionaries who received us were Mr. and Mrs. Trickey, an affable English couple with six small children.We are very pleased with the friendly welcome and the cleanliness of the environment.It continued to rain some days, so we stayed with them for two days, of course the board and lodging were paid for.After our 30 miles of mud trekking, it was certainly a good rest, and Sicheng, who was focused and unyielding, visited the city of Huozhou again in the rain and found some beautiful and important temples, some still From the Yuan Dynasty, he later pointed it out to us.The most interesting ones were of course occupied by soldiers, and it was impossible to investigate.
The Trikeys sent us off to Zhaocheng with their blessings, and suggested that there be another missionary, Miss Romke, to spend the night there.The rain has stopped, and the field is extraordinarily green and beautiful in the sunshine.Our goals are about to be reached, and emotions run especially high.By then we were all proven walkers—including Sicheng, though he had been crippled by an accident in his youth.
Even to provide a suitable subgrade for such a poor railway, this section of the road would have to be greatly elevated.Workers and soldiers digging soil on nearby hills put the loess into baskets.Other soldiers were in charge of transporting the soil, using a pole with a basket at one end, passing through and dumping it on the road.Then the cycle repeats.Hundreds of people participated in these two related processes.It is an unforgettable sight, and it reminds one of the same line of men who, without the aid of machines, used muscle power to build the Great Wall and the ubiquitous city and village walls and other engineering feats like the Grand Canal.
Sicheng, who was always full of hope, read from the local newspaper that there was a Tang Dynasty temple in Zhaocheng City.This evening we entered the city gate and went straight there.Not right.His hopes were dashed.It was a much later building, and not very interesting.So we left there and went to the mission station in the interior of China to find the lonely female missionary—the old Miss Romke.Even though we were unexpected guests, she gave us a warm welcome and a hot shower before our meal.She was surrounded by simple peasant women whom she had rescued from injustice, death, or starvation.The love for her is evident on their faces, yet she doesn't try to show off in the slightest, even when she tells their stories.Her glowing face expressed her devotion to the God who performed all these miracles.
We were still fifteen miles from our final destination, the site of Shangxia Guangsheng Temple at the southern end of the Huoshan Mountains.That meant getting out of the river and leaving the soldiers behind.It was a welcome change from that morning.The weather continued to be fine, and most of the day we could see the pagoda of Guangsheng Temple on the top of the distant mountain, which inspired us to move forward.It wasn't until we hit it almost at the foot of the mountain that we saw the lower temple in the afterglow of the setting sun.Its splendor, its beauty of design, and its multitude of arches speak of an architectural gem, as if rewarding us for our labors.
By this time we were really exhausted.The monks lifted our spirits, received us, fed us, and set us up cots wherever we liked.The Liangs chose the inside of the main hall, so that they could sleep under the shade of the Buddha and study the buildings on top at a glance.We prefer to sleep on the open-air platform in the guardrail of the small bell tower, so that we can see the brilliant starry sky when we look up.
In the bright morning sun, we could see what a fitting location the Chinese method of Feng Shui had chosen for this beautiful ancient temple.In the north, behind the mountain, the hillside blocks the biting cold wind.At the foot of the mountain, just outside the gate, an underground spring gushes out into a pool of clear water.
The god of water is the dragon, and whenever such a clear spring is found, there must be a dragon king nearby.One would think that there must be his shrine nearby.Yes, side by side with the lower temple, overlooking the pool is the Dragon King Temple.This is a truly outstanding landscape.It is much larger than the usual Longwang Temple, with two-story eaves, built on a high platform, surrounded by a verandah continued under the eaves of the lower floor.Inside, the Dragon King (he's more like a king than a dragon) sits on his throne, but our attention is drawn to the murals on the surrounding walls.Instead of expressing the usual religious content, they depict some secular themes.One of the paintings is a scene of acting.It shows actors in costume, with their faces painted in the traditional way, which was later commonly used in Chinese opera.The date indicated in its footnote corresponds to 1326 in the Yuan Dynasty, when Chinese drama was finally formed.Its research value is obvious.
Although the discovery of a rare 1149 AD Buddhist scripture at Guangsheng Temple in 1933 led the Liangs to hope that the temple itself might have been built at or around that time, they concluded from their own tests that both temples were built in the 14th century , or Yuanwei and early Ming Dynasty.A unique architectural feature caught their attention, first at the Lower Temple.Huiyin described it like this: "The front hall has five rooms, and the top of the hall is built on a mountain... Except for the south side of the center, the front hall only has column capitals, but no intermediaries. Dougong... intersects with the beams,... ...On the plane,...with a huge inner forehead, straight from the inner flat column to the mountain column,...it can be said to be a huge pole. (Note 3.)" Sicheng designed this kind of The 14th-century "architect" of the beam structure supporting the roof admired it, saying that he had never seen such an organic use of timber structures elsewhere.
