Where does Pingyao City God Temple belong?

Outside the temple gate facing the street is the landmark building of the temple-the tall wooden archway, which is a hilltop building with four pillars, three doors and eleven arches. The word "Chenghuang Temple" on the plaque was written by Mr. Zhao Wangjin, a famous local calligrapher. On the back, there are four gold characters of "Weiling Baili" in regular script, with a green stone lion and a horse-tied column. On the column, the title "I am not ashamed to be good at traveling here, but I am more afraid of being cold than my door" directly tells the theme of the religious culture of Chenghuang Temple.

The four huge regular script characters of "retribution of good and evil" on the main wall under the entrance porch add a solemn atmosphere. On both sides of the mountain gate, there are two opposing horses, full of energy, led by stable boy, which is said to be the mount of Lord Chenghuang when he toured the city wall. On the east and west walls under the porch of the mountain gate, there are huge portraits of the gatekeepers "shentu and Yu Lei", which are strong and powerful. In the second courtyard of Chenghuang Temple, two 3-year-old pagodas stood in the heart of the courtyard. It's simple and ancient, and it's flourishing.

The front of the front yard is the back of the theater. However, because the theater is a cloister-style structure with double eaves resting on the top of the mountain, there is a hexagonal window on both sides of the back wall of the theater, with a hanging mountain street gatehouse in the middle. The gatehouse can reach the main courtyard through the tunnel below the theater. Then, it is matched with the two toilet doors under the left and right bell and drum towers, forming an "instrument door", which corresponds to the instrument door of the county government. Its architectural design is unique, and its architectural art is simple and elegant, which makes visitors memorable.

Since there were no timekeeping tools such as clocks and watches in ancient times, the bell and drum towers on both sides of the stage should prove that this Taoist custom of morning bell and dusk drum is consistent with Buddhism. Ringing the bell in the morning and beating the drum in the evening also breaks the lonely life of monks and nuns and Taoist priests. On the back of the bell tower, the plaque "Happy with Different Surnames" refers to the "Kitchen God Temple". Every household of the people worships the Kitchen God. Although the surnames vary widely, the psychology of praying for the protection of the Kitchen God is the same. Therefore, it is said that different surnames have the same fun. And some people have explained these four words as follows: there are hundreds of surnames in China. No matter who your surnames are, you are equally happy to have a chance to sit at a table and chat over dinner. Isn't it "different surnames share the same joy"?

On the back of the Drum Tower, the inscription "Money is of the same humanity" is aimed at the Temple of Wealth. No matter the former copper coins or the present paper money, there are two sides. Of course, money also has two sides. Some people use money to build bridges and remain immortal, while others use money to run amok and remain immortal. Therefore, the word "money connects humanity" has broken the great attraction of money to human beings.

The word "Dare to Enter" was written on the back of the Grand Theatre Building of Chenghuang Temple, which was personally written by the famous calligrapher Fu Shan in Qing Dynasty. The word "Dare to Enter" was written in a graceful manner, and it looked like the word "knife". Is it a severe question to everyone? It can be said that I don't do anything wrong during the day, knocking at the door in the middle of the night is not surprising, and the good ones come in calmly, while the evil ones are uneasy and hesitant. "Do I dare to enter?" I believe that all of you are just people, and enter together.

The unique architectural art of the Chenghuang Temple when you came out through the tunnel of the theater. On the central axis, the city god's offering hall, the main hall and the second bedroom of the city god in the backyard will be built. Together with the offering hall, the Kitchen God Temple will be built in the east and the God of Wealth Temple in the west. The three temples are adjacent to each other, integrated, complementary and indispensable, which can be said to have reached the highest realm of architectural art. So far, the Chenghuang Temple, with such a complete regulation, grand scale and the same incense for all gods, is rare in China, and it is the only one.

Is the integration of the three temples accidental or is there another comment? According to experts' analysis, this structural configuration is completely in line with a psychological activity and life law of people in Ming and Qing Dynasties. At that time, although the economy was developed and the country was strong, under the environment of frequent wars, the people wanted social peace and harmony at home, and they could only pin their thoughts and wishes on the blessing of the gods, which produced many dependent gods.

