Singing opera in the village, usually in autumn, the autumn harvest is over, the farmers have a bumper harvest, and the hard work of one year is temporarily over. When you are free, the village with conditions will ask the troupe to reward the gods and be grateful for the good weather.
I retired, my time was free, and I had a job, so I had to wander back to my village.
So, as soon as I closed my eyes these days, I went back to the village, to the stage in the village, that is, to the temple in the village. Because the stage is built to reward and entertain God, and the drama on the stage is sung to God, people can only watch the drama with the light of God. So out of respect for the gods, the stage was opened, that is, the best theater location is facing the temple, so the stage and the temple have always been face to face. Where the temple was built, the stage was built opposite.
The temple and stage are in the north of the village, which were newly built in 2009. They are surrounded by a courtyard wall and guarded by specialized personnel. Usually, the door is locked. They should only be open during festivals and sacrifices, allowing people to enter. Only once during the Spring Festival in a certain year.
However, I remember the old temple and the old stage, not the new temple and the new stage now.
When the old temple was there, I didn't know its name, origin and life experience. It's gone, and I only know a little about its antiquity, so it can also be called an ancient temple.
According to the information on the Internet:
"Bao Zhuang Chengtangwang Temple is named after the worship of the rain god Chengtangwang in the temple. Because the temple is located in Bao Zhuang Village, Danzhu Town, Zhangzi County, it was named Chengtangwang Temple in Bao Zhuang. The date of construction cannot be verified, but the existing main hall has an obvious structure of Jin Dynasty (A.D.1115-1234), which shows that it has a long history. In 2007, it was announced by Changzhi Municipal People's Government as a municipal cultural relics protection unit.
King Tang Cheng, also known as Emperor Wutang, Shangtang, Tianyitang and Tang Cheng, was an emperor who prayed for rain for the people in the ancient history of China. More than 3600 years ago, in the 6th century BC/kloc-0, the Shang Dynasty was established in Xia Dynasty, and it reigned for 13 years. He is a kind, sincere, kind and filial monarch who loves his people as much as his son. He applied benevolent policies extensively, selected and appointed talents, and recommended Yi Yin, who was born as a slave, as his right-hand man, assisted in national politics, developed production, and more and more people joined the Party. Shortly after the establishment of Shang dynasty, it suffered from drought for years and it didn't rain for seven years. People have a hard life and complain a lot, so they have to turn to ghosts and gods, but after all their efforts, it still hasn't rained. A divination made by a later wizard showed that it would only rain if people were sacrificed. King Tang put human life first and was determined to devote himself to rain. The wizard asked him to make a fire sacrifice. The king of Tang stood on the woodpile, and the wizard lit a fire, and the flames soared into the sky. When Tang Wang was smoked by fireworks, a gust of wind blew, and suddenly dark clouds were gathering, thunder and lightning, and heavy rain poured down, putting out the fireworks and drenching the earth. People saved Tang Wang from the fire and returned to the palace singing. Later generations regarded Cheng as a rain god to show their recognition of this move.
After the death of King Tang, people all over the country built temples and statues, worshiped them year after year and admired them from generation to generation. In Zhangzi County, there is a village with a temple of King Tang Cheng. In the past, there were three large-scale celebrations on February 2nd, July 15th and September 9th of the lunar calendar to worship King Tang Cheng. "
I remember when I was a child, the temple was the center of the village. It has a hall, a hall and a side hall. The primary school in the village is built on the west side of the temple. I even think that part of the classroom in the school is part of the temple. In short, schools and temples are integrated, regardless of each other. There are two courtyards in the school. The outer courtyards are senior and the inner courtyards are junior. There is a row of teachers' offices between the inner and outer courtyards. On the east side of the temple are the offices, warehouses, temples and theaters of the village brigade. At that time, the villagers called the office compound of the brigade village Committee on the east side of the temple "Shangsi". My father used to be an accountant in the village and often went to the temple. He also saw his father build a house with reeds in the courtyard of the temple. In dialect, school is called "study room", school is called "study room" and school education is called "learning". My primary school spent six years next to this temple, playing, learning and growing with its gaze and company. The gate of the compound is under the stage in the south of the temple. This gate is also the gate of the school. We go in through this door when we go to school and line up to sing after school. To the east of this gate is the supply and marketing cooperative in the village. I clearly remember that there is a poster painted by my father on the wall of this supply and marketing cooperative: a chef is cooking with a white towel around his neck and a big pot in front of him.
At that time, the inner court of the school was next to the west side of the temple (which should be the wing of the temple), followed by grade two, grade one and then west. A three-bedroom west wing is a kindergarten class, and the south of the kindergarten class is a toilet. The second-grade classroom has a higher terrain. The courtyard surrounded by classrooms of these three grades has a steep slope to the south, and Westinghouse, which is side by side with kindergarten classes, is the third grade. Further south, a row of rooms facing north is the teacher's office, and further south, there is a western wall. Maybe it was because I was very young at that time, and I always thought the temple was very high. The wall bricks of the temple are very thick and strong, and they are gray. The base is tall and thick, in the shape of a pyramid with a small top and a large bottom. Bricks are recessed layer by layer from bottom to top, forming a small step as narrow as the thickness of a thin brick. The cracks in the bricks are covered with moss, sometimes wet and slippery. After class, we often play by the west wall of the temple, climb up that small step and sit around the base. Behind the temple is a dark place. Occasionally go there to pick up smooth and thin tiles (only in this place), which can be used to hopscotch, called tiles. It's flat, different from ordinary curved tiles. I don't know what it is. As for the main hall gate of the temple, it is locked all the year round. I have never entered it in my memory, and I don't know what immortals live in it, but it feels a little mysterious in my young mind. Successive sports have already made people lose the tradition of offering sacrifices to gods. For many years, it stood there like an unnecessary thing, and no one cared. I just heard adults say that at 1960, this is the kitchen hall of the whole village. Grandma cooks for the whole village, and the elder sister takes the family's meals home after school. At that time, people really thought communism had arrived, even if they were hungry. To the east of the temple is the house of the village Committee, which has nothing to do with our children, so we didn't pay much attention to it and were not deeply impressed by its structure.
