People who have come to Hougou Ancient Village know that Hougou is in a long ditch.

Out of Yuci City, along the road to Shouyang to the east, to the east of Dongzhao Village and then turn north, you will enter the valley where Hougou Ancient Village is located. At this time, you will immediately have a feeling of returning to the past, because those scenes that represent modern civilization have disappeared all at once, and you will see the loess peaks standing in the middle of the road, if it is in summer, the green trees and grass on the peaks will set the whole valley full of vitality, if it is winter, the grass and trees on the peaks will be blackened by withering and adding a primitive and simple atmosphere to the valley.

However, don't think that the back ditch will arrive soon, in fact, it is still early! Even if you come by car, you need to walk on the winding country road for more than ten minutes, and when you first enter the valley, you can occasionally see people on the side of the road, and then you can only see the upright loess peaks along the way. If it weren't for the country roads under your feet and the scattered farmland on both sides of the road, you would have thought you had walked into the depths of the deserted mountains.

When the car walks through nine bends and eighteen bends on the highway, making people unable to distinguish between east and west, north and south, tourists will see the looming ticket gate of the Hougou Scenic Area behind a jujube forest. In fact, this is also a scene only after the development of Hougou Ancient Village into a scenic spot, before which the ancient village was completely hidden behind a mountain cliff. Only when the visitors go around to the back of the cliff will the backyards of the kilns and the patchwork of Hougou Village suddenly appear in front of you.

When we come here, we can't help but think of Tao Yuanming's description of the "Wuling people" looking for the "Peach Blossom Spring" in "The Story of the Peach Blossom Spring":

"Traveling by the stream, forgetting the distance of the road. Suddenly, the peach blossom forest, hundreds of steps between the shore, there are no miscellaneous trees in it, the fragrant grass is delicious, and the fallen flowers are colorful. The fisherman is very different. Moving forward again, I want to exhaust the forest.

When the forest runs out of water, there will be a mountain, and the mountain has a small mouth, as if there is light. Drop off the boat and enter from the mouth. At the beginning, it is extremely narrow, and only then can it be passed. After dozens of steps, it suddenly became clear. The land is flat, the houses are like that, and there are good fields and beautiful ponds and mulberry bamboos. Qianmo traffic, chickens and dogs smell each other. Among them, the men and women are dressed like outsiders. Yellow hair hangs down and is happy. ”

The ancient village of Hougou back then was like Tao Yuanming's "Peach Blossom Spring". Due to the underdeveloped economy, Hougou Village has not been specially connected with the outside world for a long time, and the villagers go out along the Longmen River, and after the river rises in the rainy season, there is no trace of people walking at all. At that time, the village was completely hidden behind the loess cliff wall seen at the ticket gate now, and people who didn't know the inside story didn't know that there was a village here. It is said that during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Japanese army swept here, only saw a loess cliff, and found no signs of human population, so they turned around and went back, so that the back ditch escaped.

Hougou Ancient Village is not only a geographical environment like Tao Yuanming's Peach Blossom Spring, but her origin is also very similar to the Peach Blossom Spring. According to the epitaph unearthed in Hougou Village, Zhang Chonghui, the ancestor of the surname Zhang in Hougou Ancient Village, was originally a "Qinghe Wang Clan", and "Avoiding the Land in Yuzi" came to Hougou. Although the epitaph does not specify the reason for his visit, it records that Zhang Chonghui died in the 14th year of the Tang Yuanhe, that is, in 819 AD, at the age of 81. Then he should have been born in 738 AD, that is, in the twenty-sixth year of Tang Kaiyuan. And in 755 AD, that is, in the fourteenth year of Tang Tianbao, when Zhang Chonghui was 17 years old, the "Anshi Rebellion" broke out. An unprecedented catastrophe swept across the Central Plains, leaving the entire middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, including Qinghe County, in a state of depression, and the people living a life of displacement and precariousness. Du Fu described the scene at that time in his poem "No Home": "After the lonely Tianbao, the garden is full of artemisia terrestris. I have more than 100 families, and the world is chaotic. There is no news of the survivors, and the dead are dust. ”。 It is not difficult to speculate that Zhang Chonghui must have come to Hougou to avoid the "Anshi Rebellion". This is exactly the same as the people in the Peach Blossom Spring, "to avoid the chaos of the Qin Dynasty and lead his wife to this desperate situation".

And from what we know now, the living conditions of the ancestors of Hougou are almost the same as those of Taohuayuan. Hougou Ancient Village preserves a stone tablet that records the construction of "Xuantian Treasure Palace" by the ancestors of Hougou, there are words on both sides of the stele, recording that Hougou villager Zhang Cailu and his wife Hu Shi vowed to build "Xuantian Treasure Palace", unfortunately died halfway, their son Zhang Xian overcame many difficulties, and finally fulfilled the wish of his parents. The names of donors and builders are also listed on the stele. However, the most attractive thing is the age of the inscription, the inscription age of one side of the stele is July of the sixteenth year of Ming Chongzhen, and the inscription of the other side is March of the first year of Yongchang. Chongzhen we are more familiar with, Yongchang is the year name of Li Zicheng, the sixteenth year of Chongzhen is 1643, and the first year of Yongchang is 1644. The period from 1643 to 1644 was one of the most turbulent periods in Chinese history, with the collapse of the Ming Dynasty from its collapse to its demise, Li Zicheng's Dashun army entering Beijing and then being defeated and withdrawing, and the Qing army marching into Shanhaiguan and finally entering the Central Plains. In order to seize the ruling power of China, the Qing Dynasty created many massacres of anti-Qing soldiers and civilians, such as the Ten Days in Yangzhou, the Three Massacres in Jiading, and the Jiangyin Massacre, resulting in a sharp decline in the Chinese population by tens of millions. At this time, the villagers of Hougou were concentrating on building a "Xuantian Treasure Palace", which shows that the life of the Hougou people is relatively stable. Although they are not as "ignorant of the Han Dynasty" as the people in the Peach Blossom Garden, the change of dynasties obviously has little impact on their lives, and they can easily engrave the era names of the new dynasty and the old dynasty on the same stone tablet.

The history of Hougou Ancient Village tells us that in the long history of China, people fled into the mountains to escape the war. In the past, when people talked about Tao Yuanming's "The Story of the Peach Blossom Spring", they generally thought that the Peach Blossom Spring was an artistic creation made by Tao Yuanming to express his ideals, and it was Tao Yuanming's fictional village, which did not exist in reality. But judging from the history of Hougou Ancient Village, Peach Blossom Spring should have a realistic prototype. It's just that the Peach Blossom Garden in reality has less romantic and detached fantasies and more sweat of hard work. Then, "Peach Blossom Garden" is not only an ideal living home in the hearts of the Chinese, but also a spiritual portrayal of the Chinese's tenacious survival, and it is precisely because of this spirit that the Chinese nation can live endlessly and pass on from generation to generation!

May 8, 2017