Linggu Temple is a scenic area consisting of temple buildings, National Revolutionary Fallen Soldiers Cemetery and Linggu Park. Due to historical reasons, people still generally call it Linggu Temple. Our car is driving, and I wonder if you have noticed the magnolias standing tall on both sides of the car window, the trees are dense, and the winding paths are quiet. We seem to be in a fairyland. Let me first introduce the founding history of Linggu Temple.
Linggu Temple--located at the southeastern foothills of Purple Mountain, it was one of the three major Buddhist temples in the Ming Dynasty. Purple Mountain has been a holy place for Buddhism as early as the Six Dynasties. During the reign of Emperor Wu of Liang Dynasty, there were more than 70 large and small temples around it. By the Ming Dynasty, most of these temples had gone through vicissitudes of life and were destroyed. Only a few such as Jiangshan Temple, Dinglin Temple, and Songxi Temple in the Dulonggang area at the southern foot of the temple were well preserved. The predecessor of Linggu Temple was Kaishan Temple in Dulonggang. In the 13th year of Tianjian of the Southern Dynasty (514), Emperor Wu of Liang built Kaishan Jingshe and Zhigong Pagoda in Dulonggang to bury the monk Baozhi. It was renamed Baogongyuan in the Tang Dynasty, Taiping Xingguo Zen Temple during the Dazhong Xiangfu period of the Northern Song Dynasty, and Jiangshan Temple in the early Ming Dynasty. In order to build the Xiaoling Mausoleum of Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanjin ordered people to select the geomantic treasure land of Dulonggang, so he ordered all the temples in this area, including Jiangshan Temple, to be moved to the east foot of Zijin Mountain and merged into one temple. Because the terrain of Linggu Temple is a valley between "mountains on the left and steep ridges on the right", it was named "Lingge Zhuan". When Linggu Temple was first built, it was large in scale, with many temples and pagodas standing. It was 2.5 kilometers long from the mountain gate to the main hall, covering an area of ??about 500 acres, and had thousands of monks. No wonder Zhu Yuanjin regarded it as a masterpiece and wrote on it "The First Zen Forest". Unfortunately, due to the disaster of war, only Wuliang Hall survived. During the Tongzhi period of the Qing Dynasty, Linggu Temple was rebuilt, and its scale was far inferior to that of the past. However, the red walls and yellow tiles, lush pines and green forests, the singing of birds and the fragrance of flowers, and the quiet environment still retain the beautiful scenery of "Linggu Late Autumn".
Hongshan Gate - Archway of the Fallen Soldiers, Wuliang Hall - Monument to the Fallen Soldiers
Dear tourists: We have arrived at the mountain gate of Linggu Temple, which is the main gate of the temple. general name. This mountain gate is also the gate of Linggu Park. Please take a look: The mountain gate of this antique building was rebuilt in the 1930s. It has a three-arch form, a green glazed tile eaves roof, and a red outer wall, so it is also called the Red Mountain Gate. There are four characters "Linggu Shengjing" on the forehead, which are the handwriting of Mr. Qian Songyue, a modern calligrapher. The pair of stone lions outside the door were donated by the Peking Army branch that built the cemetery for the fallen soldiers.
Entering Hongshan Gate, we walked on two paths paved with bluestones. At the end of the road, there stands a tall memorial archway for fallen soldiers. The platform base of the archway is 32.7 meters long, 16.6 meters wide and 10 meters high. It has five rooms, all constructed of reinforced concrete. The base is inlaid with granite and the roof is covered with green glazed tiles. The four characters "Da Ren Da Yi" are engraved on the forehead of the front door of the archway, and the four characters "Save the country and save the people" are engraved on the back, both of which were inscribed by Zhang Jingjiang, the veteran of the Kuomintang.
Dear tourists: Now we have arrived at Linggu. The most famous attraction of the temple is Wuliang Hall. Wuliang Hall is the only remaining building in Linggu Temple in the Ming Dynasty. It is named after the Buddha Amitayus is worshiped in the hall. Since this hall is a masonry arch structure without beams, it is commonly known as "Wu Liang Hall". "Liang Hall".
