This article is taken from global person, No.34, 20 10. Author: Zhang Jianbin (Office of the National Leading Group for the Compilation of Qing History). The original title is "Looking for a Treasure for 300 Years". "Shi Niu's silver for Shigu is definitely five million." Some people can understand and buy them all. "This ancient ballad has been circulated in Chengdu for more than 300 years, because it is recognized as a" secret spell "to unlock the hidden treasure of the Great Western King Zhang. 1646 After Zhang died, the huge treasure he accumulated disappeared, and no one could even tell whether it was true or a huge lie. But in these hundreds of years, the speculation and search around it has never stopped. Legend has it that Zhang put the stolen gold and silver treasure somewhere near Chengdu, and recorded it with Shigu as a secret. 2010165438+1At the end of October, news came from Jiangkou mining area, which is only two or three kilometers away from pengshan county City, Sichuan Province: someone dug up a gold plate weighing 12 kg in the nearby river. This unexpected discovery once again revealed the legendary huge treasure of Zhang. Zhang, who plundered the wealth of Sichuan, was born in 1606 (thirty-four years of Wanli in the Ming Dynasty) and was from Yan 'an. According to Ming History, he was a burly man with a slightly longer face, a yellowish face, a chest-high beard and a loud voice, so he was called "Zhang Xianzhong". He was unruly and broke the military law many times during his tenure as a fast-catcher in Yan 'an Prefecture. 1630 (the third year of Chongzhen in the Ming Dynasty) coincided with the troubled times in the late Ming Dynasty, when eunuchs were in power and the people were in poverty. Zhang followed him to his hometown Mizhi. After the death of King Qi, he turned to Gao Yingxiang and joined Li Zicheng as a rebel. Soon, Zhang and Li Zicheng split for some reason, and Li Zicheng attacked the Yellow River basin, while he led his troops to attack the Yangtze River basin. With the growing strength of the uprising, Li Zicheng claimed to be the "King of Breakthrough" and Zhang claimed to be the "Eight Kings". Zhang was so cunning that the Ming Dynasty gave him both hard and soft treatment. First, I promised to give him a high-ranking official, hoping to win him over. Later, it was repeatedly encircled. At every critical moment, he pretended to surrender and rebelled after the crisis. The Ming dynasty * * * couldn't satisfy his desire at all, and his goal was only one-to be emperor. 1643, after Zhang captured Wuchang, he proclaimed himself emperor and established the Daxi regime. Zhao Jishi, a scholar in the Qing Dynasty, said in the Book of Sending the Garden that he stuffed the King of Chu (Zhu Huakui) into a bamboo sedan chair and drowned him in the lake, while he "took millions of gold and silver from the palace and carried hundreds of cars". The following year, led the troops into Sichuan. In the land of abundance, he did two things that made him notorious, one was killing people and the other was robbing money. It is said that after Zhang captured Chengdu, his subordinates reported that they were short of food and grass, so he solved the most difficult problem ―― killing soldiers by the simplest method. There is a "Seven Killing Monument" in Chengdu, which records his killing process: "Everything is born to support people, and no one has the virtue to repay the sky, killing people, killing people, killing people. "In addition to killing people, Zhang is more famous for looting, and the object of looting has developed from royal officials to ordinary people. Liu Jingbo, a Qing Dynasty man, recorded in the history book "The Book Cabinet Guide" that Zhang Zhongxian ransacked money from wealthy businessmen in various counties, ranging from several thousand two hundred gold to tens of thousands, and he would kill people if he got the money. The cruelty of his behavior is unprecedented, and there is no justice and humanity. At the same time, he also strictly controlled the looted property and made a rule: if subordinates hide one or two pieces of gold and silver, they will be beheaded by the whole family; Hide twelve taels, strip yourself and break the whole family. In this way, all the wealth in Sichuan belongs to Zhang alone. According to historical records, Emperor Chongzhen can only be regarded as "petty" compared with him. He once held a treasure-hunting conference in Chengdu, proudly showing off his wealth: 24 rooms were filled with rare treasures, gold ingots and silver ingots, which were dizzying and jaw-dropping. Some scholars roughly estimate that Zhang has at least 12 million silver. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the purchasing power of one or two ounces of silver was equivalent to the RMB in 300 yuan now. At that time, his wealth was equivalent to 3 billion RMB now. The treasure of silver ingots discovered in 2005 (source: data map) sank in Jinjiang? Some people say that the saddest thing in life is that people die and money is not spent. Zhang, who is crazy about collecting money, never thought that his life would be so short. In A.D. 1646, Prince Su Haug and Wu Sangui led the Qing army from southern Shaanxi into Sichuan to attack Zhang. In June of the same year, Zhang was surrounded by the Qing army. Zhang hurried out of the city to fight, and was shot and killed by Jia Brin, the general of the Qing army, in Fenghuang Mountain (now the north of Nanxi County, Sichuan Province). Unexpectedly, his huge treasure disappeared with him. Is this treasure hidden at the bottom of Jinjiang River? Buried at the foot of Qingcheng Mountain? Still hiding in Lushan County (now under Ya 'an City)? People's guesses vary, and the most convincing treasure location is the bottom of Jinjiang River. According to the Ming History, before Zhang was forced to leave Chengdu, he did an incredible thing: he asked his men to build a dike in Jinjiang, drain the river, dig a pit dozens of feet deep in the sediment downstream of the dam, dump all the looted treasures into it, and then burst the dike again to drain water to hide people's eyes and ears. Later, the history book Ming Ji also copied this historical material word for word. Pengshan county has another story about the whereabouts of Zhang Baozi: When Zhang went out of Sichuan, he had to go out of Sichuan by water because the dry road was blocked by the Qing army. However, as soon as the fleet arrived at the mouth of pengshan county River along Jinjiang River, it was attacked by the local landlord's armed forces in Yang Zhan, and almost all of them were wiped out. Zhang had to return to Chengdu, and many wooden boats loaded with gold and silver sank in Jinjiang. Some people even say that Zhang's ship set itself on fire, and his staff also recorded in the Scrap Book (Kangxi period of Qing Dynasty): "Pioneer sees thieves and burns ships." Why did Zhang burn the boat himself? This undoubtedly adds a layer of mystery to the statement that "the river mouth sinks into the silver". The third popular saying is that Zhang knew he was defeated. Before leaving Chengdu, he asked his men to make a lot of wooden barrels in advance, load them with silver ingots, put them into Jinjiang, drift along the river, and prepare to salvage them in narrow places. Unfortunately, Yang Zhan was ambushed by soldiers and horses on the way, but before he could salvage it, he was defeated, and the barrels sank to the bottom of the river as time went by. There is also a widely circulated legend: when Zhang Bing defeated Chengdu, more than a dozen large ships went down the river and were stopped by chains laid by the Qing army in Pengshan in advance. Seeing that the soldiers guarding the ship were besieged and defeated by the Qing army, they chiseled the sunken ship and fled ashore. The Qing army knew for a long time that Zhang had a large amount of gold and silver to leave Chengdu, thinking that he had intercepted the treasure fleet and was ecstatic. But when they boarded the ships that were not completely sunk, they found that they were all filled with stones. This is undoubtedly Zhang's cover-up, and the real treasure has already sunk into the bottom of the river. Either way, it points to the treasure that Zhang He sank in Jinjiang near the estuary. And this also left an endless space for future generations to cherish along the river. Treasure Hunters after 2005 (Source: Data Map) In the past 300 years, the treasure hunt fever has left Zhang with huge wealth, which has been coveted by future generations for a long time. From the Qing dynasty to the Republic of China, from the court, officials and generals to local warlords and ordinary people, they are all talking about it. According to legend, he was the first person to get a treasure. According to historical records, the battle of Jiangkou did happen, and the warring parties were Zhang He. The former lost and the latter won. Accordingly, later generations suspected that Zhangjiangkou was acquired. According to Fermi's record in Waste Records, Yang Zhan didn't know what was hidden in the sunken ship at first, but later a fisherman salvaged it, and only tens of thousands of gold and silver belonged to Yang Zhan. Another statement comes from Shen Xunwei's historical book "Preface to Southern Sichuan" in Qing Dynasty. It is said that Zhang burned the boat and a surviving boatman went. According to the facts, Yang Zhan ordered his men to salvage barrels in the river with pike according to the characteristics of barrels. Once the barrel was found, it was nailed and dragged out. Yang Zhan is a native of Jiading (now Leshan, Sichuan). When Sichuan suffered from war and famine, only Jiading was rich and stable. When people praise, they also say "Shu is what it is". Therefore, it is speculated that Yang Zhan made it by salvaging the windfall. After the Qing dynasty occupied Sichuan, it was natural that it would not miss the opportunity to find this wealth. Pengshan County Records records that in the winter of 1794 (59th year of Qianlong), a fisherman salvaged a scabbard in Jinjiang, and the news reached the ears of Governor Sun Shiyi. Sun immediately sent someone to Jiangkou. After several days of salvage, he finally recovered 22,000 pieces of silver and a large