Gaochun borders Langxi County in the southeast and Xuancheng and dangtu county in the south and west. Gaochun old street, where the county seat is located, crosses Gucheng Lake in the east, reaches Suzhou-Wuxi-Changzhou via Xu He, and connects Guanxi River to the Yangtze River in the west. The development of waterway transportation has promoted the development of local economy. In the early days, Huizhou merchants in southern Anhui brought bamboo and wood mountain products to Guanxi River for business, which developed from a trade market into a simple street. History: There were two gangs in Anhui and Jinling at first, and then they developed into six countries: Jing (County), Jing (Germany), Tai (Ping), Shi (Dai), Jinling and Jindou. Local people are mainly engaged in agriculture, animal husbandry, fishery, grain and cotton processing, yarn weaving, handcrafting, trafficking and catering services. With the development of local trade, more and more foreign businessmen came to Chun. By the Yuan Dynasty, the trade of "gaochun old street" had formed a scale. According to the Records of the Yuan Dynasty, "Gaochun Town has a tax inspection department", so it is conceivable that the business atmosphere here is prosperous. There are more than 170 shops in Laojie area, including bamboo, wood, iron, shop, pot, sauce, mill, oil mill, tea shop, yellow tobacco shop, drugstore, salt shop, grain shop, teahouse, daily necessities porcelain, catering department store (wide goods), fruit roasted seeds and nuts, feather fan shop and so on. During the Guangxu period of Qing Dynasty, there were 8 pharmacies in the block, including Wang Yuanchang, Renchengtang and Tianxingxiang. Management has its own advantages. There is a jingle circulating in this town: "Ren, Zhongjietian, Wei Changqing, a ginseng, Wang Yuanchang, an old shop, Hu family sells medicines and even prescribes prescriptions, and Xia family's clam shell sore medicine is' swept away'." In addition, Zhao Dongyang's "soft fragrant cakes", Fang Jia's blacksmith's shop (forging plum, orchid, chrysanthemum, bamboo and iron paintings) and Ruidachang's feather fan are also quite famous. Feather fan is a local traditional craft, which was listed as a tribute in Ming and Qing Dynasties. In the early years of the Republic of China, it was sent to Panama World Expo for exhibition and won an award.
Gaochun old street was built on the north bank of Guanxi River. The buildings in the block are facing the street with the back water, and the shops are opposite or the layout of the front shop and the back house. The East Lake is bright and beautiful, headed by the oriental "Qinglong", with Gucheng Lake as the "air inlet", the "White Tiger" in the south of the street and the Guanxi River, forming the mode of "water is the main living source" in Feng Shui. Shoppers rely on Guanxi River in the back street to get in and out. Merchant ships, rafts and bamboo rafts are parked in the river, and willow trees are shaded in spring and summer. At night, the passenger ship is decorated with fishing fire, which is more beautiful than geography.
The width of the street is 3.7-4.2 meters, and the street surface is paved with rocks and granite. There are rows of shops and houses on both sides, and the entrance is roughly every five groups of buildings, with a deep lane 1.4-2.2 meters wide in the middle. In the past, merchants built a "land god building" on the street corner, which was full of statues praying for peace and happiness, and people and money were empty. Although the "God Building" has been decayed and destroyed by man for a long time, tourists are staring at the old alley, and every household is walking with the door open. There is a simple and profound artistic conception in the depths of a group of alleys, and there is an ancient rhyme that "two people touch each other to build a house, and the alley grows deeper every day".
Whenever I come to gaochun old street, time goes back, and antique shops appear to be high before and low after, scattered and orderly. Deep into its territory, the single building is connected by five depths, with a width of 1-3 rooms and a depth of 70-80 meters. Every time you enter the upper and lower floors, the height is between 7 and 9 meters. Street-facing commercial shops, rooms or workshops, accounting rooms and residential buildings on the side, some in the side rooms, the backward ones as warehouses or threshing floors, and the upstairs ones are also used for stacking goods. Each entrance is connected by a horizontal entrance, and a wing or cloister is arranged on both sides of every third bay. The two walls of the patio are connected with brick "uphill walls".
Shop facade modeling, when the door rafters are used to form a "day-occupying" arcade or porch, carved lattice windows are installed on the upstairs facing the street. The ground floor can be used to shelter from the rain and shade the sun, climb the building so as to lean against the window to watch, open the window probe and have a panoramic view of the street view. The architectural concept of arcade can be described as multi-purpose. Facade decoration is mainly composed of beam Fang and "diagonal brace" wood carvings, which are rich in content and different in forms. There are Ji Xiangwen decorations such as "God of Wealth", "Lucky Fortune", "Three Stars of Fu Lushou", lions, dragons and the Eight Immortals, as well as historical allusions. These unique wood carvings use various techniques, such as round carving, relief carving and through carving, to make the characters lifelike. The content of wood carving reflects the merchants' good wishes of pursuing prosperity, praying for disaster relief and people's admiration for historical celebrities. The unique feature of the fa? ade is that the walls on both sides extend out of the door, and the "top" is built on it, which looks like a dragon mouth and contains a waist drum. In fact, this kind of variable faucet was called "Moggi" in ancient times. According to legend, it specializes in fire demons, so it is often used by residential houses to decorate the eaves on both sides.
Located on the gaochun old street, the shops stripped of vicissitudes of life, with simple and heavy slate pavements, not only have the local traditional architectural characteristics, but also are close to the southern Anhui customs, which is fascinating. Most shops are lined with wooden boards, and there are few stone doorframes. In residential buildings, hard ridges are used to build walls, but horse-headed walls are rare. Ask the local elderly that the Horsehead Wall is considered as a special kind of ancestral temple and temple wall, but Gaochun's house is a taboo in this style. In order to prevent fire, an "uphill wall" is often built between the two entrances, and the appearance is integrated with the front and rear. In order to save land, the ancients built gables near the shops, with a height of one or two floors. The door cover is simply decorated, the courtyard is small and the overall layout is compact. The wood structure uses tung oil instead of paint, maintaining the original wood color, all carved, with rough and smooth style and distinctive local traditional architectural style.
Up to now, the old streets, shops and houses in Ming and Qing Dynasties still exist, and the cultural atmosphere of ancient fragrance and rhyme is extremely strong. There are nine scenic spots in the block, such as Taoist idol painting exhibition hall, ancient brick carving stone carving hall, Gaochun folk museum and Zhao Zhai. Revolutionary cultural relics include the former headquarters of the first detachment of the New Fourth Army (Wu Ancestral Hall) and the office of the second detachment of the New Fourth Army. These historical and cultural relics reflect all aspects of Gaochun's different periods and social life, adding endless charm to the old streets of water towns. The cultural connotation of its abyss, full of local characteristics, is unique in the ancient towns in southern Jiangsu.