The first time I came to the ruins of Nanba County was a late autumn evening more than ten years ago, when it was raining when we first entered Nanba Village, we walked across a small stone bridge in a haze of rain, and the view opened up before us.
The site of the county town is on the slope of Nanba in the west of Magang Town, Dambai District, which is next to the village of Nanba on the east side. 1430 years ago, the site of the county town has not been found on this barren land, leaving only a few written records in the old county records.
I remember when I met a villager in finishing the vegetable field, I talked with him for a while and asked him if he had found anything unusual when he was plowing the ground. He said that under his vegetable field, digging a little deeper you can see the outline of the house foundation, old bricks and old tiles are often turned out. The villager also said that one of his neighbors picked up a side of ink stone on the peanut patch of this slope, and once went to Wuhan for business and talked to his business partner about this ink stone, the Wuhan businessman knew the goods and told his neighbor to take the ink stone with him when he went to Wuhan for the second time, resulting in a 200 yuan deal. At that time I thought, this ink stone is at least a thousand years old things, so it is a pity to sell it cheap.
According to the "Guangdong General": "Liang Daitong and set Nanba County, Sui Ping Chen, abolished the county, changed to Nanba County, under the control of Panzhou, after the abolition of Panzhou, to Lianjiang, Nanba two counties merged into Maoming. Yuan abolished Liangde, Namba, and into Dianbai." Dianbai County, the county's history of Nanba County is more detailed records: Nanba County, the former county for the Sui Kaihuang nine years (589) abolished Nanba County, built under the high state. Daye two years (606 years) into the Lianjiang County. Tang Wu De five years (622 years), analyze Lianjiang County was re-established. In the first year of Yong Hui (650), Nanba County was reassigned to Panzhou. Song Kaibao five years (972), the county was abolished into the Maoming County. Ming Chenghua four years, part of the original Nanba County territory was transferred to Dianbai County, the jurisdiction of the present Xiadong south to Magang and Maoming City, Maonan District to Wuchuan Qumba town area. Its county town in Dianbai Magang town west, where there are still South Ba slope, South Ba River and South Ba village, the city site in South Ba slope. The city is square, with a side length of 378 meters and an area of 140.29 million square meters.
A passage in the "Duanbai County Records", which was rebuilt in the fifth year of the Qing Dynasty, is related to the poet Liu Changqing of the Tang Dynasty: In 758, Liu Changqing was relegated to Nanba County after his release from prison (the county seat is now Nanba Slope, Magang Town, Duanbai County). On his way to his post and after arriving at Namba, Liu Changqing wrote more than ten poems to express his anger at being relegated to the barbaric countryside and his loneliness during his journey and residence. Four of these poems were selected from the "Three Hundred Tang Poems". During his tenure as a lieutenant of Namba, Liu Changqing, in addition to relieving his boredom by reciting poems, also advocated the establishment of a county school to nurture talents and contributed to the development of culture and education in Namba. A few years later, Liu Changqing moved to the post of Secretary of Muzhou (present-day De County, Zhejiang Province) and later became the Assassin of Suizhou (present-day northwest of Anlu County, Hubei Province). In the first year of Tang Jianzhong (780), Liu Changqing died at the age of 72.
In the early 1980s, dianbai County cultural relics census team together with the Zhanjiang Regional Museum Zhong Shaoyi and a number of people, to the Ma Gang District, Nanba Po, investigation and examination of the Liang Dynasty in the North and South set Nanba County site, the results of the examination published in the "Zhanjiang Daily". According to the Dianbai County Cultural Bureau at that time compiled the "Cultural Relics" (a copy of the manuscript of the first draft) records, this time to participate in the South Ba County heritage site survey mapping personnel are: Zhu Kengxin, Ma hire, Liu Zhongshao, Huang Xiong, Zhu Quan, District Danmei, Chen Zuhui, Li Feng, Zhu Fuxun, Wen Guoliang, Liu Tucheng, Ma Wenwei, Huang Guangcheng, etc.. They were all members of the cultural relics census team drawn from the county cultural bureau, cultural museums and other units to temporarily form a census site in Nanba County, which is just one of the census sites, in addition to a number of cultural relics sites such as Lady Xian's tomb city in Diancheng Town Shandou. It is said that the 1984 census of cultural relics was a county-wide launch, quite extensive and the only one to date.
