Some old things of Leshan Giant Buddha Temple

Xin Chouchu, a friend of Chengdu, chose to go to Leshan to see the Giant Buddha on the first day of the Lunar New Year. From the parking place to the mountain gate, it is quiet and there are few tourists, which seems to be greatly affected by the epidemic.

For Leshan locals, in the past, it was the most important festival of the year to eat glutinous rice balls on the New Year's Day, and adults and children put on new clothes and go to Lingyun Mountain to worship Buddha. Including four townships and eight villages, all have the custom of worshipping Buddha during the Spring Festival. I know a gentleman who was born in the 1930s. He wrote in an article recalling his childhood:

"At the latest, on the morning of New Year's Day, after eating noodles, teenagers will gather in twos and threes, cross Hongyan, Qingyiba and Dongyue Temple, and worship Leshan Giant Buddha. This is the custom in Niuhuaxi area."

Even in the 1960s and 1970s, when capitalism was broken and traditional culture was unpopular, it was still an important activity for Leshan people to visit the Giant Buddha during the Spring Festival.

I remember that there was a trick at that time, which was to occupy the Buddha's head early. It is a proud and happy thing to invite the playmates who live in the complex to climb the bun on the Buddha's head from behind the Buddha's head and climb to the middle of the Buddha's head to play poker.

At that time, I lived in the celestial world, and every time I went, the Buddha's head was occupied by people who lived in Jiaochangba. We are so jealous that we will get up early to cross the river next Spring Festival to seize the position of Buddha head.

1975 autumn, there is still a long time before the Spring Festival, and Leshan Giant Buddha Temple is already very lively. Nearly a thousand young and middle-aged farmers from several communes in four districts of Leshan County filled a deserted Lingyun Temple with laughter. Rows of bungalows behind the Buddha's head are full of bunks, where farmers from Lingyun Commune, Puren Commune and Kowloon Commune live. Behind the Tibetan Scripture Building, the auditorium of the original Party School was filled with farmers from Qinglong, Maoqiao and Angelababy Commune, all of whom belonged to a new organization-Dazhai Agricultural Professional Team.

Learning to build a big agricultural village is the loudest and overwhelming slogan of 1975.

In order to build momentum, the people stuck in the county cultural center on the mountain of the Giant Buddha scenic spot chose the mountain road, passed the "Longqiu" and looked up at a rock flat with the words "Back to the shore". Set up a bamboo box frame, first scrape off the weeds and moss on the rock to expose the red sandstone. A tall man named Luo Hengheng, nicknamed Luo Jianshe, climbed the box rack every day, waved a big broom and poured thick lime water on it. Five huge Chinese characters gradually appeared on the red sandstone:

"Agricultural Dazhai School!"

Every word is a few meters square and dazzling white. You can see clearly even standing on the frog mouth of Dadu River across Minjiang River. Many years later, Luo Jianshe still proudly said that it is not generally difficult to write such a big word empty-handed.

At that time, the monks on the mountain either retired to their hometown or entered the reformatory.

Farmers who live on the mountain of the Great Buddha Temple and the professional teams of the communes in the four districts take the commune as the company, and each of them builds a shed on the mountain to make a fire and cook. For a time, plumes of smoke rose from the Great Buddhist Temple. Play sumptuous food once a week or half a month, and garlic sprouts and cooked pork are the most popular.

After eating, these young farmers of professional teams went down to the foot of the mountain with two hammers, steel drills, chisels, hand hammers and other special tools for hitting stones. The stonemason of Qinglongmao Bridge is in Guanzimen Stone Field at the end of Bizi Street. Masons from Lingyun, Puren and other communes are all in Lingyun Mountain, and they entered from the flour mill. The whole piece of red sandstone there is high-quality stone. No wonder 1000 years ago, the ancient people in the Tang Dynasty chose this stone to carve Buddha.

Every company has a stone digging index, and each person who digs stone crevices must reach 20 meters every day, so that ten work points can be counted, and the professional team will issue a certificate and bring it back to the production team for payment. This kind of production activity that occupies the vast rural areas for free was called corvee in ancient times. For example, the Great Wall built in the Qin Dynasty and the artificial pyramids in Egypt were all the organizers' ideas, and people brought their own food and tools to provide services free of charge.