The country is people-oriented, food is the most important thing for the people, and the body is the revolutionary capital. Therefore, it is obviously logical to solve the problem of food and clothing first, then live and work in peace and contentment, be healthy and safe, and finally find out our own goal to challenge the new life. Therefore, we first visit the Kitchen King Temple, then ask the city god to keep safe, and finally settle in the Temple of Wealth.

The wing located on the north side of the bell tower is dedicated to Zhong Kui, a well-known ghost king. Zhong Kui was originally a scholar in Zhongnanshan. He went to Beijing to take the exam in Tang Dezong, but unfortunately he was disfigured by a kid on the way to take the exam. At that time, Zhong Kui boldly played in one go and won the first place. However, Tang Dezong kicked Zhong Kui out of the Golden Palace by judging a book by its cover, and he was killed by a pillar. Later, one night, Dezong dreamed that an ugly man looked like Zhong Kui wielding a sword and fighting with imps. After waking up, Dezong ordered someone to paint the image of Zhong Kui playing ghosts in his dream on paper and hang it on the wall to ward off evil spirits. After Zhong Kui went to the underworld, he was named the "exorcism emperor" by the Jade Emperor.

The story of "The Zhong Kui Sisters" has been widely circulated. After Zhong Kui died, his good friend Du Ping buried him to express his gratitude and asked his sister to marry Du Ping. Generally, in Shanxi area, the portrait of Zhong Kui beheading a ghost will be posted on the southeast corner of each household's gate on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month to show good luck.

From the central government to the state government, there are six functional departments, namely, house officials, households, rituals, soldiers, criminals and workers. Of course, there is also a functional department, Liucao House, in the Chenghuang Temple. After entering the first temple, the first thing you see is two impermanent images, holding a heady chain to ask for people's souls, which is really fierce. A series of criminal laws on the brick platform are even more horrible and chilling.

The Kitchen God Temple mainly worships the Kitchen God, who is one of the most widely spread gods in China and respected and relied on by people. However, few people provide food for Grandma Kitchen King. Usually, only the Kitchen King keeps watch. In fact, the Kitchen God was originally a woman, and Taoist Zhuangzi once described the image of the Kitchen God as "a beautiful woman with a red dress and a bun". It didn't become masculine until after the Han Dynasty. There are many legends about the Kitchen King in China. According to legend, the Kitchen God was originally the chef of the Jade Emperor in the Heavenly Palace, named Song Wuji. Kitchen King Milk is a lilac fairy named Guo Lilac among the hundred flowers fairies. One day, in heaven, the first couplet was written by Lilac Fairy, "Water, cold, wine, one point two o'clock". After three days and three nights of painstaking meditation, Song Wuji failed to get the second couplet. He felt that he was defeated by a woman, and he was deeply humiliated. He crashed into the south wall and died, and was reincarnated as a great chef. When the Jade Emperor learned that Lilac was in trouble and broke the dogma, he demoted her to the lower bound and skillfully arranged for her to be combined with Song Wuji.

I don't know that Guo Dingxiang's cooking skill is quite high, and the business of the small restaurant opened by them is getting more and more prosperous, and within a year, it has become a famous rich man. Just joking that "men become bad when they have money" is just a partial statement. Just after Song Wuji had money, he also took a concubine and Guo Dingxiang to eat separately. Who knows that this woman just took a fancy to the money in Song Wuji's pocket, and then she ran away with a wave of her money. Since then, Song Wuji has become a street beggar. At this time, he is very sorry for what he did and misses his ex-wife. One day, on the day of begging, I happened to meet my ex-wife's big restaurant. They were relatively speechless, but they knew each other well. Guo Lilac gave him a bowl of rice. After the meal, Song Wuji felt guilty and had no face to face Guo Lilac again, so he plunged into the stove and painted his face black. At this point, you may notice the words "Kitchen Temple" on the cast iron incense burner in the courtyard. According to this legend, the Kitchen God was indeed a black-faced chef. Later, with the invention of China, Taoist priests tried to live forever with their heads, and a series of fire-related histories gradually evolved into the word "kitchen", which reflected the progress of society and the continuous improvement of human civilization.

According to legend, on the 23rd of the twelfth lunar month, the Kitchen God went to heaven to report his work to the Jade Emperor. On this day, every household would offer sesame candy as a sacrifice to the Kitchen God. First of all, paste the mouth of the kitchen god so that he won't talk nonsense. Second, because sesame sugar is sweet, it makes the kitchen god say good things after eating and drinking, and return to the palace for good luck. On New Year's Eve, families also set off firecrackers in order to welcome the kitchen god from the Heavenly Palace and the people to welcome the coming of the New Year. All these activities show people's yearning and longing for a better life.

