1. The legend of Jidu Temple
It is said that Jidu God in heaven saw that Cuiping Mountain in Jianning was a good place, so he wanted to come down to earth to save all living beings and bring blessings and rain to the world. So, he chose a piece of flat land on Cuiping Mountain and placed his drinking bowl on the stone slab, intending this place to be the place for the deity to establish himself.
Unfortunately, the Empress Shiji of Heaven (known locally as the Red Lady) also fell in love with this place. Empress Shiji took a closer look and found that the drinking bowl Ji Dushen usually used was buckled in this place. She really didn't want to give up this precious land, so she had an idea and put her drinking bowl under the bowl of the God of Ji. After putting it away, she was still worried, so she took off the golden hairpin from her head and put it in her own bowl. , to prove that they occupy this treasure land first.
The two gods each claimed that they were the first to occupy this Feng Shui treasure land, and neither one wanted to give up. After a stalemate, they went to the Jade Emperor to request a ruling. In order to appease the two gods, the Jade Emperor acted as a peacemaker and asked them to build a temple together there. The temple was called Jidu Temple. The Jidu Hall in the front yard belonged to Jidu God, and the goddess harem in the backyard belonged to Jidu God. It belongs to Empress Shiji. After the completion of the temple, God Jidu and Empress Shiji lived in harmony, and together they blessed the world with abundant harvests and people living and working in peace and contentment.
According to legend, one year there was a locust plague in the Jianning area, and the locusts seriously destroyed the crops. Local people went to Jidu Temple in droves to burn incense and worship, praying to the two gods to appear quickly and drive away the pests that were damaging the crops. Without hesitation, the two gods turned into countless crows to eliminate the locusts. In less than an hour, all the locusts in the field were eaten, protecting people from the locust plague.
2. The legend of encountering the fairy mountain
There are three legends.
First, it is said that in ancient times there was a Dragon King Temple on the mountainside. There was a spring under the temple. The inscription said it was "the first spring in Gaoyi". There was a pond under the spring and there were fish in the pond, so it was named Yuxian Mountain.
Secondly, it is said that Yugong, who was over 90 years old, had his house blocked by Taihang Mountain and Wangwu Mountain. In order to allow his descendants to get out of the mountains and see the outside world, he led several generations of his descendants to move there. Two big mountains. Faced with such a world-shaking feat, the entire heaven was moved, and the Emperor of Heaven immediately sent Erlang Shen to help Yu Gong move the mountain. Erlang Shen picked up the two mountains with a pole and began to move them. When he reached the west of Jianning, a lot of soil had entered the two shoes, so he stopped and scooped the soil out of the shoes. As a result, they formed two identical hills in the north and south. In order to commemorate the footprints left by Erlang God in Jianning, local people called it the North and South Yuxian Mountain.
Thirdly, it is said that two goldfish in the Queen Mother's Yaochi secretly escaped from the Yaochi and played around in the sky. When I swam to the sky above Jianning, I saw that the scenery here was so beautiful. Because of my fun, I forgot to return to Yaochi. The Queen Mother was very angry and sent heavenly soldiers and generals to Jianning to capture them. They didn't want to go back at all, because they had fallen deeply in love with this beautiful place, and they just wanted to watch Jianning for the rest of their lives. Seeing that the heavenly soldiers and generals were about to arrive, he made up his mind and transformed into two mountains to the west of Jianning Ancient Town. While enjoying the beautiful scenery, they also bless the happiness and health of the people of Jianning. In order to express gratitude to the two goldfish immortals who came from the fairyland in heaven, people called these two mountains the North Fish Immortal Mountain and the South Fish Immortal Mountain according to their directions.
3. The Story of Guodong
According to legend, Emperor Jiajing of the Ming Dynasty liked to travel around the mountains and rivers, neglected government affairs, and had no regard for the country, the country, the country, and the people. In order to satirize the emperor, minister Guo Dong compiled some of Gaoping's scenery into a jingle and invited the emperor to visit Gaoping. A jingle goes, "The Thousand Buddhas without Beams Hall in Jianning can be heard in three counties when a cock crows. There is a big drum tower in Gaoping, half of which pokes into the sky. There is Mijian Mountain in Gaoping, only one brick away from the sky." The emperor was very surprised after hearing this, and went to Gaoping with great fanfare. The result was far from what he said. In a rage, he killed Guo Dong. In order to bury his body intact, Guo Dong's descendants secretly hired a goldsmith to cast a gold head so that the body and head could be connected, and then buried him on Cuiping Mountain south of Jianning Village.
In fact, Guo Dong was not killed by the emperor. Historical data records that Guo Dong died "at the age of eighty". This legend is just a plot created by the local people's imagination to beautify the hero in people's minds. According to common sense, even if Guo Dongzhen was killed by the emperor, all nine of his clans would be implicated, and there would be no plot to cast a golden head.
The Guodong family has continued to prosper for several generations and built a large-scale residential compound in the southwest corner of Jianning Ancient Town.
But Baiyun Cang Gou, the world is unpredictable, and the family that has been prosperous for several generations gradually declined. In order to make a living, the descendants sold most of the properties to a wealthy businessman named Zhang in the ancient town. This is in line with an old saying, "Morality is passed down to a family for more than ten generations, farming and reading are passed down second, poetry and books are passed down next, wealth is passed down to a family for no more than three generations." In this way, the Guodong family's greatest contribution to the people of Jianning is to leave the spiritual wealth of "farming, reading and family inheritance" to the villagers. Among the contemporary descendants of Guo and other people with other surnames, dozens of them have been admitted to top domestic universities such as Tsinghua University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Wuhan University, Tianjin University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and many others have been admitted to the United States, Ph.D.s from France and other Europe and the United States. The scholars in Jianning Ancient Town will continue to inspire and inherit the Guodong family's spirit of "farming, reading and inheriting the family" and become a role model in the minds of future generations.
4. The legend of the official appointment at the bottom of the tomb
It is said that during the Ming Dynasty, there was a severe drought one year, and Gaoping County was even more serious, with no crops harvested. At that time, the rich man surnamed Ji, who lived in Pearl Lane, Jianning Ancient Town (today's Jiannan Village), took out the food he had hoarded at home and distributed it to the poor people without saying a word, helping the victims survive the famine.
When the emperor heard about this incident, he was very moved and thought that the rich man had done a great thing and relieved the court from the disaster. So he asked someone to bring a letter to reward him, and to confer an official title on him. Rich Man Ji mistakenly thought that the emperor was going to seize his family property. He was very scared and did not want to harm his family, so he hanged himself. When the officials dispatched by the emperor rushed all the way to the ancient town of Jianning, it was already the day of the funeral of Rich Master Ji. The officials sighed and blamed themselves for arriving a step too late, which had caused such an unfavorable situation. The official who announced the decree was in a dilemma, not knowing how to report the matter to the emperor. After much deliberation, he decided to solemnly read out the imperial edict in front of Ji Caizhu's grave and confer an official title on him, becoming the only example in history of conferring an official title at the bottom of a tomb.
The Ji family has been doing business for several generations and is known by the locals as the five major families in Jianning Ancient Town during the Ming and Qing Dynasties (Guodong family, Shenliang family, Zhang Duanren family, Ji family, and Xia family) one.