Starting from Maoxian County, along Minjiang 2 13 National Road and heading south, we went to find an ancient tea-horse road that had been abandoned for more than half a century. Opposite the ancient road, there used to be a mysterious ancient town.
The ancient town is located on the east bank of Minjiang River, on the main road from Maoxian to Songpan. It used to be a military fortress, a business travel station and an important node on the ancient tea-horse road in northern Sichuan.
The construction of modern roads makes the ancient tea-horse road in northern Sichuan fragmented and inaccessible. In a place called Jiaochang Township, the car stopped. Xiao Li, director of the Tourism Bureau, pointed to a dirt road on the side of the road and said, this is the ancient tea-horse road, from which you can see Diexi Haizi.
The slope of the ancient road is steep, and it is not covered or stopped. Looking down, the Minjiang River is rolling. I am afraid of heights. When I set foot on this rugged dirt road, my heart began to be afraid. When I meet a place with a steep slope, my feet can't help slipping. Xiao Li, who walked in front, stopped to give me a hand. I am wearing professional hiking shoes, and he is wearing ordinary sneakers. He wasn't as heavy as me, so I pulled it up easily. I wonder: why are you so steady under your feet? He said, I grew up running and jumping here. At that time, there was no flat land here, so I ran on the hillside every day and got used to it.
We wound our way through a steep dirt road. When the road was flat, a low wall appeared on our left. Xiao Li pointed to the earthen wall and said, this is it.
I took out an old photo printed on A4 paper, which was taken in August of 19 10, and the shooting position was under our feet.
Above the photo is a mountain terrace, above which is a square city, tiled fields, and a Qiang-style watchtower is faintly visible.
Xiao Li pointed to the opposite side and said that it should be the location of the ancient town in the photo.
Looking up, however, there are no terraces and ancient towns except steep mountains.
Xiao Li pointed to the bottom and said, this is Diexi Haizi, and the ancient town of Diexi is underwater.
I looked down near the earth wall. The Minjiang River is not wide, but it is very open here and the water is like a mirror. However, my heart is full of anxiety, and there are thousands of lives of Qian Qian underwater.
Diexihaizi
Diexi Ancient Town was built in Han Dynasty, formerly known as Silkworm Mausoleum. As the name implies, this is the birthplace of sericulture, legend is the hometown of ancestors, and naturally it is the birthplace of silk industry. At that time, it was built as a fortress and later became a stop for business travelers. It is a commercial distribution center in northern Sichuan. Until the end of the last century and the beginning of the Republic of China, Diexi was the main road leading to Songpan, Qinghai and Gansu in northern Sichuan.
1On the afternoon of August 25th, 933, there was a loud noise, the ground shook, and an earthquake of magnitude 7.5 caused a huge landslide. The mountain is almost straight, with a drop of 500-600 meters, and the whole body falls into the Minjiang River at the foot of the mountain. The dammed lake formed by the downstream landslide raised the water level, and Diexi disappeared forever.
Diexi earthquake, in addition to the collapse of Diexi, was recorded as "about 30 miles north and south, about 50 miles east and west, Songpinggou landslide, the upper reaches of Minjiang River impassable, Songmao Avenue impassable."
Diexi earthquake among the old population is terrible: when the earthquake happened, a child was playing on the hillside on the east bank of the river and was inexplicably thrown into the mountain on the west bank of the river.
How many people died in Diexi? It is said that Diexi had a permanent population of more than 500 people at that time, and the caravan passed 1-200 horses a day. Those days happened to be a market, including merchants. It is estimated that the population is nearly 1,000, and with the population of the surrounding 2 1 Qiang villages, the number of people sinking into the Minjiang River should exceed 3,000.
The local people say that on a miserable day, when you stand by and listen carefully by the lake, you can hear the screams of the ghosts below.
