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People's Daily: Mei Jie, June 29, 2024, 00:00
Bailang Street is an ancient street.
I have long heard of this street, which is located at the junction of Hubei, Henan and Shaanxi, and is rumored to be able to "step on three provinces with one foot". As early as the early 80s of the last century, the writer Jia Pingwa wrote about Bailang Street in his root-seeking essay "Shangzhou Chulu". It should be said that from the "First Record of Shangzhou", I have vaguely seen that the streets of the "Three Provinces of Chicken Song" are crowded with farmers who have just contracted the land. In the different dialects of the three provinces, they shouted the fruits, vegetables, and grains grown from the land they had contracted, and sold the chickens, ducks, fish, meat, and eggs they served. The loudspeakers on the trees in the three provinces shouted in different accents the notices of going down to the field or harvesting wheat; On the theater floor shared by families in the three provinces, Qin opera, Chu opera, and Henan opera are quite popular; The children of the three provinces marry each other, one family holds a wedding, and the people of the three provinces send "soup" according to customs; Under a tree, people from the three provinces eat with bowls, Yu people eat white buns, Hubei people eat white rice, and Qin people eat cold skin.
At that time, I was thinking, what is such an interesting Bailang Street like? For many years, I vaguely imagined that place.
The opportunity has finally arrived. In May 1993, Hebei TV station filmed two of my works, "Women's River" and "Mother's Mountain Beam", and the film crew had to choose the filming location in Yunyang, Hubei Province. The head of the propaganda department in his hometown suggested going to Bailang Street. He said, the exterior location you need Yunyang Old Town has been flooded due to the construction of the Danjiangkou Reservoir, and the Jingzi Pass near Bailang Street is just like a microcosm of the old Yunyang Mansion, you can go there to choose the exterior location.
Bailang Street? My heart moved.
Without hesitation, the film crew galloped to Bailang Street, which I had longed for many years. At that time, when I went to Bailang Street, I walked on a winding dirt road in the mountains at the southern foot of the Qinling Mountains, and the back of the green jeep was dusty, unlike the current high-speed road.
Jingziguan Ancient Street is very similar to the old town of Yunyang, where I lived in my childhood and youth, except for the small scale and no towering city walls, it looks almost the same. The buildings of the Ming and Qing dynasties on that street are one after another with white walls and black tiles, with horse-head walls connecting horse-head walls, paving doors connecting paving doors, and slate roads connecting slate roads...... We chose an ancient house with neat paved doors, shiny black lacquer gates, and majestic stone lions in front of the door, and began to shoot the scene of my grandmother working as a maid in Yunyang Mansion in the twenties and thirties of the last century......
This encounter with Bailang Street has made me miss that place for more than 30 years. No matter how time grinds, the appearance of the Ming and Qing architectural streets, the old mansion with the black and shiny gate, always appear in front of my eyes. It was as if the negative of that memory was always carefully protected, hoping that if it was occasionally developed, it would be authentic.
One day in the spring of 2024, a friend in my hometown of Shiyan asked me to go to Wufeng Township to see rape flowers, and I replied almost without thinking: "Can you take me to Bailang Street?" ”
A few days later, my wish was granted, and my friend really took me to Bailang Street. As soon as the car stopped, we saw a majestic arch gate made of blue bricks, standing across the street. The overlapping brick bucket arch makes the arch gate add a kind of ancient majestic atmosphere. The three words "Jing Ziguan" on the lintel are vigorous and powerful. Ah, this is the ancient street where TV movies were filmed back then! I couldn't help but be moved and surprised.
After the gate, it was as if I had returned to the old town of Yunyang in my childhood. On both sides of the ancient street, there are all the buildings of the Ming and Qing dynasties, and under the sky, the white walls and black tiles, the cornices and corners of the street are particularly beautiful. The horse-head wall on the top of the house is staggered and stands tall. The black lacquer paved doors on both sides of the street are arranged compactly, one next to the other, and the vicissitudes of life are dignified. The street is all paved with bluestone slabs, shiny and black, and there are many well-preserved ancient guild halls, palaces, and theaters along the street. We talked, laughed, and unconsciously entered the Pinglang Palace.
