The moon is setting, crows are crying, and the sky is filled with frost. Jiang Feng, fishing fire, is facing melancholy.

At Hanshan Temple outside Gusu City, the bell rang for the passenger ship at midnight.

When you come to Suzhou, you will see that everyone is leaning against the river. Suzhou is a city made of water.

Rivers crisscross the area, and ancient bridges connect the streets and alleys of the ancient city.

Among the ancient bridges in Suzhou, the Maple Bridge, located outside Hanshan Temple and spanning the ancient canal, has a very high reputation. "Night Mooring on the Maple Bridge" by Zhang Ji, a poet from the Tang Dynasty, is a popular song that has been passed down through the ages and can be regarded as a chant for all generations.

A classic work in Suzhou poetry.

The moon sets and the crow crows, and the three hundred painted bridges on the sleepless night beside the Maple Bridge reflect the river city. Maple Bridge is uniquely famous in the poem.

It is difficult to verify when Fengqiao was first built, but at least in the Tang Dynasty, Fengqiao was already a strategic point on land and water, connecting boats and boats.

In the early Ming Dynasty, Yao Guangxiao recalled the prosperity of Fengqiao in "Rebuilding the Hanshan Temple": "It reaches Jingkou in the north and Wulin in the south. It is an important place. Boats are moving and walking, and ants are connected day and night."

However, after the "An-Shi Rebellion" broke out in the 14th year of Tang Tianbao (AD 755), what Fengqiao welcomed was not a ship full of food, but a crowded passenger ship, full of refugees from Chang'an and Luoyang.

, officials and scribes, including Zhang Ji from Xiangyang who just won the Jinshi two years ago.

Fan Chengda's "Wu Jun Zhi" said: Maple Bridge "is nine miles outside Changmen and has been famous since ancient times. Passengers from the north and south pass by, and there is no one who stops by this bridge and chants it." In the Tang and Song Dynasties, when people went in and out of Suzhou City by boat, they generally

Make a short stop at Maple Bridge.

It was a late autumn night, and the weather was extremely cold. Darkness enveloped the Maple Bridge and the canal, and the shrill cries of crows (some scholars believed they were blackbirds) echoed in the cold air.

The lonely Zhang Jizheng lay in the boat, unable to fall asleep looking at the maple trees on the shore and the lights of the fishing boats on the water.

At this time, the bells of Hanshan Temple not far away came, which aroused his thoughts of traveling and worries about his family and country.

Are relatives far away safe, when will the days of wandering end, and how long will the country's turmoil last... Zhang Ji couldn't sleep anymore. He turned over and sat up, took out a pen and paper, and wrote this immersed poem.

The melancholy and brooding "Night Mooring at Maple Bridge".

Among the starry poets of the Tang Dynasty, Zhang Ji is not considered a famous one.

In addition to being a Jinshi, he only held ordinary official positions such as Hongzhou Salt and Iron Judge.

Not many of Zhang Ji's poems have been handed down. Ye Mengde from the Song Dynasty said that by the Southern Song Dynasty, there were only more than thirty poems by Zhang Ji in existence ("Shilin Poetry Talk").

But it is with this song "Night Mooring at Maple Bridge" that Zhang Ji's light will never dim.

In every dynasty, "Night Mooring at Maple Bridge" has attracted countless fans.

The only exception is that Ouyang Xiu of the Song Dynasty once questioned "ringing the bell at midnight" in "Six Day Poetry Talk", but "Stone Forest Poetry Talk" and "Gengxi Poetry Talk" have cited poems by Bai Juyi, Wen Tingyun and others to prove that Buddhist temples in the Tang Dynasty

Indeed, the clock strikes midnight.

In addition, poets and poetry commentators of the past dynasties have highly praised "Night Mooring at Maple Bridge" and chanted about Maple Bridge one after another, leaving behind "The crow crows and the moon falls in the temple beside the bridge, and I can still hear the midnight bell while sleeping on my pillow" (Song Dynasty Sun

Face to face); "I haven't been to Fengqiao Temple for seven years, and the guest still sleeps at midnight" (Lu You of the Song Dynasty); "It is the first night when homesickness begins, and I stay alone in Fengqiao in the distance" (Gao Qi of the Ming Dynasty); "Ten years

"Dream of Jiangnan in the Old Testament, listening to the midnight bell of the cold mountain alone" (Wang Shizhen of the Qing Dynasty) and other good lines.

Even the popular song "The Sound of the Waves Remains", which was once popular, cleverly used "Mooring at Maple Bridge at Night" to express the sorrow shared by modern people and ancients for thousands of years.

Hanshan heard the bell, and the three poem tablets have gone through vicissitudes. The temple flourished with poetry, and the poem was named after the temple. It is really appropriate to use this sentence to summarize the relationship between "Night Mooring at Maple Bridge" and Hanshan Temple.

Hanshan Temple was first built in the Liang Tianjian period of the Southern Dynasties. It was originally called "Miaoli Puming Pagoda Courtyard". According to legend, the eminent monk Hanshan once traveled here during the Zhenguan period of the Tang Dynasty, so it was also called "Hanshan Temple".

Since the publication of "Night Mooring at Maple Bridge", Hanshan Temple has become famous as a Zen forest. "Everyone likes Huang Tong and old people knows Hanshan Temple." There is an endless stream of tourists from all over the world.

The ancient bell and the poem stele, these two antiquities related to "Night Mooring at Maple Bridge" in the temple have attracted the most attention and have gone through thousands of years of vicissitudes.

"The bell rings at midnight". When tourists come to Hanshan Temple, they always ring the ancient bronze bell.

Listening to the bells of Hanshan Temple on New Year's Eve is an ancient custom of Suzhou people.

There is no doubt that when Zhang Ji wrote "Night Mooring at Maple Bridge", there was a big bell in Hanshan Temple. However, as Hanshan Temple was destroyed by war at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, this bell of the Tang Dynasty was "super refined in smelting, and the clouds and thunders are ancient".

The clock has been annihilated together.

During the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, under the auspices of Zen Master Benji, Hanshan Temple once again cast a giant bell and built a bell tower.

The talented scholar Tang Bohu wrote "Gusu Hanshan Temple Hua Zhongshu" specially for this grand event.

It is a pity that this bell was also destroyed during the later Japanese invasion. "When the bell encountered Japanese aggression, it was sold as a cannon" ("Hundred Cities Smoke and Water").

Today, the ancient bell preserved on the octagonal tower of Hanshan Temple was recast in the style of the old bell when Chen Kuilong, governor of Jiangsu Province, rebuilt Hanshan Temple in the 32nd year of Guangxu of the Qing Dynasty (1906). This bell contains black gold, and the sound of the bell is loud and clear.

Smell for miles.

However, there is always a saying among the people in Suzhou that the Ming Jiajing bronze bell of Hanshan Temple was not "sold for cannons", but was robbed by Japanese pirates and taken to Japan. Kang Youwei once wrote a poem about it: "The bell has crossed the sea to Yundong,

"The maples of the ancient temple in Hanshan Mountain are as cold as cold."

But whether the Jiajing Mingzhong really ended up in Japan, and what its exact whereabouts are, is still an unsolved mystery.

"Poetry Stele for Night Mooring at Maple Bridge" is another cultural business card of Hanshan Temple.

According to the "Continued Records of Wujun Picture Book", as early as the Northern Song Dynasty, Prime Minister Wang Gui wrote the poem "Mooring at Maple Bridge at Night" in handwriting and carved it on a stone tablet.