Chapter 96 Section 6 Two Archways

The famous Ningyuan City in history is now called Xingcheng. The ancient city wall built by Zu Dashou in person is still majestic, and the blue-gray ancient mottled city bricks on the top of the wall were once printed with the footprints of Zu Dashou and Wu Sangui. Wandering in the ancient city, the two huge stone archways in the center of the city attract the attention of everyone who comes here.These two buildings still look down on the passing crowd with the defiant air they had just erected more than 300 years ago, but now this air seems a bit pretentious. Because tourists in twos and threes just looked up at the still exquisite reliefs on the archway, and then touched the heads of the two stone lions below, few of them recognized the few traditional characters carved on it by the owner of the archway.Those words are engraved extremely high, and you have to look up your head with great effort to read them clearly.

The words on the front archway are "loyalty, courage and wisdom", and the four characters on the taller one at the back are "Dengtan Junlie".These words mean to commend the generals who guarded the city at the beginning, and commend their loyalty and bravery.The people they want to commend are Zu Dashou and Zu Dale.The two archways were built by the Zu brothers themselves with the approval of the emperor.Later, the two self-proclaimed generals simultaneously betrayed their emperor. Looking at these two stone archways, the first thing that comes to mind is why they are built so tall that people passing under them will experience a sense of oppression.Moreover, two ferocious lions will be placed below to defend?This embodies an effort to keep a distance from the world, a meaning of looking down on everything and overriding everything.And what is this thing that overlooks everything and overrides everything?It is the core of the moral concept of this society.

The basic values ​​are the spiritual pillar of a society that unites people's hearts and integrates the ideology of the whole society, and is the spiritual starting point and destination of every member of society.Therefore, every society always strives to promote this kind of value and consolidate the spiritual commanding heights of this kind of social centripetal force. After Zu Dashou surrendered, these two archways have become two concrete ironies.As his successor, Wu Sangui passed these two buildings almost every day.However, he never proposed removing them.This is a meaningful fact.When Wu Sangui, Ning Yuan's successor guard, passed under these two buildings again more than 300 years ago, what was he thinking?