The Ming Zu Mausoleum is located on the west bank of Hongze Lake in Xuyi County, Jiangsu Province. It is the tomb of the great ancestor, great ancestor and grandfather of Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang and the actual burial place of his grandfather. To be honest, the location of the Mingzu Mausoleum is not ideal. It is not on the side of the mountains and Dafu, but on the hilly land known as "nine hills and eighteen depressions".
Liu Ji, the Kanyu master at that time, knew that the location of the Mingzu Mausoleum was not a perfect auspicious land for thousands of years. According to the definition of ancient Kanyu art, the topography of a geomantic treasure land requires a clear hall in front of the acupuncture point, and three oddities and four responses. The three wonders are mountains, water, and tables; the front, back, left, and right are the four corresponding elements. However, except for the water country around the Ming Zu Mausoleum, there is not much wonderfulness to speak of.
Since the feng shui here is not good, why didn’t Zhu Yuanzhang find another auspicious land to bury his ancestors?
In fact, Zhu Yuanzhang didn't want to, but this is the actual burial place of his grandfather. If he wants to move the tomb, it will definitely vent his anger and affect the Ming Dynasty. Therefore, the ancestral mausoleum could only be built here. In order to solve the problem of poor Feng Shui, large-scale geographical transformation was carried out when the mausoleum was built. The depressions were filled in, insufficient repairs were made, the ground was dug into rivers, the earth was piled into mountains, and mountains, water, near cases, and bright halls were artificially created. After waiting for the landscape that must have Feng Shui elements, a so-called Feng Shui treasure land was artificially created.
In the seventh year of Hongzhi in the Ming Dynasty (AD 1494), the middle and lower reaches of the Huaihe River flooded for many years, and the ancestral mausoleum continued to suffer from flooding. Some people advocate "controlling water with water," which means using water from the Huaihe River to block back the water from the Yellow River. It's a pity that people are not as good as God. No matter how much you gather the power of the Huai River, you can't beat the Yellow River. The surging Yellow River is blocked by just a little power of the Huai River. How can you say that it rushes to the sea and never returns? Soon the Huaihe River bed near the Mingzu Mausoleum was also flooded with yellow water and increased in height. The Huaihe River was unable to turn the yellow color, and the old road into the lake was built with high weirs, so the Huaihe River had to overflow and flood. This caused the river to flood during the summer and autumn rainy seasons every year. , the Huaihe River will flood the Mingzu Mausoleum.
According to common sense, since Zhu Yuanzhang’s ancestors are revered as emperors and queens, mausoleums should be built where they are buried, and imperial mausoleum buildings should be built according to regulations. But according to historical records, Zhu Yuanzhang only added titles in the early years of Hongwu and did not build ancestral mausoleums. What are the historical reasons behind this? It turned out that Zhu Yuanzhang's family was poor when he was young, and his residence moved again and again, so he did not know the exact burial place of his three generations of ancestors. Therefore, he went through a lot of trouble to find the burial place of his ancestors.
In the seventeenth year of Hongwu (1384), by chance, Zhu Yuanzhang finally found out the true location of the ancestral mausoleum. Speaking of Zhu Yuanzhang's same clan, Zhu Gui, his grandfather and Zhu Yuanzhang's grandfather moved from Zhujiaxiang to Sunjiagang in the north of Sizhou City. Through his return to his hometown to investigate, Zhu Yuanzhang finally learned that his grandparents were buried in Yangjiadun in the north of Sizhou City.
Zhu Yuanzhang's ancestors were very poor for several generations and wandered around. There was really no roof above them and no place to stand below. His grandfather, Zhu Chuyi, lived in Gushangzhou when he was in his sixties, herding pigs for a wealthy family named Shui in Shuanggou Town. This sailor is nicknamed "Water Half Lake", and his family's land is all around Hongze Lake a few miles east of Shuanggou. Zhu Chuyi and his family built a shack and lived in Sunjiagang by the lake, herding pigs and clearing wasteland for the water rich man to make a living.
There is a pier behind Sunjiagang Village, which is called Yangjiadun. There is a dimple on the pier. In late autumn one year, Zhu Chuyi, who was herding pigs here, hid in a hollow on the pier for shelter from the wind. He unexpectedly learned that this mountain was backed by mountains and faced by water, with majestic and lush green mountains behind and broad Hongze Lake in front. It was actually a piece of dragon vein. Who knows? After death and being buried here, someone will definitely be an emperor in his descendants. The old man wanted to take this place as his own, so he hid the secret from then on, even to his family. It was not until his death that he told his son that he would be buried here.
Open the door to Chinese history, and you will find that there are many legends about emperors playing politics in Chinese history, such as Chen Sheng’s midnight divine revelation, Liu Bang’s sword killing the white snake, Liu Bei’s Bai He’s escape, Zhao Kuangyin’s Xianglong Ruisheng and so on. Zhu Yuanzhang's Mingzu Mausoleum is just a continuation of the above-mentioned brilliant methods of historical politicians.
But one thing is worthy of our careful consideration. The geographical location of Yangjiadun is obviously not a treasured place in Feng Shui. Why did it become a place of dragon veins in legend? And why did Zhu Yuanzhang create such a legend?
This is still related to Zhu Yuanzhang's origin. His throne was brought down from the lowest level by himself and his brothers. He did not have a prominent family background and no blood capital worth showing off. In history, almost all the people who established eternal empires were better than Monk Zhu who herded cattle and cleaned temples. None of Qin Shi Wang Ying Zheng, Sui Emperor Wen Yang Jian, Tang Taizong Li Shimin, and Yuan Shizu Kublai Khan were queens of emperors or from prominent families. Even Liu Bang, the emperor of the Han Dynasty, the chief of the pavilion, was still the number one figure in the local area. Although Liu Bei, the Lord of Shu, sold straw sandals To make a living, but when publicizing, he always claims to be a descendant of the Han royal family - Uncle Liu. Cao Cao and Sun Quan were from a noble family, while the other was from a military family. For Zhu Yuanzhang, it felt like a beggar who was spurned by others and suddenly made a fortune one day and started wearing fine clothes, but he still felt that others looked at him strangely. In desperation, in order to shape the heaven and earth for his ascension to the throne, to prove that he was given by God, and to flaunt his bloodline as the inheritance of heaven, in order to defeat the psychological advantages of the old noble families at that time and change the ideological disadvantages in politics, the grassroots emperor In the end, Zhu Yuanzhang could only invite his ancestors to come out for some deification and propaganda. Therefore, although the ancestral mausoleum is not very valuable, Zhu Yuanzhang could not move the ancestral mausoleum to another place.