At school, Chu heard from his classmates, "Do you know? Our Lingwu place, the legend of the tower on the other side of the East Tower?"

Hua Xin said: "I know the legend of Zhenhe Tower, in ancient times, floods often occurred on both sides of the Yellow River, large areas of fertile land and villages were submerged, and the common people had a very difficult life. One spring, a strange thing happened in Lingzhou: from a spring in the middle of the West Lake on the edge of the city, black water like ink gushed out, and the black muddy water poured all the way to the city of Lingzhou, and the people were panicked, and adults and children cried together. There were hundreds of strong men who went to block the spring, and they couldn't stop it after thinking of many ways. Many people were busy packing up their bedding and preparing to flee. At this time, two sisters came from the side of Mount Meru, and they were going to the Wudang Temple in Helan Mountain to catch the temple fair, and they happened to pass by here. My sister is tall and thin and walks fast, while my sister is a little shorter and walks slowly. My sister had to stop and wait for her every time she walked. On this day, my sister went to Xingzhou (now Yinchuan), and my sister went to Lingzhou (now Lingwu). When the younger sister saw the chaos in the city, she asked the people what was going on, and they told her what had happened. But before he could finish speaking, it suddenly began to rain heavily. The water in the West Lake has not yet been blocked, and the Yellow River has broken again. The turbid water of the Yellow River washed down the southwest corner of the Lingzhou city wall, and it seemed to overflow the Fire Temple and the South Drum Tower. Suddenly, my sister was swept into the water by a wave, and people saw that where my sister was standing just now, a column of water dozens of meters high erupted, and after the water column fell, a tall tower appeared, and the Yellow River was put down in an instant. The water of the Yellow River turned westward again, and it was almost flooded to Xingzhou. When my sister heard the news of her sister being flooded in Xingzhou, she was very sad, and she vowed to look at her sister day and night and guard the Yellow River together. In an instant, she also jumped into the Yellow River and turned into a tower. Since then, the sisters have looked at each other day and night, silent. Because the sister tower is east of the Yellow River, people call it the East Tower, also known as the Zhenhe Tower; The sister tower is in the west of the Yellow River, and people call it the West Tower, also called the Chengtian Temple Tower. ”

Liu Yanyan said: "What you say is just a legend, the real situation is like this, Lingzhou City has been repeatedly flooded by the Yellow River since ancient times, from the seventeenth year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty (1384) to the third year of Jingtai (1452) in 69 years, Lingzhou City was moved three times due to floods. According to the Kangxi period, the "Reconstruction of the Zhenhe Tower Inscription" records: Lingzhou City is like a boat adrift in the river, the construction of the tower is like burying a wooden stake for the boat by the river, as long as the boat is tied to this stake, the city will never be washed away by the flood again. Although this is the beautiful yearning of the ancients for social stability, it also confirms the history of blood and tears in Lingzhou City that has been frequently flooded for more than 2,000 years.

Zhenhe Tower was built in the seventh year of Kangxi (1668), and the tower and temple were completed at the same time in the thirty-seventh year of Kangxi (1698). In the forty-eighth year of Kangxi (1709), an earthquake occurred in Lingzhou, and the tower was cracked. In the 57th year of Kangxi (1718), another catastrophic earthquake occurred, and the Zhenhe Pagoda and the temple collapsed into ruins.

Kangxi 58 years (1719) in situ reconstruction, due to successive years of natural disasters, grain harvest, financial difficulties, three years of the tower body only built three layers in the middle of the road. After 10 years of preparation, the third time in the seventh year of Yongzheng (1729) was started and rebuilt, until the fourth year of Qianlong (1739), which lasted 20 years and finally completed today's Zhenhe Tower. In the twenty-second year of Guangxu (1896), the local gentleman Xu Xiang and others proposed that "no lower hall is not enough to be spectacular", and suggested that the lower hall should be repaired. After many recruitments, two years later, the middle hall and the lower hall were built in turn opposite the upper hall. After 1935, a gossip pavilion was built around the tower. At that time, the temple covers an area of 30 acres, the wall is two zhang high, there is a moat river more than one zhang wide outside the wall, and trees are planted on both sides of the river. In 1963, Zhenhe Tower was listed as the first batch of ancient buildings in Ningxia by the People's Government of the Autonomous Region as a "key cultural relics protection unit".

During the "Cultural Revolution", the Zhenhe Tower temple and the surrounding wall were all demolished, all the trees inside and outside the temple were cut down, and the moat river was also filled. In the autumn of 1962, in a storm, the glazed tiles on the top of the Zhenhe Tower were destroyed by lightning.

In order to prevent further lightning strikes in the future, the Lingwu county government decided to fund the repair of the top of the tower and the installation of lightning rods. After many inquiries, the person in charge of the county cultural center found Yu Jianying, a mason who was bold and well-known in the Lingwu construction industry.

Yu Jianying, a native of Yantai, Shandong, was a teenager in the War of Resistance Against Japan, and the Japanese devils killed more than 50 members of his family in a sweep. In order to escape the war, he fled to Ningxia alone, where he learned a superb masonry craft.

Yu Jianying spoke loudly, although he was tall, he was very agile, he was very quick to work, and a brick knife was used freely in his hand.

Working at the top of the 40-meter-high tower requires not only extraordinary courage, but also superb skills.

Yu Jianying and the sworn brother He Yi discussed many times and came up with a plan to repair the tower.

On a crisp autumn afternoon, Yu Jianying and several assistants came to the tower with tools.

On that day, the crowd who came from Lingwu City to watch the tower repair was black, and people sweated for Yu Jianying.

Yu Jianying climbed from the Zhenhe Tower along the wooden ladder to the top floor, stretched out the two rafters from the south window, and tied the two ends of the north side firmly to the wooden ladder in the tower, spread a wide wooden board on the rafters, nailed it with iron nails, and erected a wooden ladder on the board.

He climbed up the ladder, and at the top of the tower was a circular glazed tile building with a diameter of more than two meters.

Yu Jianying set up a workbench on the steps next to the glazed tiles, stood on the workbench to remove the bricks and tiles that had been shattered by lightning, poured the reconciled cement into the hole little by little, and finally tied the lightning rod firmly to a wooden stake with a wire.

For more than 40 years after that, the Zhenhe Tower stood majestically and unharmed. When Yu Jianying was repairing, a wooden basin connected with copper nails was found from the gap in the gourd-shaped glazed bricks on the top of the tower, and a copper pagoda and a bronze Buddha statue similar to the shape of the Zhenhe Pagoda were placed in the basin.

In the belly of the bronze Buddha, 31 volumes of Tibetan scriptures of the Yuan Dynasty were found, and the scriptures are now stored in the Ningxia Museum, and the whereabouts of the copper pagoda and the bronze Buddha statue are still unknown after several turns. The green glazed treasure gourd-shaped spire stores the cracks of cultural relics.

Yao Yao said: "What you are talking about is memorizing history, I heard my grandmother say, at that time, Lingzhou City was on the edge of the Yellow River, and there was a monster in the river, similar to the Jiaolong that is said now, often haunted to eat people, to sacrifice, otherwise it will flood the village." So later a tower was built to suppress the monster below, and the water of the Yellow River receded farther and farther away, and never went ashore again! He also cleared a lot of fertile land. ”

When Chu heard these things, he thought that there were monsters that were sealed under the tower, no wonder he went there once, and found that there was a pool of water under the thin layer of cement slabs in this tower! Could it be that this monster is still alive?

Let's see the next time