The offering hall of the Town God Temple is named as the main hall for pilgrims to offer incense, make vows and present articles. From the architectural point of view, the memorial hall uses the rest peak with the second grade of ancient building roof, and also uses the style of Baoxia, which gives people visual beauty. We can infer the age of the building from its columns and drums. Before the Song and Yuan Dynasties, the column foundation was not allowed to be exposed to the ground, and it was gradually higher than that in the early Ming Dynasty. Especially in the Qing Dynasty, there were columns and drum stones above the column foundation, which not only played a solid role, but also greatly exceeded the original use, and the carvings on the drum stones became increasingly colorful. The water and soil in the south are warmer, so the drum stones are high from the ground to prevent column corrosion, but there is no need to worry about this in the north, which is more of an aesthetic effect. Grapes carved on the drum stone mean that many children are blessed, deer and cranes and pine trees are in harmony, and this series of auspicious ornaments all reflect the ancients' longing for a better life.

But besides the solid foundation, the building's stability is also helped by hanging down. Please look up. The woodcarving between the two capitals is called hanging down, and the woodcarving at both ends of the capitals is sparrow replacement. Both hanging and sparrow replacement play the role of fixing the tripod. The theme of this hanging is two dragons playing with pearls. Beads are regarded as auspicious beads in the folk, symbolizing imperial power in the palace, and one dragon represents the emperor, and one dragon represents the emperor, which means that the emperor's rights are given by God. Therefore, the two dragons play beads symbolize the supremacy of imperial power.

standing on both sides of the Xiandian, there are officials who are used by the folk activities, which add a dignified atmosphere to the whole temple. There are five pairs of wooden hooks on the temple beams, all of which are used for hanging plaques. They were once full of plaques that people wished for, but they were destroyed or sold out during the Cultural Revolution. Twenty-four filial piety pictures are depicted on the forehead, so I won't explain them in detail here, such as lying on the ice and seeking carp. The East-West Gables depict stories about benevolence, righteousness, courtesy, letters and strange stories from a strange studio, with poems such as Farewell by Du Mu, Wen Qili by Lv Dongbin, Questions and Answers in the Mountain by Li Bai, Pear Blossom in Donglan by Su Shi and so on.

Only when you have peace can you have everything. Peace is the most basic guarantee for all kinds of life. Please worship Zhu Xiang for him and pray for peace for the whole family. I believe that with your sincere prayer, Chenghuang will certainly meet all your needs.

The town god is sitting in a grave position, with a serious face. The red-faced judge and the heady kid stand beside him, ready to listen and then send them. The word "rewarding the good and punishing the evil judge" breaks the main thread that has been running through this temple all along: "Good and evil will be rewarded in the end, and it will be clear in the end".

Town God is one of the most important deities generally worshipped in the religious culture of ancient Han nationality. There are different opinions about the original origin of Town God. After the Song Dynasty, many famous officials who worshipped dead heroes or made contributions to local people became Town God, such as Wen Tianxiang, Yangjiao Mountain and Shanghai Town God.

The ancients thought: "A city with water environmental protection is a city, and a city without water environmental protection is a city", and "Water is a city, but mediocrity is a city". The ancients believed that everything related to people's daily life was a god, and the city was closely related to people's life. Of course, there should be a city god to protect the people, so the city god came into being, which constituted the dual defense system, that is, the early ditch god. In the Book of Rites, there was a saying that the son of heaven had a big Laba, which had been standardized as early as the Zhou Dynasty. The eight waxes were first increased, then increased, and then farmed.

during the five dynasties and ten kingdoms period, the separatist regime in the buffer region at the end of the Tang dynasty formed a melee situation, which promoted people's worship of the city god. After the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang made the city god an official and a knight, Kyoto promoted the Fu Ming Ling Wang to inherit heaven and learn from the country and the people, the government learned from the people, and the state learned from the people, and the city god blessed the Hou and the county. If the county magistrate encounters a thorny case, he still comes to the temple to worship incense, hoping that the city god will give him guidance.