Wuliang Hall - built in the 14th year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty (138), it has a history of more than 600 years. The main hall is 53.8 meters long from east to west, and the terrace in front of the hall is spacious. It is 5 rooms wide and 3 rooms deep. Although it has been renovated many times, its structure has never changed. The roof is made of double eaves and nine ridges of glazed tiles, and the three glazed tile pagodas on the ridge are Lama pagodas. It adopts the traditional construction method of column combined with frame. There are no beams or columns in the whole building, and it is made entirely of bricks. It adopts the construction method of ancient Chinese stone arch bridges. The base layer is built with five holes first, and then the joints are stacked. It forms a large arched roof. We see that each of the five doors has a coupon, and each row has 5 coupons. The one in the middle has the largest coupon hole, 11.4 meters wide and 14 meters high. The structure, however, still appears in the form of an imitation wood structure, with overhanging brackets under the eaves and doors and windows on the front. It is a building that uses various coupons and intricate connections. Its structure is strong, its momentum is magnificent, and its techniques are exquisite. Although there are similar beamless temple buildings in other places in my country, such as Xiantong Temple in Wutai Mountain, Shanxi, Wannian Temple in Mount Emei, and Kaiyuan Temple in Suzhou, etc. , but in terms of architectural structure and techniques, the beamless hall of Linggu Temple is more unique and perfect, which fully reflects the superb architectural art of the working people of ancient China.
Visitors: After seeing the appearance of Wuliang Hall, follow me into the hall. According to historical records: Since the construction of Wuliang Hall in the Ming Dynasty, various large and small Buddha statues such as Amitayus have been enshrined. In 1928, the Kuomintang government spent 120,000 yuan on engineering costs to transform it into a memorial hall for the fallen soldiers cemetery. The original Buddhist niche was converted into three large brick platforms, used as altars for displaying sacrificial vessels. Each altar has a stone tablet. Please see: the middle monument is the "spirit of the martyrs of the National Revolution", the left monument is the "National Anthem", and the right monument is the "Testament of the Founding Father". On the surrounding walls of the memorial hall, there are 110 Taihu bluestone steles inlaid with the names of fallen soldiers. The total inscription on the tablets totals 165,000 words. After the restoration of the memorial hall was completed, it was named "Zhengqi Hall".
Let’s go around the hall and visit the Revolution of 1911 Celebrity Wax Figure Museum. The wax figures of 57 celebrities before and after the Revolution of 1911 are exhibited here. These wax figures are based on historical photos and materials at the time, with reference to shots from various angles of the characters, and are made at a life-size scale of 1:1. They are composed of 22 groups with stories. The dynamic pictures of the plot and the wax figures are realistic and lifelike, recreating the vivid scenes of the revolutionary pioneers who were all-powerful.
Monument to the Fallen Soldiers. After visiting the Wuliang Hall, we came to the semicircular flower bed lawn, which has become the cemetery of the First Cemetery of the Fallen Soldiers Cemetery. Now, please come and visit this cemetery. In fact, there are three tombs here. This is the one in the middle, and there are two more on the hillside on the east and west sides of the Manliang Hall. At that time, due to the large number of fallen soldiers, the cemetery could not accommodate them all, so a division-by-division drawing method was used to select one representative from each rank for burial. There are monuments at the east and west ends of the tomb wall on the north side of the cemetery. They are monuments to the fallen soldiers of the 19th Route Army and the 5th Army in the Weihu War of Resistance. These two monuments have become one of the anti-Japanese war memorial sites in Nanjing. A base for providing patriotic education to young people.
Songfeng Pavilion - Linggu Pagoda - Baogong Pagoda and Sanjue Monument - Pipa Street
Songfeng Pavilion - the building behind the cemetery is called Songfeng Pavilion. Songfeng Pavilion is a zoumalou-style building built against the mountain. It is 9 rooms wide and has a double eaves roof paved with blue glazed tiles. Climbing the tower and looking far away, you will have a wide field of vision, the breeze will pass by, and the pine waves will burst into waves. It is really a wonderful scene of "Nan Fu is desolate, the pines are blowing in the wind, and you can listen carefully to the gurgling mountain springs." This building is also the memorial hall for the "Falls of the National Revolutionary Army". The memorial hall was built in 1931. It was designed by American architect Mao Fei according to the traditional Chinese national architectural form and cost 215,000 yuan. After its completion in 1933, it was officially named "Revolutionary Memorial Hall". This two-story building is 41.7 meters long from east to west and 19.7 meters wide from north to south. It is a reinforced concrete imitation wood structure. There is a cloister outside, 9 rooms downstairs, a hall in the middle, and a zoumalou-style building above. There are shelves and cabinets all over the place for displaying the relics of fallen soldiers or holding exhibitions.
More than 100 meters behind Songfeng Pavilion is a modern pagoda with perfect shape - Linggu Pagoda.
Linggu Tower - formerly known as the Memorial Tower for the Fallen Soldiers, is one of the main buildings of the Fallen Soldiers Cemetery. It was built from 1931 to 1933 with a cost of 355,000 yuan. The designers of the tower are the famous American architect Mao Fei and the Chinese architect Dong Dayou.