Climbing up the steep slope leading to the upper monastery, we reached a superb viewpoint, visible from the southern tip of the Huoshan Mountains.To go to the temple, we have to pass through two gates.After leaving the second gate, we came to the tall tower in the courtyard.This weird placement method is unique to Buddhist architecture in the Tang Dynasty.The buildings of later generations generally have two towers in this courtyard, one on each side of the central axis of the temple.The Liangs were not surprised when they learned that Guangsheng Temple was originally built in the Tang Dynasty, destroyed by an earthquake in 1303, and rebuilt in 1319, so it may have imitated the design of some of the original buildings.They pointed out to us the same inventive beam structure they had admired in the Lower Temple.We all admired the beautiful Buddhist carvings that dominate the halls.
The octagonal pagoda is thirteen stories high, all covered with colorful glazed tiles, which glow brightly in the sun.When we inspected the great Buddha rooted at the ground floor, the first few steps of the internal spiral staircase caught our attention.We decided to go up, never knowing what a thrilling adventure it would be.The stairs are dark, the brick steps are narrow and shallow, and the slope is steep.The only light comes from each floor opening in the thick façade towards the sun.A small opening about three feet high and two feet wide.We groped our way up in a single file.When we finished the first flight of stairs, we were surprised to find that there was no platform to rest on.You don't know you've walked a flight of stairs until your head hits a board.There you have to turn around and step over the dangling gap to the head of another flight of stairs.To stabilize yourself during this dangerous activity, you have to move a brick here and there on the wall to find a handrail.It all sounds scary enough, but the construction is so precise that we quickly learned how to step over gaps and where to find handrails as we climbed.At intervals we were able to crawl out on our hands and knees to view the wonder from the heights through the little opening in the wall.We don't know exactly who designed the interior of the Buddha and when, but the only date related to the pagoda is that it was covered with glazed tiles in 1515 during the Ming Dynasty.
When we descended to the lower monastery to say goodbye to the monks and collect our luggage, we asked them to explain why the walls of the main hall had been newly painted.We are fully aware that this can be an embarrassing question.They told us that in 1927 the monks sold the murals on the walls on both sides of the main hall to a cultural relic dealer to repair the temple building.Seeing that we were upset, they argued that the monastery's house was already badly remembered, and if the house was not repaired, the murals would have to be lost anyway.Is this a cunning ploy to reassure architects that preservation of buildings is the right motive for selling frescoes?We have known before that some famous museums in the United States and one in Toronto have exhibited some murals from temples in Shanxi, and everyone knows that they were bought from Japanese cultural relic dealers Yamanaka.Are these monks trading art treasures for money just to preserve buildings?
It took a few more days to get back to Yudao River, but it was not so difficult compared to the one going south.We have had time and opportunity to discuss this and other shared experiences.The architectural treasures we want to remember are the temples, and besides that there is the two-story building with the high walled battlements where we stayed that night in Changjiazhuang, which was an unexpected gift.We all cherish the opportunity to live in that luxurious residence for a few hours and inspect what may be the only building in Shanxi.
As for the investigation itself and the contacts we had with outsiders along the way, everyone's reactions were different.Fairbank and I enjoyed the company of the missionaries, who were far from home but still solitary in a crowd that was not widely popular.For us, it was a brief glimpse into life in the missionary's home.Sicheng doesn't see it that way, and he's frustrated with relying on foreigners to get clean and tidy in his own country.His national pride has been bruised many times by actions that do not conform to his code, such as the ridiculous railway embankment and the scene of Yan Xishan's soldiers laying the tracks, and the angry rickshaw puller who declares that they must spend an hour out of every three hours. Stopping for a meal, those monks who tore down Chinese art treasures—monastery murals and sold them to foreign countries—probably did so for personal gain.Huiyin is extremely sensitive to the surrounding things, as she has always been.When she was well rested, she took extreme delight in the beauty of the scene and the interesting encounter.But when she's tired or down for some reason, she can be very difficult to deal with.We all feel bad when the environment is bad, but she will curse loudly at such times, which is very stimulating to me who was taught by my parents to "be a good athlete for others" since I was a child.I began to doubt.She protested loudly in the face of reality; and I, as a "good athlete", quietly and passively waited for it to pass, who was right?Maybe both are right, maybe neither are right.We are two different people, two people of completely different upbringings.
An unintended consequence of a field trip is physical exhaustion.Especially for Huiyin's already bad health and Sicheng's lameness.Fairbank and I recovered quickly, but the long-term effects on both of them are hard to say.When we parted ways in Fenzhou, they were on their way home to visit Jinci, another beautiful monastery near Taiyuan.
In a week or two, we will return to Beijing and live again in the adjacent Liang family's house as before.This week we have been together day and night, sharing joys and sorrows, and have nurtured a long-term close friendship.
Note 1. Refer to page 281 of the first volume of Liang Sicheng's Collected Works. ——Translator's Note Note 2. Refer to page 309 of the first volume of Liang Sicheng's Collected Works. ——Translator's Note Note 3. Refer to page 327 of the first volume of Liang Sicheng's Collected Works. ——Translator's Note
Note 1. Refer to page 281 of the first volume of Liang Sicheng's Collected Works. ——Translator's Note Note 2. Refer to page 309 of the first volume of Liang Sicheng's Collected Works. ——Translator's Note Note 3. Refer to page 327 of the first volume of Liang Sicheng's Collected Works. ——Translator's Note