These stones were knocked out free of charge by farmers from seven communes in four districts, while professional teams from communes such as Tuzhu, Jianfeng and Baima in the second district beat stones around Longhong Temple. ) will be transported to Qingyi River to build a riverbank from Suji to Yangwan. That is the main content of 1975 "Learning Dazhai" in Leshan County.

At that time, the quarry at the foot of the Great Buddha Temple jingled and the horn sounded constantly. In addition to cooking smoke, there are many stoves while the iron is hot on the Big Buddha Temple Mountain. The steel chisel head worn by knocking on the stone shall be tempered by the company itself. To this end, although the sparrow of each company is small and complete, it is a cook, a tool repairman and a warehouse keeper. Many masons are freshmen and many people are injured. The commune also sent barefoot doctors.

1976 During the Spring Festival, masons from various communes will go home for the Spring Festival as usual, and six masons, including Li Shuiqing from Puren Commune, will stay to help the Big Buddha Temple celebrate the Spring Festival.

On New Year's Day, there is always a sea of people on the Big Buddha Temple. At that time, tickets to the Big Buddha Temple were collected, and each person received 50 cents. Farmers of professional teams who stay at the gate to help collect tickets are counted by professional teams every day and brought back to their production teams for year-end accounts. The Big Buddha Temple does not give money for three meals a day.

Mr. Li Shuiqing recalled that on the first day of New Year's Day, people from all directions came to worship Buddha, blocking the whole Lingyun Mountain. By noon, the number of people coming to Chaoshan increased instead of decreasing. It is Xiang's father and son who cook on the mountain. His family lives in our Sitang, and he crossed the river to cook in the mountains early in the morning. I remember eating steamed stuffed buns at noon one day. Master Xiang put a steamer full of steamed bread on his head. There are so many people going up the mountain that he can't go down the mountain backwards. I had to follow the crowd around the back door and open the steamer. There are only a few steamed buns left. It turned out that in the crowd along the way, someone took advantage of the crowd to directly open the steamer that Master Xiang was holding on his head and took the steamed buns.

In the long history, Leshan Giant Buddha Temple is full of countless memories of countless people.

My comrades-in-arms, descendants of northerners, were born and raised in Leshan. His memory of Buddhist temples is related to the popular ballroom dancing in the 1980s. Maybe at that time, they were just young and energetic.

Everyone in Leshan knows that there is an auditorium behind the Big Buddha Temple and Lingyun Temple. In the early 1950 s, it was an honorary military school, called Rong Xue for short. It mainly receives the wounded soldiers on the Korean battlefield, and the office building of the school is now the Tibetan Scripture Building. After the school was closed, it was handed over to Leshan University. I also ran an agricultural school and a Sichuan Opera school, and later a prefectural party school. In the 1970s, it became the division hospital of the troops stationed in Yue Le, and there was also a logistics transportation company.

By the 1980s, people all over the country were fascinated by ballroom dancing. On weekends, there are spacious units, colorful spotlights rotate and music rings. Young men and women, strong gentlemen, itchy feet. I don't know who turned the auditorium into a big dance floor with amateur singers and a small band of six or seven people. Perhaps it is located in the Great Buddha Temple, which some people call the ballroom of the Great Buddha Temple.

Ballrooms naturally have names. It is named after the ballroom of the Great Buddha Temple, and it probably has some ink in its belly. Around the auditorium, there are lush trees, lush bamboos, soaked rocks and jingling. They were named "Diecuitang" one by one, a bit like the old Red Chamber. "Diecuitang" ballroom has developed foreign business and its business is booming. The music began to spread to the south building of the Big Buddha Temple Guest House. Several beautiful waiters oiled their feet and ran into the ballroom. Who can resist?

Le Sheng, a comrade-in-arms, recalled that even regional commercial motorcades often called to make reservations for dance halls. Generally speaking, it is a chartered party, inviting people from relevant business units under the banner of trade union activities. At the end of the week, I drove several trucks with men and women with boiling blood standing on them and headed straight for the back door of the Big Buddha Temple.

The night in Lingyun Mountain began to be lively again.

Today, at night in Lingyun Mountain, the grotesque lights fluctuate along the mountain and change colors constantly. There are cruise ships floating in the river and tourists parked on the mountain road.

Wang Wei, a poet in the Tang Dynasty, said, "This river flows through the world, and there are both mountains and mountains.". There is always a mountain view of an era in an era, which constitutes an old story of Leshan Giant Buddha in Lingyun Mountain.