Day 8 of the 2024 Spring Festival Tour: Lin'an Ancient City

At eight o'clock in the morning, it's just a few minutes' walk from Hanting Hotel (Jianshui Ancient City Branch) to Chaoyang Tower. The ancient city streets in the early morning are much quieter without the crowd of last night. Chaoyang Tower opens at eight o'clock to welcome guests, and you can go up to the tower for a view. From Chaoyang Tower, head west along Lin'an Road, passing through Hanlin Street (Zhu Family Garden), Tianjun Temple (free visit), Xuezheng Examination Hall, Lin'an Prefecture, Jianshui Confucius Temple, etc., taking about 50 minutes with stops. Then, starting from Jianshui Confucius Temple and heading east, we visited Xuezheng Examination Hall, Zhu Family Garden and other three paid attractions, with the last Zhu Family Garden on Hanlin Street. These three attractions took about three hours, and we returned to Hanting Hotel at half past twelve. Plan your trip well in these days, enter the attractions early, otherwise, like us entering Zhu Family Garden at around half past eleven, it was already crowded with people everywhere. Taking a photo also has other people in it. It's noisy everywhere, and when it gets hot, some irritability rises in the heart. 📍Introduction to Jianshui Ancient City Jianshui Ancient City was built during the Yuanhe period of the Tang Dynasty, i.e., 806-820 AD. It was originally called Butou, also known as Badan, and in the Yi language, it is called 'Huil', which means 'sea' in Yi; 'Li' means 'big', which translates to 'big sea' in Chinese, hence the name Jianshui. Jianshui Ancient City was originally a earth city built during the Nanzhao period, and was expanded into a brick city in the 20th year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty (1387). When Li Dingguo captured Lin'an City, the three city towers in the south, north and west were destroyed by war. They were repaired again in the fourth year of Kangxi, but were damaged again. Only the East Gate Chaoyang Tower, despite numerous wars and earthquakes, still stands nearly six hundred years later. Jianshui County began to build temple schools in the Yuan Dynasty, built Lin'an Prefecture School in the Hongwu period of the Ming Dynasty, and built Jianshui State Confucian School in the Wanli period. During the Qing Dynasty, four academies, 'Chongzheng, Huanwen, Chongwen, and Qujiang', were established one after another. At that time, it was known as 'half of the list', i.e., about half of the candidates in the Yunnan imperial examination came from Lin'an Prefecture, which was rare in the country. Therefore, Jianshui has always been known as a 'literary state' and 'Zoulu of Southern Yunnan'. In 1994, Jianshui was approved by the State Council as the third batch of famous historical and cultural cities in China. The ancient city, after 12 centuries of construction, still preserves more than 50 ancient buildings, and is known as the 'Museum of Ancient Architecture' and 'Museum of Folk Houses'. The city has well-preserved and large-scale 'Yunnan's First' Confucius Temple, as well as Chaoyang Tower, Shuanglong Bridge, Zhilin Temple, Zhu Family Garden and a large number of distinctive ancient buildings. There are nearly a hundred ancient temples in the county, and more than 40 in the city alone. These treasures, which have gone through the vicissitudes of life, have considerable historical and artistic value. ✅East Gate Chaoyang Tower Jianshui East Gate City Tower is the Chaoyang Tower that Jianshui people are proud of. It is recorded in 'Jianshui State Annals': 'The East City Tower, a hundred feet high, is magnificent. Below the city is a market, with thousands of households, endless scenery. The sun rises in the east, and the light is reflected far away. Looking at the city tower from afar, it is like a crane on a slope, like Yueyang, a great view of the south.' Chaoyang Tower has been exposed to wind and rain for more than 600 years, has experienced several wars, and is still intact and standing, becoming a landmark building of Jianshui. ✅Jianshui Confucius Temple It was built in the 22nd year of Yuan Zhiyuan (1285 AD). 'Yuan History•Zhang Lidaobiography' records: In that year, Zhang Lidaobiography served as the Xuanfu envoy of Yunnan Lin'an Guangxi Road (Xuanfu Division was set up in Jianshui), 'and created a temple school in Jianshui Road'. This is the earliest Confucius Temple he created in the province after the first Confucius Temple in Zhongqing Road (now Kunming City), which was created at the same time as Dali Road. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, it was the location of Lin'an Prefecture School and Jianshui State School. It also once hosted Yuanjiang Prefecture School, becoming the cultural and educational center of Southern Yunnan. Over the past seven hundred years, it has been expanded and rebuilt more than fifty times. Especially in the Ming Dynasty, the head of the Hanlin Academy, Li Yueyuan, brought back the architectural drawings of the Royal Palace of the Confucius Temple in Qufu from the capital, and then rebuilt and expanded it according to the drawings, eventually becoming a large-scale Confucius Temple covering an area of 114 mu (about 76,000 square meters), the largest Confucius Temple in southern China. ✅Xuezheng Examination Hall The Yunnan Tidu Xuezheng Examination Hall is the place where the highest education administrative official in Yunnan Province, the Tidu Xuezheng, regularly held the college entrance examination for students from Lin'an, Yuanjiang, Kaihua (now Wenshan), and Puer in the southern Yunnan region. The Xuezheng Examination Hall faces south with a width of more than 40 meters and a depth of 150 meters, covering an area of 6,000 square meters. The buildings are neatly symmetrical, with more than a hundred rooms. The entire building is centered on the corridor, forming six courtyards. The existing buildings are well preserved, with red pillars and grandeur, and are an excellent physical relic for studying the ancient imperial examination system in southwestern China. In 1993, it was announced by the People's Government of Yunnan Province as the fourth batch of key cultural relics protection units. In 2019, it was listed as the eighth batch of national key cultural relics protection units by the State Council. The college entrance examination in the Yunnan Tidu Xuezheng Examination Hall is a preparatory examination before the imperial examination. Those who are admitted to the college entrance examination can enjoy generous poetry encounters, enter the national imperial examination selection process, and realize the dream of 'being a country boy in the morning and entering the emperor's hall in the evening'. In the Yunnan Tidu Xuezheng Examination Hall, there are four exhibition halls: the Mongolian Study Hall, the Jianshui Temple Study Academy Yixue Hall, the Comprehensive Hall, and the Local Hall, which fully display the ancient imperial examination system in China and the local imperial examination culture. At the same time, the Yunnan Tidu Xuezheng Examination Hall Wenfang Qinggong Exhibition Hall and 'Zangxitang' are set up, which display thousands of ancient inkstones from the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, as well as a large number of ancient quantities, rubbings, etc., and precious cultural relics such as oracle bone inscriptions, Qin and Han simple books, and ancient simple bamboo slips. Especially the authentic works of Lin'an Prefect Wang Wenzhi, Yunnan Xuezheng Tidu Fu Zhenbang, Qing Dynasty official Wang Wen, and imperial examination champion Yuan Jiagu, will make you linger. ✅Zhu Family Garden Located in the middle section of Hanlin Street in the center of Jianshui Ancient City, it is a house and ancestral hall built by the local gentry Zhu Weiqing brothers in the late Qing Dynasty. It covers an area of more than 20,000 square meters. The main building is arranged in a 'vertical four horizontal three' layout, which is a typical Jianshui 'three rooms and six ears three rooms hall with rear mountain ears, a large patio with four small patios' parallel and combined residential building group. The courtyards are layered and the houses are lined up. There are 42 large and small patios and 214 rooms, known as the 'Daguan Garden of Southern Yunnan'. Zhu Family Garden is an important part of the national key scenic spot and the national historical and cultural city Jianshui, and is now a national key cultural relics protection unit.