Cultural relics" in the record: Nanba County site in the present Magang Wei side of the slope, that is, Nanba Ling before the slope of Nanba. This together with Zhanjiang (Zhanjiang) Museum (Museum) Comrade Zhong Shaoyi to explore the site, there are five hundred and forty paces across, a hundred paces smaller than the electric city. The whole slope is planted with crops. According to the masses, heaps of bricks and stones were dug out when the land was opened. We rented a small piece of land, hired workers to excavate, underground indeed buried a lot of masonry, the scale of its masonry, than the Ming built Shendian Wei Cheng brick slightly smaller and thinner. The foundation of the city can not find reliable signs. The "Cultural Relics" also mentions that there are four ancient post stations in Nanba County: Wulan Post Station, Hot Water Post Station, Sanqiao Street Post Station and Ha Dong Post Station. All of these stations were built along the old avenue.
In the middle of June this year, I took a trip to Nambapo the day after attending the inauguration of a cultural tourism project at Yosuigu Hot Spring. The two places are just five kilometers apart, and, according to the county records, when the Tang Dynasty poet Liu Changqing went to Namba to serve, he had to pass through the hot water station and then arrive at the destination of Namba County. During his three years of service in Namba County, Liu Changqing may have also visited the hot springs. The source of the Namba River begins at Hot Water Mountain, and the two places are also the two connection points of the ancient road back then.
This day at noon, and several fellow villagers braved the sun to Nanba village, the village than the first visit many more houses, the village lane also twisted and narrowed a lot, the car is not like the first visit directly parked in Nanba Po ancient county ruins of the ditch. It is said to be a ditch, but it is actually a moat, two stone slabs across the ditch, a few steps around the bamboo forest is the old city ruins.
I heard that there is an ancient well in the village of Namba, from the Sui and Tang dynasties, which has lasted for more than a thousand years, and the village people only say they have an impression of it, but it has been buried long ago. A villager from a small store at the edge of the village said that there was an old stele in the village that might still be there. Under his guidance, the village cadres led us to a house with a locked door, and later in a dilapidated mud-brick house to the right of the door, we saw this old stele blocking the doorway. The village cadres said that this was a pigsty house. We took the stele out, and the dust on the surface of the stele was thick, so we washed the surface of the stele with mineral water and the handwriting appeared. This monument is more than a hundred years ago to repair the South Ba bridge, the monument body is intact, the text is flawless, although the value is not high, at least is also a cultural relic. I said with the village cadres, find a place to hide and protect it.
Walking into Nambapo, not much has changed from what we saw more than ten years ago, still vegetable fields, only the area is several times larger than ten years ago, and the whole old city site has been opened up for crops. From the vegetable field through, there is a sense of time and space across, the sun, as if mixed with some thousand years ago the smell of the sea. More than a thousand years ago, the south side of Nanba County is the sea, but also the outlet of the Nanba River.
It is likely that this is the Nanba Ridge, which is mentioned in the county records, and the Nanba Village still exists, but the Nanba River is nowhere to be found. There are two ditches on the east and west edges of the old city site, there is still living water flow, maybe this is the site of the moat more than a thousand years ago.
One of my peers, Wen Hai, picked up a few small tiles at the edge of the ground, one of which had writing on it, and the writing was illegible due to its age. This is a poem in five lines written by Liu Changqing on New Year's Eve in 759, the second year of his relegation to Nanba, when he felt homesick for the New Year:
The new year of my hometown is very close to my heart, and I am weeping alone by the sky.
The old man is living under the people, the spring return in the guest first.
The ape in the mountain is the same at dawn and dusk, and the willow in the river is the same as the wind and smoke.
Has been like Changsha Fu, from now on and a few years.
On New Year's Eve of this year, the poet Liu Changqing felt that he had reached the age of "old age" and was relegated to the southern barbarian land of "living under the people", so his heart must have been lonely, sad and depressed. Nanba has been through Liang, Sui, Tang, Song and Yuan for hundreds of years, with countless officials coming and going from the south to the north, but none of them left their names. Only Liu Changqing, in the county "reclusive" for more than a thousand years, occasionally reminds people of the great poet of the Tang Dynasty, and occasionally find his old works to revisit, venerate and sentimental. He was treated very differently from Su Shi of the Song Dynasty, who was respected as a guest in every place of exile, while Liu Changqing, however, was so lonely and silent.
(The author of this article, Zhang Huimou, is a member of the Chinese Writers' Association and chairman of the Maoming Writers' Association)
[Author].
[Source] Nanfang Media Group Southern+ Client