Pinglang Palace is the most complete and spectacular one of the ancient buildings in Jingziguan, and it is a magnificent and magnificent building built by ancient shipwrights nearly 400 years ago to pray for the blessing of the gods. The staff of the cultural center guarding the gate took the initiative to act as a tour guide for us, telling us about the past and present life of the ancient street.
Jingziguan Ancient Street has a history of four or five hundred years. The Danjiang River, which originates from the Heilongkou of the Qinling Mountains in Shaanxi Province, flows for hundreds of kilometers before entering the Han River. The river has been navigable since the Warring States period. During the heyday of the Tang Dynasty, Jingziguan became a distribution center for the transportation of goods from the north and south, and the tribute grain of the eight southern provinces had to be transferred to Chang'an from here. Here "hundreds of boats one after another, thousands of hooves one after another", hundreds of ships docked every day, up to more than ten miles. By the middle of the Qing Dynasty, there were hundreds of large and small businesses on the bank of the Danjiang River on Bailang Street, which was unprecedentedly prosperous.
However, the Bailang Ancient Street in front of you is very quiet. The old man on the street said that the old street has been protected as an ancient building, and most of the homes and shops have moved to the nearby new street. In fact, in Bailang Street and Jingziguan Ancient Town, I have been quietly looking for the old house where I made TV films. But the old houses on the street make it impossible for me to confirm. In the end, I chose an old house with a black lacquer door closed, mottled wooden planks on the street, and a "Yongchengde" plaque hanging on the lintel as the background to take a photo, which was a memorial of the year.
As he spoke, he came to the Three Provinces Pavilion standing high in the center of the street. The three columns of the stone pavilion are carved with dragons and phoenixes, and the bluestone is reflective, standing straight in the air. In the middle of the pavilion stands a conical granite stone tablet, which is very small. One side faces west, and it is engraved with "Qin"; One side faces southeast, and "E" is engraved on it; One side faces northeast, and it is engraved with "Yu". This is the "Three Provincial Stones". The people of Hubei, Henan and Shaanxi provinces have lived here for generations, and the stone remembers the years when they got along with each other.
It is said that there are dozens of places at the junction of the three provinces on the map of China, but most of them are barren mountains and wild forests, and this Bailang Street is densely populated by tens of thousands of people in the three provinces. The three provinces also have grassroots governments: Bailang Town, Yunyang District, Shiyan City, Hubei Province, Jingziguan Town, Xichuan County, Nanyang City, Henan Province, and Xianghe Town, Shangnan County, Shangluo City, Shaanxi Province. The offices are no more than five kilometers apart. Jingziguan Town, Henan Province is called "the barrier of Henan", Bailang Town of Hubei Province is called "the gateway of Hubei", and Xianghe Town of Shaanxi Province connects Qin and Jin, known as "the throat of Shaanxi". The jurisdiction of the three provinces is intertwined here, street after street, ground by ground, house to house, wall to wall. I don't know the past, but I just feel that the people of the three provinces live next to each other now, regardless of each other. I saw the full text of "Bailang Street" written by Jia Pingwa, which was engraved on the wall of the "Three Provinces Inn" opened by Henan people; On the 2024 "May Day" International Labor Day, the three towns jointly held the Rural Revitalization Cultural Tourism Festival......
Later, I walked all the way down Bailang Street with six relatives from Beijing. They were all first-time arrivals. When our big family circled around the "Three Provinces Stone" on Bailang Street, took pictures and cheered, I suddenly felt that although I had not found the old house where the TV film was filmed more than 30 years ago, I had no regrets.
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People's Daily netizen 7fc956
The stone records the reproduction of people in Hubei, Henan and Shaanxi provinces, which is the best proof of this
Henan netizens
12 hours ago
Reply
It makes sense
The people of Hubei, Henan and Shaanxi provinces have lived here for generations, and the stone remembers the years when they got along with each other.
Sichuan netizens
18 hours ago
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