Now that we have arrived in front of Linggu Tower, we see that the base of the tower is a large platform with a diameter of 30.4 meters, an octagonal plane, and a carved stone railing on the outside. There are stone steps on the front of the tower. In the middle of the stone steps is a white granite relief "Rizhao Mountains and Rivers" 5.8 meters high and 2.8 meters wide. Look again, the tower is 60 meters high, with nine floors of human faces, constructed of reinforced concrete and Suzhou granite. The diameter of the bottom floor is 14 meters, which decreases from floor to floor. The diameter of the top floor is 9 meters. Each floor is covered with green glazed tiles. There is a corridor outside and is surrounded by stone railings so that visitors can lean on the railings to enjoy the scenery. The top of the tower is covered with green glazed tiles, with raised eaves and corners. There is a tower brake erected on the spire in the middle, shining with golden light.
Visit the tower: The three words "Linggu Pagoda" on the horizontal hat of the main entrance were written by Gao Yilin, the first director of the Cemetery Management Office after liberation.
The second to fourth floors of the tower are the farewell speeches of Sun Yat-sen, a veteran of the Kuomintang, to the Whampoa Military Academy when he went north, written in cursive in your right handwriting. On the fifth to eighth floors are Mr. Sun Yat-sen's opening speech at Huangpu Military Academy written in seal script by Wu Jingheng, another veteran of the Kuomintang.
After walking up the 252 steps along the reinforced concrete spiral escalator, we arrived at the top of the tower. Climbing up here and looking into the distance, you can enjoy the green scenery of the distant mountains and the sky, and fully appreciate the meaning of the scenic spot of Linggu, which is "ten thousand pines towering into the sky, and one path is deep and deep".
To the west of Linggu Pagoda, there is also a Baogong Pagoda.
Baogong Pagoda - the pagoda used by Emperor Wu of Liang Dynasty in the Southern Dynasty to bury the relics of monk Baozhi. At that time, the construction of the pagoda cost 200,000 silver taels. Later, because Zhu Yuanzhang built the Ming Xiaoling Tomb, the pagoda and the temple were moved here and renamed Linggu Pagoda. When the pagoda was first built, it had five floors. Unfortunately, the original pagoda has long been destroyed. Monk Baozhi was a native of Dongyang, Qixia, Nanjing. He became a monk at the age of seven and died in the thirteenth year of Liang Dynasty. He was one of the monks most respected by Emperor Wu of Liang Dynasty.
Sanjue Stele - There is a black stone stele embedded in front of Baogong Pagoda. On the stele is engraved the portrait of Monk Baozhi painted by Wu Daozi, a famous painter of the Tang Dynasty. On the left side is the great poet Li Bai of the Tang Dynasty. The portrait and praise were written by Yan Zhenqing, a great calligrapher of the Tang Dynasty. Therefore, the stele combines the unique skills of three famous calligraphers of the Tang Dynasty, so it is called the "Three Unique Steles". However, the original stele was completely damaged as early as the third year of Xuande in the Ming Dynasty (1428). What we see now was copied by the monk Fashou during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty based on the old rubbings.
Dear tourists: We have basically finished visiting the main buildings of Linggu Temple. In fact, the scale of Linggu Temple in the Ming Dynasty was much larger than it is now. In addition to what we have seen, there are also Diamond Hall, Tianwang Hall, Five Directions Hall, Pilu Hall, Guanyin Pavilion, Zen Hall, Guest Room, Abbot's Room, etc. In the middle of the Qing Dynasty, Linggu Temple regained its former glory. In addition to the restoration of the temple, it is also famous for its "Eight Scenes of Lingge". The eight scenes are: clear clouds in Zhongfu, autumn moon in the floating picture, bells in the ancient palace, pine shadows in the green pond, ginkgo and clouds, clear spring swallowing bamboo, empty palms, and meandering water tendons. These landscapes have experienced vicissitudes of life, especially during the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom period. The Taiping Army and the Qing Army used this place as a battlefield, so the buildings in the temple were severely damaged. Only the Wuliang Hall, a brick building, has been completely preserved.
Dear tourists: After leaving Linggu Temple, the road we are walking on is called "Pipa Street".
Pipa Street - Why is it called Pipa Street? According to legend, people can hear crisp echoes when they step on the ground here, and when they clap their hands
they can hear the same sound as playing the strings of a musical instrument. Wonderful echo, this is "Empty Street Yingzhang" known as one of the scenic spots in Linggu. Don’t believe it? You can try it. I hope my tour guide’s explanation can also leave you with notes of memory. Thank you everyone!