Transportation Guide to Guandu Ancient Town: Take bus No. 31 or minibus from Kunming Railway Station to the terminal of Guandu Ancient Town;
By car, you can transfer from Dianchi Road to Guangfu Road to Guandu Turn left at the gas station, or turn right from Xiaobanqiao on Kunluo Road to Guandu.
The historic Guandu Town is located in the southeastern suburbs of Kunming and is one of the famous historical and cultural towns in Kunming.
Guandu, formerly known as Wodong, is a fishing village with piles of screw shells on the shore of Dian Lake. The clouds and mist here are clear, the wind is calm and the scenery is picturesque. As early as the Tang Dynasty, Wodong was an ideal place for Nanzhao princes to stop when visiting Dianchi Lake. In the Song Dynasty, from about 1180 to 1190, Gao Shengshi, a military officer stationed in Shanchan, often visited Wodong by boat. Gao Shengshi's boat rope was on the shore, so he named the cave Guandu. The Gao family seemed to have a special liking for Guandu, so he simply designated Guandu as a seat under his direct jurisdiction, set up Guandu County in Wodong, and built a city.
As a scenic tourist area, Guandu has become a treasure place where dignitaries build palaces and villas, and celebrities and celebrities visit. How many pedestrians come and go here, horse hooves break through the frost at dawn, the wine curtain here invites me to get drunk, and the sheng and drums from across the boat send me home. The ancient Guandu is immersed in the sound of silk and bamboo orchestral music.
Of course, the first people to stop here were not only the princes and nobles of Nanzhao and Dali and their attendants, but also the religious culture that accompanied them. The earliest temples built in Guandu are the Tuzhu Temple dedicated to Mahakala (the God of Mahakala) built in the Tang Dynasty and the statutory temple in the Song Dynasty. The current main hall of Tuzhu Temple is larger in size, with a front corridor and a back building, and a bucket-style seven-sandwood beam structure. Especially the Qing-style nine-step, four-warped Ruyi bucket arch under the eaves in the front of the hall is magnificent in scale, prosperous and gorgeous. The legal temple is not large in size but has a high elevation. The brackets have 45-degree wing-shaped arches and are rich in decoration. The outer eaves of the front are gorgeously decorated, the open eaves of the open room are decorated with double phoenixes facing the sun, the tops of the eaves are decorated with carved wooden unicorns, and the four corners of the beams are carved into the shape of phoenixes. The shape is vivid, and it still retains the architectural style of the Song Dynasty, and has high architectural artistic value. They are all provincial cultural relics protection units.
Miaozhan Temple, the first of the six temples in Guandu, was built in the 27th year of the Yuan Dynasty (1290) and completed in 1295. It later collapsed due to flooding and was moved to the current ancient town in 1325. center. There are two 13-story solid square brick towers with dense eaves in the east and west of the temple. Later, the west tower was destroyed by an earthquake, but the east tower remains today.
Of course, the most famous among the religious buildings in Guandu Ancient Town, the most eye-catching one is the Vajra Throne Tower in front of Miaozhan Temple, a key national cultural relic protection unit.
When Miaozhan Temple was rebuilt in the second year of Tomorrow Shun (1457), the land was opened in front of the temple and a pagoda was built again. This pagoda was the Vajra Throne Tower. The advocate of building the Vajra Throne Tower was Dr. Tejin Ronglu who guarded Yunnan, General Mu_, and the investor was Luo_, the eunuch who guarded Yunnan. They were both leading figures who ruled Yunnan at that time. The purpose of building a new stone pagoda is to create merit, prolong life, follow customs and stabilize people's hearts, and it is not curable. The following about following customs and stabilizing people's hearts refers to the folk legend about screw monsters causing trouble, so towers were built to suppress them. Among the more than ten existing Vajra Pagodas in my country, the Miaozhan Temple Vajra Pagoda is the earliest one to be built and has the longest history. This Vajra Pagoda complements the two brick towers with dense eaves in Miaozhan Temple. It not only embodies the Buddhist spirit of being generous and large, emphasizing both sutra and sutra, but also has a staggered structure and a very spectacular layout. The core of the town's ancient architectural complex.
The Vajra Throne Pagoda was originally the memorial tower where Sakyamuni Buddha attained enlightenment and became a Buddha on the banks of the Niranjan River in Gaya City, India. It was called the Great Buddha Gaya Pagoda. Also known as the mandala, that is, the altar. A small square tower is built at each corner of the tower base, guarding a tall conical tower in the middle. The five pagodas represent the Buddhas of the five directions, the big pagoda in the middle represents the Great Sun Tathagata, and the four towers around clockwise represent the Tathagata A_, Precious Born Tathagata, Amitabha Tathagata, and Buddha Amitabha.
The Guandu Vajra Throne Tower is composed of two parts: the base and the tower body. The plane of the base is a square shape, with a side length of 10.4 meters and a height of 4.7 meters. The bottom of the base spans the sky, with four gates connecting the east, west, north and south, allowing pedestrians, vehicles and horses to pass. On the base, five towers stand. There is a main tower with a height of 16 meters in the center, and small towers with a height of 8.84 meters at the four corners. The main tower is huge and majestic, while the small tower is small and exquisite. The main pagoda and the small pagoda are composed of a sumeru base, a pagoda body, a pagoda neck and a pagoda brake, but they have different styles and styles. The large and small towers complement each other and are very harmonious. The towering and handsome pagodas stand in clusters, like bamboo shoots springing up after a rain, competing to break through the ground. The image is light and pretty, with a kind of flying beauty.