The murals of the two gables were first painted in the Ming Dynasty and redrawn in the Qing Dynasty. During the Cultural Revolution, they were painted with a thick layer of white ash. This mural is the original trace after washing off the white ash, and has not been redrawn. From then on, it reflects that the pigments produced in Pingyao in Ming and Qing Dynasties are quite good. The stone color extracted from natural mineral years, Gane and Tung oil and bladder glue have deeply penetrated into the wall and are not easy to fade. The whole painting is meticulous and light-colored, and the scene is magnificent. The little devil walks in the forefront with the flag of clearing the way with a blare gong. Although the four ghosts kneel behind the stones on the road, they are all in rags, but when they look closely, they can see that the four ghosts have an imperceptible smile, just like seeing the dawn. They very much hope that the gods will avenge themselves and make them reincarnate as soon as possible.

In fact, at that time, the painter felt aggrieved for the people, and his anger and ridicule of the world were vented through murals. You seem to have heard the voices of the people. And the city god will send two little devils to catch bats from time to time, and the two ghosts will sing and talk to the world. It is good for the people to go out for a tour of the city god.

Dressed in a yellow robe, the city god walked forward in a big sedan chair with two lions on his feet. He goes on patrol three times a year, in Tomb-Sweeping Day in spring, on July 15th in autumn, on the first day of October in winter, and on the seasonal Ghost Festival. Going out on patrol in Qingming means releasing ghosts, visiting ghosts in autumn, and collecting all the ghosts left in the world to the city god temple in winter. Through the eight-lift sedan chair he sat in, he learned that it was indeed higher than the human county magistrate and had the right to govern Qipin County.

According to the expert's research, this painting adopts the bamboo leaf drawing method of Wei Wu, a famous painter in the Ming Dynasty. It seems that the lines are smooth, rigid and flexible, which makes people visually comfortable, and there is no sense of rigidity.

At that time, eight stories in the Chronicles of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty were skillfully depicted by using the North Wall, including Wu Zixu's traveling incognito to Zhaoguan, Zhou Youwang's Fengtou drama of princes, Jiezi's pushing and defending his ambition to burn Mianshan, and Yan Zhongping's killing Sanqi with two peaches.

The back wall of the main hall is painted with an "unannounced visit map of the city god", which gives a panoramic view of good and bad things. This is also the common saying that "there is a god who holds his head three feet high."

After the fire broke out in the temple fair in the ninth year of Xianfeng, Qing Dynasty (1859), the learned man Ji hired the Prime Minister first, and worked hard for five years. After the completion, he died because of overwork, and everyone set up a shrine for his statue for the city god temple.

through the second street gate, enter the inner house of the city god. The inner house consists of two bedrooms, a bedroom and an east-west wing. Careful, you will find that this door is slightly staggered by one inch from the door on the back wall of the main hall. According to the local elders, it is unlucky to have an argument from door to door and mouth to mouth. Therefore, it is necessary to stagger it and open the door by mistake to prevent the outflow of wealth and the invasion of evil spirits.

The day before a new official took office in ancient times, he had to enter the city from the East Gate (commonly known as Ximen) above the Sixth City Gate of Pingyao, then go to the Confucian Temple to pay homage to Confucius, and rest in the East Wing of the Town God's inner house at night. First, he assured the Town God that he would be an honest official and enforce the law fairly. Secondly, pray to the gods to bless the country and the people during their tenure, and the grain will be abundant; Thirdly, he still ruled the people by the authority of God.

The West Wing, where the Taoist priests are accompanied, is now displaying one of the three specialties of the ancient city, namely, push-light lacquerware and protective objects with aura. If you want to know the historical and cultural connotation of Pingyao carefully, you might as well buy books or bring a set of CDs.

The city god's bedroom is a kiln structure with upper and lower floors. If the two wings are connected, it will form two major buildings of Pingyao's residential buildings. One is the boudoir where people with noble families and small jasper families live, and only those with the longest seniority can live in caves. The second is the most representative quadrangle form in the Han nationality areas in northern China, and the roofs are all single slopes. Because Shanxi is located in the Loess Plateau for ten years and nine droughts, it is rare to have a rain, and the rain is considered as a fortune. "How can fat water flow to outsiders?" It is a unique local structure.

There are three kinds of caves: cliff cave, sinking cave and independent cave. All caves in Shanxi are independent cave, that is, they are made of bricks on the flat ground, which is fire-proof and moisture-proof.