Original link: https://macin.org/2023/07/17/kong-qiu-cun/
Kongqiu Village is located in Linhai, Zhejiang, and it took a long drive to get there. One is because the location is relatively remote, and the other is that the road conditions are not good, especially when entering the village, the road is too narrow, and it is impossible to miss the car coming from the opposite direction. Before we set off, we searched for information, focusing on an “isolated” original ecology, retaining the appearance of ancient villages in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, so when walking on the road into the village, the bad road conditions made us feel: this time You have come to the right place.
According to “Linhai Longzhou Zhang’s Genealogy” records: Ming Zongzhen years, “the world was in chaos, in order to avoid war chaos, Zhang Tingke , a scholar and sea traveler in Ninghai, took his six sons into the mountains for fear that they would not go deep, so he went to Linhai Longzhou to live in a hut.” This is the origin of Kongqiu Village. Zhang Tingke settled here to avoid the war, and then gradually multiplied and became a large village.
Most people in Kongqiu Village are surnamed Zhang, and there are currently less than 100 households in the village, and most of them are left behind by the elderly. When I visited, it was raining lightly. Because there were not many people in the village, many houses were vacant or even collapsed, so it was very quiet. Holding an umbrella, we broke into this ancient village like this.
We parked the car near the village committee, got off the car and walked a few steps to see this “Cultural Auditorium”. It used to be the village school. It is such a small school hidden in the mountains that has cultivated many talents. Looking at the introduction on the wall, we know that the school has a long history!
During the Daoguang period of the Qing Dynasty, Zhang Yepei (1814-1898), the first literati in the village, was friendly with Liu Ao, the prefect of Taizhou, and devoted himself to culture and education. In the eighth year of Tongzhi (1869), Zhang Yepei and Shi Bingyi set up a private school. In February of the following year, they established the “Baoshu Private School” in the village, borrowing the village ancestral hall as a house, and raising more than 70 mu of school fields (land). At that time, all the cultivated schools in the village The fields are only more than 600 mu, which shows that the village has attached great importance to education from the very beginning. In the same year, Zhang Yepei set up “Dingxin School” in Ruolishan (now Ruokeng Village), ten miles away from the village, and raised more than 45 mu of land for education. At that time, it was one of the 32 private schools in Linhai village. Later, due to development needs, the two schools were merged and renamed “Baoshu Dingxin Rixin School”. Relying on his own prestige, Zhang Yepei hired celebrities to teach, and the culture flourished. Students from nearby Tiantai, Ninghai and other places came to study continuously.
In the 30th year of Guangxu (1904), it was changed to a new-style school and renamed “Baoxin Primary School”. You must know that it was the time of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the Eight-Power Allied Forces.
In 1901, the “Xin Chou Treaty” was signed, and in 1906 the Qing Dynasty announced the abolition of the imperial examination system. Although it is impossible to find out the teaching content of this Baoxin school when it was changed to a new school, but judging from the time point, it has been transformed two years before the abolition of the imperial examination, which is still very powerful. I think Linhai is located on the coast, so it is more open-minded?
Baoxin School has trained many talents. During the period of the Republic of China, more than 10 people held important positions in various places. Among them are Zhang Shengping, a professor at Fudan University in Shanghai, who served as the director of the military law divisions of the 29th Army, 98th Army, and 10th Army during the Anti-Japanese War, as well as major generals Zhang Hongxu and Zhang Hongliang, who were all students of “Baoxin Primary School”. There are so many people that I won’t list them one by one, because some went to the treasure island of Taiwan. Therefore, how can the “rural revitalization” strategy be implemented without the role of education? A village can produce so many talents, how can the village not be revitalized?
Walking in the village, it is not easy to see individuals. Just when the door of “Zhang’s Ancestral Hall” opened, we slipped in and saw that the clansmen were cleaning the ancestral hall. It can be clearly found that the ancestral hall has been renovated, and the donation monument at the door is not only an honor, but also a responsibility to the big family. After we get rich, we have no place to donate to build ancestral halls. 
Going further inside, we finally met an old lady who looked over ninety years old. We really wanted to talk to her about the history of the village, but we couldn’t understand the dialect she spoke. She spoke Mandarin. Probably didn’t understand either. The memories of the old people may not be accurate, but I would like to call them the living fossils of Confucius, and they are the living history. We chatted for a few minutes to no avail, and when we were about to leave, a middle-aged man came out of the room and scolded the old lady. It may be that she dislikes her talkativeness.
The rain was getting heavier and heavier, and we had to hide from the rain under the eaves of the old house. The three little yellow dogs also curled up, just looking at us two strangers curiously. Just this look has scared us so much that we dare not speak out, for fear that the dogs will jump up. When the rain subsided, we continued to walk around and found that most of the houses in the village were built with stone foundations, and then a small amount of wood was added to make doors and windows. The stone base is not as fine as the dry base construction of the Chinese mining university we saw in Hechuan, Chongqing. There are large gaps between the stones. It feels cold in winter if there is air leakage.
Walking to the door of a large courtyard, I found that there were still two old people living there. They only live in one corner of the yard, but they seem to be more lively than other families, so the old saying goes, “A person needs an inch of food, and a house requires an inch of people”.
The old man said that all her children went to Linhai City to buy a house, and the rest of the village were mostly old people. She said that when the older generation was still there, those people who were far away in Taiwan would still come back here during the holidays. Now that the older generation has left, the place is a bit colder than it used to be… The old man was still arranging the light strings while talking to us. She said that this is just to earn some manual money, and she can’t do heavy physical labor when she is too old.
After watching the village in a while, the only regret is that I didn’t find the villagers to chat with. Basically every vacant old house has a small faded white sign in front of it, which says the achievements and official positions of the former owner. After reading a few times, I found that they all went to Taiwan. If you have the opportunity to see the genealogy in the ancestral hall, you may piece together some historical details.
Every village is unique and should have its own history to be remembered. When I was young, our village had its own primary school. Now after the merger of the village primary school, we can only go to the town to study. If time goes back to the past, are the previous villages very similar to Kong Qiu? To some extent, these descendants of the Zhang family who left Taiwan are like seeds blown by the wind from old trees. That’s why Fei Xiaotong said in “Homeland China”, “Our Confucianism pays most attention to human relations. What is human relations? My interpretation is a round of events that occurred among the group of people who have social relations with me. The differential order of the wheel ripples.”
Kongqiu Ancient Village is now like a paradise. It seems that it can not be swallowed up by the external economy and the tide of marketization, and continue to develop on its own track, no matter whether it is withered or what the result is. There are not many traces of tourism development here, quiet and simple. How many generations have lived, grown up, and died here, but the small ancient village hides a century-old history.
I am curious about whether the Restoration of the late Qing Dynasty left anything in the village. I am curious about how the Confucian intellectuals’ self-cultivation and governance of the country and the world will be converted into the skills of learning from barbarians in the village. I was thinking about it in my head, but there were only a few pieces of bricks and tiles and streams of water in front of me…
This article is reproduced from: https://macin.org/2023/07/17/kong-qiu-cun/
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