The Guandu Vajra Throne Tower not only has an elegant overall conception, but also makes people think deeply. The detailed copper and stone carvings are also very exquisite. Whether it is the five kinds of animal images of mounts on the Xumizuo in the main pagoda, the four-cornered Vajra Hercules, or the Buddha statues in the Buddhist niches, the carvings are all extremely delicate, delicate, lifelike, and vivid. On the bronze umbrella cover are the four heavenly kings holding swords, lutes, pearl umbrellas, flower foxes and sables and other magical instruments, as well as the bronze golden wheel with nine Buddha statues embedded in the center of the top of the tower base, which is also engraved. Extremely exquisite, showing a superb level of craftsmanship.
Guandu is the landing place where Tibetan Buddhism entered the Kunming area. The architecture of the Miaozhan Temple stone pagoda left a deep imprint on the Tibetan Tantric pagoda, which is clearly reflected in the lama pagoda-style body of the pagoda. . The later built Vajra Pagodas of Dazhengjue Temple in Beijing, Biyun Temple and Ciyun Temple in Hohhot are all typical Han-style multi-story dense-eaves pagodas. The Vajra Pagoda with Lama Pagoda-style body is the only one in the country.
The Guandu King Kong Throne Tower is not only steeped in the aura of religious culture, but also filled with the poetic charm of architectural art, giving people spiritual edification and beautiful enjoyment. So far, we have no way of knowing who designed and built this exquisite artistic masterpiece. History books only record the names of the officials who initiated and donated funds. However, this stone tower with eternal artistic value will always be the legacy of their wisdom and talent. A monument erected in people's hearts.
In the Yuan Dynasty, the Confucius Tower was also built in Guandu, which had a profound impact on the reading and writing of Guandu children. Later, the famous scholar Wang Sixun came out here. Wang Sixun was a Jinshi in the 45th year of Kangxi reign of the Qing Dynasty (1706). He served as an academic in Jiangxi Province. He was the teacher of the young Emperor Yongzheng. Emperor Kangxi once gave him thousands of books. After Wang Sixun returned to his hometown in honor, he built a library and collected it. The library still exists today.
By the Qing Dynasty, Guandu Ancient Town had formed a complex of six temples, seven pavilions and eight temples that are full of rich cultural colors within the four villages of Luofeng, Xiuying, Xizhuang and Shangyi. These spectacular buildings are integrated with the natural scenery to form a beautiful picture, forming the so-called eight sceneries of Guandu, namely, the ancient fishing lanterns, the snail peaks, the moonlight on the cloud platform, the shepherds in the apricot garden, the smoky clouds, the southern Yunnan lawn, King Kong speaks in the night and writes the sky.
Back then, when I walked into Guandu, I saw the endless clear water of Dianchi Lake with rippling waves, gulls playing with fish, and the vast sky with endless clouds. Flocks of wild birds are playing in the reeds by the lake. Hundreds of cypress trees in Luofeng Mountain are cascading from the foot of the mountain to the top of the mountain, with layers of green. The sound of the bells in the temple and the sound of reading in the academy drifted through the morning clouds and dusk rain; the towering dense eaves tower and diamond tower pointed straight into the sky, like a master of gods waving a big pen to praise heaven and earth and bless the world. In the large apricot groves on the shore, shepherd boys hide and seek and play games, full of childish joy; tourists compose poems, drink wine, and have fun with each other, playing melodious flutes. The market is crowded with cars and people. During the temple fair, not only residents from the city come to participate in the temple fair, but residents from neighboring counties also flock there. The open space on the lawn to the west of Wugu Temple was crowded with people and extremely lively, far beyond what ordinary markets at that time could compare with. At night, a string of bright red lanterns rises from the ferry lighthouse, leading the official and fishing boats to slowly approach; during the moonlight season, the Yuntai Palace is reflected in the pool of water that is always as clear as a mirror. The breeze blows, and the shadow of the palace is rippling; on the Jingang Bridge , occasionally came King Kong’s whisper.
However, as time goes by, the lake shoreline gradually recedes, and the natural landscape of Guandu has undergone great changes. The ancient temple buildings gradually became obsolete and dilapidated, and some were even demolished. The famous Vajra Throne Tower also sunk by more than one meter, forming a huge pit. In April 2001, the Guandu Ancient Town Cultural Heritage Rescue Project started. After more than two years of hard work, governments at all levels invested heavily to lift the 1,350-ton King Kong Throne Tower by 2.4 meters, rebuild the Miaozhan Temple and the West Tower, and restore There are ancient buildings such as the Confucian Temple, the Martial Arts Temple, the Shutang, the Legal Temple, the Tuzhu Temple, the Guanyin Temple, the upper and lower attics. The traditional houses in the town are also being repaired in a planned way. At the same time, folk cultural activities and traditional snacks are gradually restored, and the protection of the natural ecological environment is also being planned. We saw an ancient yet young new Guandu that connects a long and splendid history with a glorious future.