Liu Dong, a scholar in Ming Dynasty, wrote The End of Water. The so-called "end of water", that is, the "water source" at the westernmost end of Xiangshan Cherry Valley, is the source of spring water everywhere, hence the name. The article begins with a cloud (slightly abridged):
Guanyin shiting west, all streams, streams have spring committees; All the stones, all the stones are walls. On its south bank, there are all bamboos, all of which are surrounded by streams, and stones are leaning on them. It is difficult to swallow bamboo, so far it has a forest mu. ..... After crossing Longjiao Temple and heading west, I heard the sound of spring water. Spring flow is long and short, leveling. Flowers, curves and services for flowers; Bamboo, canal spring and bamboo service; It's too noisy. Flowers and bamboos don't serve, and springs are still stone springs. ..... Stones are surging, people are screaming, people step over stones, and water drops gradually turn into clothes.
Go west from Guanyin Stone Pavilion and enter the valley (today's "Cherry Valley"). Rocks of streams can be seen everywhere. They come from springs and mountains. Beijing belonged to the northern Yan land in ancient times, and the climate was cold, making it difficult for bamboo to grow. However, the dense planting here is indeed a strange sight. Walking west after visiting Longjiao Temple, I heard the sound of spring, but the sound was relatively small. This is because the flowers, plants and bamboo forests are vying for the spring water to water them, and the spring water has no time to make a loud sound to vent its momentum. Then upstream, the infiltration of streams around flowers and trees into bamboo forests gradually decreased, and there was a distance between water and plants. The sound of the spring immediately became louder, and the water surged in the cracks of the stone, splashing the clothes of the tourists.
There are two most noteworthy contents in this paper: bamboo forest and Longjiao Temple. Let's talk about temples first. The valley visited by Dong Liu, a scholar in Ming Dynasty, was called "Tuigu" in ancient times, and "Cherry Valley" was commonly known. Judging from the full text, he marked his whereabouts with the ancient temples along the way. From east to west, there are Longjiao Temple, Yuantong Temple, Taihe Temple, Guangquan Abandoned Temple and Wuhua Temple. These five temples are all gone now. You can also see the site of Longjiao Temple in Yingtaogou, and you can't go far into the valley. More than ten steps can be climbed from the north bank of the stream, with walls and doors, and the word "coca pavilion shade" is engraved on the lintel. You can see a flat land between cliffs, one or two acres in size. The Longjiao Temple was here. In the northeast corner of the courtyard, the ancient pagoda stands in the wind, which should have been planted when the ancient temple was first built. Last week we went sightseeing, and the three of us would hold hands around it. It is estimated that the age of trees and temples should be five thousand years.
Bamboo, topographically speaking, is really likely to become a forest. The valley is generally trumpet-shaped, and the wider it gets. So is Cherry Valley. In the valley east of Longjiao Temple, along the winding stream, several places are very open. The bamboo forest in the northernmost latitude should be located in Hongluo Temple (now changed to "District") in Huairou County, more than 0/00 km north of Beijing. I have been there. According to the latitude, the small bamboo forest in Ming Dynasty infiltrated by Yingtaogou Creek is really amazing. I said "worthy of attention" earlier because these grain returns and bamboo pruning are related to Cao Xueqin. Let's stop and enjoy the second half of The End of Water:
Flowers and algae are mixed, and the mountain monk garden is not worthy of its name. Grass can't become a family, and visitors are different from each other by fighting for flowers and picking hundreds of ears. However, flowers in spring are not as beautiful as persimmon leaves in autumn. Ye Hema's little chef, Shi Dandan, the wind is beautiful every day, the trees are full of stars, and the fields are on fire in the evening: Xiangshan says apricot, Yangshan says pear and Shoushan says persimmon. Go west to Yuantong Temple and see the Hall of Supreme Harmony. Mountain people point to the end of the water and the source of the spring. At the end, Lei Lei has two stone corners, such as the ridge, from which the spring cover comes out. The sound of birds and trees is strong, but spring is hard to hear. After sitting for a long time, I said goodbye, "the sound of birds, trees and the sound of spring." There is Guangquan Abandoned Temple in the west and Wuhua Temple in the north. But Monkey looked forward to the Buddha's return and said, "Buddha has no spring."
