A Bridge to Chinese

Just another weblog about China and Chinese

This is the gate of Da Shun temple, not a huge one,  which do not match up with the big name of Shun. Shun, is one of the latest five emperors in China.

The Five Emperors in the legendary period are Shaohao (少昊) , Zhuanxu (颛顼) , Gaoxin (高辛) , Yao (尧) and Shun (舜) . Shaohao was the renowned leader among the Yi (夷) people in East China. The Yi people had officials for both industry and agriculture. In my opinion, these five emperors were not from legend, they existed around 5000 years ago.

Zhuanxu was a very wise and intelligent person. He respected the gods and taught his people. He appointed one official responsible for offering sacrifices for the gods in the heaven and one official in charge of the civil affairs.

Gaoxin was said to be a descendant of Huangdi. He enjoyed a high reputation among his tribal people and they were obedient to his administration.

Yao made great contributions to the lunar calendar.

Shun was physically and mentally gifted and he was a man with great virtues. He was selected by Yao as his successor.

The portecting of this temple was a historical story. Someone might take it as superstition, but actually, it was a beautiful Chinese legend.

The two dragon pillars, the spirit of the temple, have been pretecting the Da Shun Temple from the Xianfeng Emperor of Qing Dynasty till now.

The Xianfeng Emperor (Chinese: 咸豐帝);  pinyin: Xiánfēngdì; July 17, 1831 – August 22, 1861), born Yizhu, was the eighth Emperor of the Manchu-led Qing Dynasty, and the seventh Qing emperor to rule over China, from 1850 to 1861.

 —–FROM Wiki

The temple was rebulit at the period of Xianfeng Emperor, and later in the time of Dongzhi Emperor. What remains now was from the Xianfeng Time. 

The Tongzhi Emperor (Chinese: 同治帝; pinyin: Tóngzhìdì, April 27, 1856–January 12, 1875), born Zaichun, was the ninth emperor of the Manchu-led Qing Dynasty, and the eighth Qing emperor to rule over China, from 1861 to 1875. His reign, which effectively lasted through his adolescence, was largely overshadowed by the rule of his mother, the Empress Dowager Cixi. Although he had little influence over court affairs, the time of his reign gave rise to what historians call the “Tongzhi Restoration” (Chinese: 同治中兴), an unsuccessful attempt to stabilize and modernize China.

——-FROM Wiki

The stories telling from the around 50 year-old door keeper there are amazing. With his high and low pitches of narrating, I could feel his deep love of this place, even with his heavy Shaoxing accent(Shaoxing is a city located in Zhejiang Province, China). Then I knew that his childhood was spent in this temple, his studying time was also there,  and how his teachers pretected the siprit, the two dragon pillars,  during the Chinese Culture Revolution, why the uneven ground at the right side of the main building cloudn’t grow anything, why the local people there admire Da Shun so much.  Unbelievable! You should go there, then each piece of wood, stone or brick there are vivid to you, and all the stories are not lengends any more.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 7:25 am and is filed under Chinese, Culture, View. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.