Anhui Bozhou, is a state-level cultural city with a history of more than 3700 years, as early as the Ming Dynasty, together with Yuzhou, Qizhou and Yaozhou, known as the "Four Great Medicine Capitals of the Central Plains", known as the proverb "medicine is not bozhou is not effective". The profound cultural heritage has left countless cultural relics and monuments for the city, the most worth seeing is the Flower Opera Building located in Xianning Street, Guanyu, North Guanyu, Bozhou City.
According to records, the Bozhou Flower Opera Building was built in the thirteenth year of Qing Shunzhi (1656), which was built for Guan Yu after the Shanxi merchant Wang Bi and the Shaanxi merchant Zhu Kongling made a fortune in Bozhou to operate medicinal materials, and it also became a meeting place for medicine merchants from Shanxi and Shaanxi in Bozhou, so it was also called "Shanshan Guild Hall". Because the theater building of the guild hall is beautiful and exquisitely carved, it is commonly known as the "Flower Opera Building".
In fact, many cities in China have flower opera buildings, but Bozhou's flower theater buildings are the most exquisite and gorgeous, and have the famous "three musts" in the country: brick carving, wood carving and iron flagpoles. For more than three hundred years, these exquisite brick carvings and wood carvings have been eroded by wind, snow, rain and frost, and are still intact and lifelike, as early as 1988, they were selected into the third batch of national key cultural relics protection units, which is the so-called "good oil head sold in Suzhou, the flower theater building seen in Bozhou".
Approaching the Flower Theater Building, the first thing that catches your eye is the cast iron flagpole, one of the "three musts". According to the inscription on the iron flagpole seat, this pair of flagpoles was cast in the first year of the Qing Dynasty (1821) and was presented by the Shaanxi medicine merchants, each weighing about 12,000 pounds and nearly 20 meters high. The flagpole is cast with patterns such as bagua dragons, and 24 iron wind chimes are also hung, which are very pleasant to the ear.
The mountain gate of Hua xi lou is a three-story archway building with imitation wooden structure, and the carved "Heaven and Earth" above the lintel comes from the Tao Te Ching of Laozi, the ancestor of Taoism, which means: "Taoist laws originate from the nature of heaven and earth". The 52 brick carvings on the front wall of the mountain gate are all carved by hand, mainly based on opera stories and folk allusions such as "Three Gu Maolu" and "The Legend of the White Snake", which can be called the pinnacle of Chinese brick carving art.
The "third best" of the Flower Theater Building is this theater building, and it is also the soul of the Flower Theater Building complex. The south and north sides of the stage of the theater building are supported by six pillars in a manner of interlocking tenons, and the roof is paved with glass, and the whole building is golden and brilliant, and it is still as strong as ever. On the stage, above the "Erlong Opera Bead" transparent carving screen, hangs a golden plaque with the words "Acting in ancient style and present".
On the pillars on both sides of the front of the stage hangs the link of "a song of YangChun awakening the dream of the present and the ancient, and the two faces are loyal and adulterous". Above the stage are inlaid with eighteen large wooden painted carvings, the content is mainly based on "Changsaka Slope", "Cutting the Beard and Abandoning the Robe", "Seven Captures of Meng" and other Three Kingdoms drama texts, the scene is grand, the carving is exquisite and transparent, which can be called a representative work of the qing dynasty's prosperous period.
Among these exquisite wood carvings, the most splendid painting of Nagasaka Slope, which hangs in the middle of the stage, is made of a piece of wood, which is three layers deep, carving 23 figures and 13 war horses. Zhao Yun in the picture single-handedly broke into the Cao camp and rescued the young lords Liu Chan and Lady Gan. Since Cao Cao was born in Bozhou, the work also praises Cao Cao's character of "loving and cherishing talents".
Entering the main hall of the Flower Opera Building, in the middle is enshrined the statue of Guan Yu of Qi Yuxuan, Guan Ping and Zhou Cang are separated on both sides, and above the statue hangs a gilt plaque of "Zhongyi Qianqiu". Regrettably, these three statues were destroyed during the War of Resistance Against Japan, and the "Green Dragon Crescent Knife" weighing more than 1,000 kilograms in Guan Yu's right rear was also stolen, and now they are all replicas.