number of jewels and jade articles. By the end of the Qing Dynasty, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement broke out. In order to solve the financial difficulties of the imperial court, imperial academy edited Chen Taichu and brought up the old story again, petitioned for this treasure, and said that he had seen Pengshan and Meishan residents salvage and abandon money. Emperor Xianfeng, who was short of money, ordered Yu Rui, a general in Chengdu, to "make a careful investigation, dig as far as possible and make proper preparations", but in the end he found nothing. The passage of time has not reduced people's pursuit and desire for wealth. During the Republic of China, an old man named Du in the Qing Dynasty was cornered because of his crime, and he was helped by Yang Bailu, then secretary-general of the Sichuan Provincial Government. He lived in the Yang family for several years. In return, before leaving, Du gave Yang Bailu a sandalwood box that he had been carrying with him for many years, and said that what was hidden in the box was a picture of the place where the silver was buried, which was secretly drawn by a stonemason who participated in the silver burial at that time. After several exiles, Du hoped that Yang Bailu could "make good use of it". After many years, Yang Bailu kept the wooden box and never revealed it to anyone. In the winter of 1937, Yang Bailu told Ma Kunshan, a good friend who used to be a teacher, and they hit it off. They felt very promising, so they ran around and set up Jinjiang Gold Rushing Company to salvage treasures. According to the original drawings, after careful measurement and exploration, they concluded that the place where gold and silver were buried was on the other side of the downstream of Wangjianglou in Chengdu, on the left side of the intersection of the lower triangle of the original Stone Buddha Temple. So, taking advantage of the Xiaodong River in 1938, Jinjiang Gold Rushing Company organized the excavation, but there was no harvest. They didn't give up and kept digging in the winter of 1939. Hundreds of people worked back and forth for 10 for more than a month, and actually dug up a big stone cow and a big stone drum. "Shi Niu" and "Shigu" came out. According to that widely circulated ballad, is the "100 million" for buying a luxury house in Chengdu far away? Yang Bailu and others quickly bought a metal detector. One day soon, the metal detector buzzed. "I found it!" The news quickly spread throughout Sichuan and Sichuan, and the treasure-digging incident reached God. But once again, I played a joke on someone, and the workers tried their best to dig up only three baskets of copper coins. The truth passed by again and again. Although the vigorous treasure hunt ended in farce, in the following decades, people continued to salvage property from the river. 1 In August, 1990, Wu Changfu, a fisherman from Jiangkou Town, pengshan county, got a large and small silver ingot, with a big one weighing 3 kg and a small one1. 1July, 1998, Zhang Zhihua, a villager from Lingshi Township, pengshan county, scoured for sand in the river, but found a silver tripod ... In April, 2005, when the water diversion project of pengshan county was under construction in Minjiang River, Jiangkou Town, a log containing seven silver ingots was dug up from 3 meters below the surface, and the words "the 18th anniversary of Chongzhen" and "Silver 420 in Huanggang County" were engraved on the silver ingot. As can be seen from the inscription, this batch of silver ingots came from Yuanling County, Xiangtan County, jingshan county City, Hubei Province, Huanggang County and other places. This is very consistent with the place where Zhang fought that year, and the time is also synchronous. Undoubtedly, it can be regarded as another proof of "the river mouth sinks into silver". Is "Jiangkou Shen Yin" true? Many experts and scholars have been trying to demonstrate. 1In April, 1999, Wang Gang, a researcher at the Institute of Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences, announced after years of research that there were indeed a lot of gold and silver buried under Jinjiang. Wang Gang said: Official history such as Ming Dynasty, Shu Bamboo Slips, Huang Shu, Pengshan County Records, unofficial history, etc. all introduced "Jiangkou Shen Yin" from different angles, and the objects that have been continuously salvaged in recent years are even more powerful evidence. So "1000 ship's treasure is still sleeping at the bottom of the river!" According to him, pengshan county * * * and Jiangkou Town * * * conducted field surveys, but they had to give up in the end because they were too old and the river silt was too deep. As for the gold plate recently unearthed, experts in Ming and Qing dynasties believe that it is not surprising to find the gold plate in Jiangkou area, but whether it was buried by Zhang needs further examination and confirmation. For more than 300 years, the secret of Zhang's "sinking into the river mouth" has been excavated again and again, but the truth has passed us by again and again. Maybe this time, it can really come to light.