Legendary Zhaojiabao: The Royal Family of the Southern Song Dynasty built a “Bianjing City” in Fu

In Zhangpu, Zhangzhou, Fujian, at the foot of Shuogao Mountain, which is less than 20 kilometers away from the coastline, stands a century-old fort, Zhaojiabao. Pieces of yellowed rocks build towering walls to keep all dangers out. Only the city gate is left as an entry and exit checkpoint. In the coastal areas of Fujian, similar castles are not uncommon. In the Ming Dynasty, Japanese pirates were rampant, and many coastal villages in southern and northern Fujian have a history of building castles. However, Zhaojiabao is very special. Its shape and layout are exactly like Bianjing, the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty, revealing to the world the story of an ancient and sad dynasty.

#1

The Song Dynasty fell, and the young master fell to Zhangzhou

The establishment of Zhaojiabao has a continuous relationship with the Zhao family of the Song Dynasty. In 960, Zhao Kuangyin seized the throne through Chenqiao mutiny and established the Song Dynasty. After the inheritance of the throne, the Song Dynasty also continued to develop and prosper. Until the Jingkang Incident happened, the Song Dynasty was about to perish, and the fate of the Zhao royal family began to turn.

In the second year of Jingkang (1127), the Jin people from the northern nomads went south and captured Bianjing, the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty. They not only kidnapped the two emperors Hui and Qin, but also captured more than 3,000 people including the royal family and harem concubines to the northeast. However, although King Kang Zhao Gou escaped the clutches of the Jin people, he still did not come out of the fact that the dynasty was overthrown.

The Southern Song Dynasty barely survived for more than 150 years. In the past hundred years, the royal heirs have changed repeatedly, and finally passed on to Zhao Ruohe, the descendant of Zhao Kuangyin’s brother Zhao Kuangmei. Zhao Ruohe, who was accidentally proposed to be the prince, was only 13 years old at the time. He was ignorant and was adopted in the palace, waiting to inherit the throne. However, due to the intensified struggle for the throne, Zhao Ruohe was eventually pushed out of the game and resigned to Fuzhou, Fujian as the king of Finchong.

Soon after, Lin’an City was breached by the Yuan army, and the remnants of the Southern Song Dynasty established a small court in Fujian. The Yuan army was still in hot pursuit and forced the small court all the way to Quanzhou. Never thought of Quanzhou, the defending general Pu Shougeng surrendered to the Yuan army, did not allow the small court to enter the city, and also killed more than 2,000 Zhao clans in the city, the small court had to flee to the South China Sea in Guangdong.

Even so, they still could not escape the pursuit of the Yuan army, and a large number of royal family members were forced to die in the river. In the end, Zhang Shijie, a general of the Southern Song Dynasty, led 16 ships to seize the port and headed north all the way to return to Fuzhou. However, there was a strong wind on the way, and the ship sank in the wind and waves. In the end, only four ships survived the danger and landed on the coast of Zhangzhou. The young master Zhao Ruohe was one of the survivors in the boat.

In order to avoid the pursuit of the Yuan army, Zhao Ruohe changed his surname to “Huang” and settled in Fotan Town, Zhangpu with his courtiers Xu Dafu and Huang Cai, and lived a secluded life for generations.

#2

Wanbi Tower and the inner city, the castle defends against the coastal Japanese pirates

The peaceful life has allowed the Zhao family to recuperate, and the family background has become a secret kept for generations. It was not until the eighteenth year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty (1385) that Huang Huiguan, a descendant of the Zhao family, was brought to court for the crime of “intermarriage with the same surname”.

During the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, the Zhao family ushered in a long-lost revival. Zhao Ruohe’s eighth-generation grandson, Zhao Shukuan, was good at financial management, bought land, built ancestral halls, made friends with literati, and hired a famous Confucian scholar to be a teacher for his son Zhao Fan. In the fifth year of Longqing in Ming Dynasty (1571), Zhao Fan became the second-ranking scholar and became famous in one fell swoop. He has served in many places successively, and he has served as the governor of the state, the foreign minister of the household department, and the deputy envoy of the Zhejiang Provincial Commissioner.

At that time, the coastal pirates were rampant, and Zhao Fan invested 200 taels of silver to build a large defensive earthen fort, Meiyuelou, in Yuandong Village, Fotan Town, Zhangpu County, where he had lived for generations. But 20 years later, when Zhao Fanzhi returned to his hometown, he saw more rampant pirates attack, and realized that although there was an earthen fort in Meiyuelou, it could only be avoided temporarily. It would be better to build a large fort. Therefore, Zhao Fan moved his family to the Huxi area, which is only ten miles away from Fotan Town. Under the Shuogao Mountain in the Huxi, he found a hidden and suitable place for farming, and began to build Zhaojiabao.

The Wanbi Building is the earliest defensive earth building built in Zhaojiabao, which means “completely returned to Zhao”, reflecting the castle owner’s wish for the family’s revival. The name itself also has a hidden mystery: the structure of the word “Wan” is “Song Song and Yuan Dynasty”, which means that although the dynasties have undergone changes, it is still Song in the sky and Yuan in the earth; , the word “jade” is written very small and a little less, becoming the bottom of the word “king”. This is the image of the Zhao family living in a remote sea corner, which has suffered humiliation and bitterness for hundreds of years; “lou” The right part of the character is shaped like the character “An”, indicating that the descendants of the Zhao family live and work in peace and contentment.