The only difficult word is "bah" and the sound is "chicken". "Boo-Boo" is the song of a bird, which means that the sound of spring is very small. "Grass can't be classified" means that grass can't be classified by name. The sentence "Spring flowers are not as good as autumn leaves" tells us that this is a spring outing. The whole highly praised sentence is like this: "Ye Hema's little chef, Shi Dandan, is beautiful every day, the trees are full of stars, and Noda is full of fire: Xiangshan says apricot, Yangshan says pear, and Shoushan says persimmon." Don't steal the beauty of others, and record the comments of today's people: it means that the fruit trees that can create the above charming scenery are apricot in Xiangshan, pear in Yangshan and persimmon in Shoushan. "Xiangshan" is now the Xiangshan in the western suburbs of Beijing. "Yangshan" is a section of mountain east of Biyun Temple and west of Wofo Temple. "Shouan Mountain" is located in the north of the reclining Buddha Temple, namely Cherry Valley. From the travel notes, I don't like the last sentence of this article very much. I use the ancient cliche, but from the historical data, it reveals a message to us: deep valley retreat was once a secluded place, very quiet and games. The record of "Guangquan Abandoned Temple" also has historical value. The bamboo forest and abandoned temple in this paper have aroused the association of Mr. Zhou, a red scientist. He has a statement about Cao Xueqin's residence in his later years, and my summary is recorded here-
Look at the scenery of this place written by him (Dong Liu). Bamboo groves and springs are two major features. This is the cherry ditch. In the 11th year of Kangxi (1672), Wang Yuyang swam back to the valley and wrote a poem, "Ten thousand bamboo poles in the southwest grew denser with the years", which can prove that the bamboo forests here were still very good in the early years of Kangxi. The poems written by Duncheng after Xueqin's death include the words "Retreat Weng Pavilion, Bamboo in the Upper Wind, Shi Ping in front of the Sleeping Buddha Temple", and the last sentence is about the scenery of retreating to the west of the Sleeping Buddha Temple, which not only confirms that the bamboo forest still exists during the Qianlong period, but also shows that Duncheng is very familiar with this place. This place is only five miles north of Xiangshan and Biyun Temple, but it is the closest place to the legendary Jianruiying Zhengbai Banner and Yellow Flag, just east of Xiangshan. Looking back, it was a secluded path. Ganlong has never been so prosperous, which is very different from the piedmont area. It's a secluded place. Most people who swim to the reclining Buddha Temple don't know that there is such a beautiful and quiet place next to it. Xueqin probably fell in love with the most beautiful place in Xishan, the Hermit Palace. If we look at the poems of the Ming Dynasty, they are all similar to those written by Dunga brothers and others, such as Luoluomen Lane, Winding Path to a secluded place and Huangye Village. So I suspect that Cao Xueqin's wandering may be closely related to this place. His friend Zhang Yiquan saved a poem named Qin Xue's Abandoning the Temple in the Western Suburb in the Poem of Spring Willow Pavilion. It is also a coincidence that there is a famous abandoned temple, Guangquan Temple, in the depths of the cherry ditch where the mountains in the Qing Valley are gradually rising. His village house may not be far from here, which may be related to the legend of "Jianrui Camp". Apart from this area, there is no other place to combine with Quanxi Bamboo and Jianrui Camp. Considering that it can match all the clues well, this is indeed a place worth studying and investigating. Note: To the south of Tuigu Bamboo Forest and to the north of Yingzi, where Xueqin lives, there is a small village called Beigou, with the most desirable geographical location.
Whether Cao Xueqin lived in the old house named "Huangye Village" in Zhengbaiqiying, or the small village "Beigou" at the southern foot of the bamboo forest guessed by Mr. Zhou, or the village verified by several other experts, or whether he lived in these places, or lived in more than two places, has become a hot issue in A Dream of Red Mansions. In my opinion, they are just hidden under a roof a few kilometers away from Fiona Fang. Does it really matter which well Mr Qin Xue drinks?
Hehe, I have an important mistake to clarify here. A few days ago, I wrote miscellaneous notes about Huangye Village and was misled by a map. It is speculated that Guangquan Ancient Temple, which was destroyed in the Ming Dynasty, is located just north of the water source of Cherry Valley, with a climbing distance of only a few hundred meters, that is, somewhere in the hollow between today's "straw hat pavilion" and the ridge of Yan 'erling in the north. It seems that the direction is wrong. At the end of "The End of Water", the direction is clear: "Guangquan abandons the West Temple". This temple should be just west of the water source, not just north. A few years ago, some busybodies followed the words described in ancient books to visit this temple. Their travel notes also specifically mentioned that they climbed the mountain in the west from the "water source" and said that they saw an ancient well with carved stone called "Guangquan Ancient Well" and covered it on the abandoned wellhead. Since there is the word "ancient", it can be seen that it was written by later generations.
Next time you visit the end of the backcountry, just climb the mountain to the west, which is much easier than finding Cao Xueqin's home.
At noon
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Appendix "The End of Water" (this article is taken from "The Scenery of the Imperial Capital" co-authored by the author and Yu Yizheng)
Water end
[Ming] Dong Liu
Guanyin shiting west, all streams, streams have spring committees; All the stones, all the stones are walls. On its south bank, there are all bamboos, all of which are surrounded by streams, and stones are leaning on them. It is difficult to swallow bamboo, so far it has a forest mu. Bamboo, Zhang began to branch; Bamboo shoots are still awkward; Bamboo powder is born at the festival, bamboo shoots come from the forest, root whip comes from the fence, and grandchildren are older than mothers. After crossing Longjiao Temple and heading west, I heard the sound of spring water. Spring flow is long and short, leveling. Flowers, curves and services for flowers; Bamboo, canal spring and bamboo service; It's too noisy. Flowers and bamboos don't serve, and springs are still stone springs. Stones are surging, voices are screaming, people step over stones, and water drops gradually become clothes. Small fish rest between cracks in the stone. When they smell the sound, they lie down. They lie in the sand. Flowers and algae are mixed, and the mountain monk garden is not worthy of its name. Grass can't become a family, and visitors are different from each other by fighting for flowers and picking hundreds of ears. However, flowers in spring are not as beautiful as persimmon leaves in autumn. Ye Hema's little chef, Shi Dandan, the wind is beautiful every day, the trees are full of stars, and the fields are on fire in the evening: Xiangshan says apricot, Yangshan says pear and Shoushan says persimmon. Go west to Yuantong Temple and see the Hall of Supreme Harmony. Mountain people point to the end of the water and the source of the spring. At the end, Lei Lei has two stone corners, such as the ridge, from which the spring cover comes out. The sound of birds and trees is strong, but spring is hard to hear. After sitting for a long time, I said goodbye, "the sound of birds, trees and the sound of spring." There is Guangquan Abandoned Temple in the west and Wuhua Temple in the north. But Monkey looked forward to the Buddha's return and said, "Buddha has no spring."