The bigger disaster is 40 days later. The earthquake formed three large dammed lakes, with water coming from the upper reaches and rising water levels. One night in June+10, 5438, a tsunami suddenly came to the upper reaches of Maoxian County. When people realized that the dam of Diexi dammed lake in the upstream burst, the flood had already rushed to the county seat.
The flood washed away the walls of Maoxian county, went straight to Wenchuan and then to Dujiangyan, and 4,000 bodies went down the river.
Today's Diexi Haizi is 98 meters deep with an average depth of 82 meters.
19 10, Rudner Eide, an American who teaches at Sichuan University (now Sichuan University), took a group of photos of northern Sichuan. In 2002, his descendants published these photos in the name of "looking back at history", one of which read Diexi.
The pictures taken at 19 10 by Ludna Aide, an American professor who teaches in Sichuan universities, were mistaken for Diexi.
However, some people have questioned that the recorded Diexi River is 270 meters high from the water surface of Minjiang River, while the ancient town in the photo is basically close to the water surface. In addition, according to records, there are 278 families in Diexi, with a lot of farmland, but in the photo, the houses are dense and there is no room for farmland. Obviously, this is not a stacked stream.
Ed's descendants got to know each other, but the original picture didn't explain the words, so it was made up after his own field trip.
In 2007, Yin Kaipu, a researcher at Chengdu Institute of Botany, China Academy of Sciences, found thousands of photos of western China taken by henry wilson on 1908- 19 10 in Harvard Library. As a botanist, every photo of Wilson has detailed shooting information, altitude, latitude and longitude, and geographical environment description. One of them, Wilson, wrote "Minjiang River Basin" like this. Left bank of Minjiang River. 7200 feet high, Diexi ancient military fortress. "
Is this Diexi?
The photo of Diexi ancient town taken by British botanist henry wilson on 19 10.
Yin Kaipu found a hand-drawn map of Diexi City in the archives. On the map, there are strong city walls around the ancient town, and there is a watchtower outside the east gate of the ancient town. There is a row of houses next to the watchtower. According to written records, "Songmao Avenue outside the ancient city, the city wall is around the city, the houses in the city are staggered, and the watchtower stands at the east gate".
Photographs are generally consistent with written records and Diexi drawings, and it can be asserted that this is the Diexi of that year.
According to records, the Diexi in the photo was rebuilt in the eleventh year of Hongwu in Ming Dynasty. At that time, "Yu Dingyu, the imperial doctor, asked Tong Sheng to rebuild it, with a height of one foot, a circumference of 390 feet and four doors".
He came to Maoxian Tourism Bureau and asked the local villagers to identify him. The old man confirmed that it was Diexi. Although the ancient tea-horse road was destroyed due to the construction of roads, many areas were no longer set foot in, but many old people still accurately identified the place where Wilson took pictures, that is, the place where we stood.
Standing at the position where British botanist Wilson photographed Diexi a hundred years ago, he photographed Diexi Haizi today.
19 10 In July, Wilson and his caravan set out from Chengdu for Songpan. It was in this position that he set up a camera, facing the platform, and Diexi City was quiet and peaceful, with smoke curling up.
Now, from here, there are no terraces and ancient towns on the opposite side, but from the overall mountain situation and mountain shape, it can still be roughly consistent with the mountain shape in the photo.
At that time, the mountain collapsed by half, revealing earth and stone. Now, the opposite mountain is lush.
Yin Kaipu said that this is naturally the case. No matter how serious the geographical disaster is, as long as human beings don't disturb it, its natural ecology will slowly recover itself.
The opposite hillside is quiet and desolate, and Haizi under the mountain is sparkling. I opened my notebook, on which was a poem of Ming Dynasty carved on the rock wall of Yudie Cave, which described the life of Diexi people in this way: "Go to the suburbs in spring and look for wild Heshan. The grass got lost in the path of the platform, and the mud stagnated. Ancient caves can be romantic and new songs can be a joke. Buttermilk tincture leaps over the western hills and follows the willows over thousands of rivers. "