The Wanbi Building is square in plan, 80 meters long, three stories high, and 13.6 meters high. As a military defense building, the walls of the Wanbi Building are very strong. Many triangular perforations are opened along the wall. People inside can observe external enemies through the perforations, and even attack them, but the external enemies cannot harm the people in the building. There is a secret room on the second floor, with no doors and no windows, for the owner of the castle to hide important items or carry out secret activities. The third floor is a large room with no partition walls. It is a place for the male and strong family members to stay together at night, stand guard and deal with emergencies. In addition, there is a secret passage next to the courtyard in the middle of the building, which is usually used for drainage. During the war, internal personnel can sneak out of the city through the secret passage.

With the Wanbi Tower as the core, Zhao Fan later built a city wall on the periphery, and only opened three city gates to the outside world, which further enhanced the defense of the Wanbi Tower. In addition to several new mansions, the entire castle covers an area of​4.68 acres and has a circumference of 222 meters. Although the area is small, it is invaluable, guarding the safety of the Zhao family from generation to generation.

#3

Outer City and Mansion, Miniature Bianjing City

In the forty-seventh year of Wanli in the Ming Dynasty (1619), Zhao Fan’s son Zhao Yi took over his father’s “baton” and continued to expand the castle. Because the wall was built outside the original castle, the former castle was called the “inner city”, and the later one was called the “outer city”. The outer city walls are all built with local rock slabs, with a circumference of 1082 meters and an overall area of ​​173 acres. At this time, the ancient castle had both defense and living needs. Four mansions were the main buildings. There were six main houses on the left and right sides, and a garden area was opened. , Buddhist Temple, Jufo Pagoda, Yu Temple, Shifang, etc., have built a living system integrating residence, defense, religion and leisure.

The scale and pattern of the ancient castle is exactly the same as that of Bianjing, the capital of the Song Dynasty, just like its miniature version. According to the textual research of relevant materials, the Bianjing city is divided into three layers, namely the palace city, the inner city and the outer city, all of which are slightly shorter from east to west and slightly longer from north to south; the inner city has ten city gates, and the outer city has twelve city gates. All over the four directions of east, west, north and south. Compared with Bianjing City, Zhaojiabao is composed of Wanbi Tower, inner city and outer city. The plane is also square or rectangular. The inner city has three gates, and the outer city also has four gates from east, west, north and south. Among them, the east gate is the current main gate. The four characters on the gate are “Oriental Great Barrier”, which means that the castle is like a copper wall and an iron wall, which can resist the invasion of foreign invaders.

The style and location of the Jufo Pagoda in Zhaojiabao are also similar to the Kaifeng Iron Pagoda in Bianjing City. It’s just that the stone tower replaced the iron tower, and its height is only one-tenth of the iron tower. The stone alleys in the castle lead to every household, and also to the city gate. If you walk on any alley, you can follow the road out of the city. “Song Wenjian Bian Du Fu” once described the capital of Bian: “There are things in the city. Qian, the road between the north and the south. It has four stretches and nine tracks.” Zhaojiabao also gave people the same feeling. There is also a lotus pond in the fort, which is divided into two halves by a long embankment. The bridge across the pond is called “Bianpai Bridge”. It consists of a flat stone girder bridge and a coupon-top arch bridge. “Panyang Erhu Lake and State Bridge are set up. Everywhere along the old Bianjing, the longing of the descendants of the royal family for the old capital is revealed everywhere.

In addition to the overall pattern of the castle, several buildings in the castle also tactfully tell the family history to future generations. The north three halls and the south three halls built in the Chongzhen period of the Ming Dynasty were once the residences of the Zhao clan. Among them, the “South Three Halls” include Zhongtang, Zhitang and Huitang, which have been opened as “Zhaojiabao Exhibition Hall”. Hanging in the Zhitang is the “Two-Eight Emperor God Statue”, which was the ancestor picture of the emperors that Zhao Ruohe carried with him when he was traveling in the south. The portrait is about 50 centimeters high and 35 centimeters wide. It has been kept in a fragrant wooden brocade box all the year round and has become an heirloom of the Zhao family.

The four mansions at the center of the ancient castle are of high specification. Different from the buildings built with local rock materials, they basically adopt the architectural form of red brick walls and swallowtail cornices in southern Fujian. The mansion door drum was actually engraved with dragon and phoenix reliefs. You must know that dragon and phoenix were the symbols of the royal family at that time. There is a large plaque “Fu Yao He Lan” hanging in the hall of the mansion, which is the praise of Ming Shenzong when Zhao Fan went to Ningxia, Shaanxi for disaster relief. There are two couplets written on the pillars of the hall: “The Song Dynasty has been moving for a long time, and a butterfly will not go with the world. The dynasty is heavy, and Shuangma once came to the sun.” Although it is far away, the poems and books have brought the sun and the moon long.” It described the pains and sufferings of the Zhao family that has continued to this day, and also explained their inexhaustible longing for their homeland.

Times have changed, and the turbulent history has finally become the past. Today’s Zhaojiabao has no swords and shadows, only a idyllic pastoral scene. Chickens and ducks are scurrying around, grandma is enjoying the shade under the tree, grandpa is selling souvenirs at the entrance of the castle, and the kitchen chimney emits bursts of fragrance… 

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