I have left my village to study abroad since junior high school. I have less time to go back to the village and less opportunities to go to the temple. I just go once in a while when I sing in the village. I inadvertently saw it still standing there alone, as if forgotten.
At the moment, I want to see the old temple again and touch every brick of it. I fantasize that some cultural relics appraisers may have taken pictures of it and are eager to see pictures of it. If there is not even a photo left in the ancient temple, then I can only touch it in my memory. However, I can't describe its appearance and internal structure in more detail in the remaining vague memory.
State-owned national temples, villages have village temples, and some big families also have family temples. Village temple is the soul of a village, which protects people. Villages with temples are places where people and gods live together. Temple courtyard is a public place where villagers hold large-scale activities. A temple is the root of a village.
A while ago, I attended the release conference of Da Lian's new book "Looking for the Ancient Temple in Shanxi". This northeast person who loves ancient buildings is a bosom friend of Shanxi ancient temple. In the next 20 years, he went deep into the rural areas of Shanxi to find ancient buildings at his own expense, and painted more than 0/000 paintings of ancient buildings by hand. However, this ancient temple in the village was not as lucky as in the book, so he didn't wait for Da Lian to hand-paint her portrait.
This sturdy ancient temple built by our ancestors with excellent bricks 800 years ago was originally intended to be handed down from generation to generation to accompany the villagers. Unfortunately, they never imagined that the temple fair was built in the wrong place.
"In 2009, Shangdang people built a highway from Changzhi to Changzi, and its planned section just passed through the temple. In order to protect this historical and cultural heritage, Zhangzi county, township and village moved the temple from March 15 to July 15, 2009 on the principle of maintaining its original appearance and repairing the old.
Since then, the ancient temple has ceased to exist, and the first-class highway has rudely passed through the village like a sword, which has changed the feng shui pattern of the village for thousands of years. The real antiques were torn down, and a fake antique was made for offering. A monument was erected next to it, which read "Key Cultural Relics Protection Unit in Zhangzi County" (naturally downgraded from "Cultural Relics Protection Unit in Changzhi City"), saying that it was a cultural relic. Is it a relic? Can cultural relics be rebuilt? Maybe in another 800 years, people will say it is a cultural relic, but now I don't know what it has to do with the demolished Chengtangwang Temple. It says that in order to protect the inheritance of this historical and cultural heritage, why not re-plan the road and walk around the temple? It is said to keep the original appearance, repair the old as the old, and inherit it well. How can a newly built temple be as old as the old one? Are all the bricks and tiles that built it removed from the ancient temple? Or overall migration? Back in the Jin Dynasty, it was even more difficult for my ancestors to build another one. Obviously not. The new temple is brand new, the bricks and tiles are new, and the paintings are new. Although it is also very good, I have never felt anything about it. The ancient temple can't even protect itself. How can it protect the villagers?
As the oldest building in the village, it disappeared silently. For the economic development of future generations, perhaps the ancestors are willing to sacrifice themselves and give everything to forgive their children's actions. However, the traces of culture and history preserved by the ancient temple after years of vicissitudes have disappeared and cannot be passed down. ...
I learned from the Internet that there is also a Chengtangwang Temple of A Jin Dynasty in the adjacent Xishangfang Village, which survived because it is located in the wild, but the wooden structure is more dangerous. Experts and enthusiasts from afar have tried their best to restore it to treasure more than once. I hope it will be finished. Because I am young and ignorant, I don't know what the structure of the ancient temple in our village is, but it is still strong and well preserved. It is so strong that I think it will be quite difficult to dismantle it. If it exists, it may attract the attention and footprint of enthusiasts.
In short, it's a pity that the ancient temple was demolished and my memory was taken away! I'm so sad!
Mr Qi Dongfang, a professor and doctoral supervisor of Peking University Institute of Archaeology and Culture, wrote in the preface of the book Looking for Ancient Temple in Shanxi: "The ancient buildings in China are often the superposition of history, which contains information of various periods. Some have experienced wind and rain, but they have been destroyed by modern people. It is a lucky thing that the cultural relics that are about to be dumped can remain until now. However, now destruction and demolition occur frequently. In the contradiction between the rapid economic development and the protection of ancient cultural relics, the opposition between demolition and protection appears from time to time, but the opponents are all the same offspring. I think it is a greater sin to make ancient buildings disappear in the prosperous time when there is no foreign plunder and war. It is greedy to exchange the loss of spiritual culture for more material benefits. When we can't find our roots, we will become spiritual beggars with nothing. If we can appreciate elegance, agility, publicity, domineering, grandeur and luxury from ancient buildings, we cannot but have reverence and confidence in our traditional culture. Cherishing them means loving our ancestors, appreciating them means appreciating wisdom and creation, and protecting them means protecting our homeland. "
From now on, I will not only offer sacrifices to King Tang Cheng, but also to the temple of the late King Tang Cheng.