Xinfadi and Zhongguancun are both related to "graves"?

Careful people may find that there are many place names with the word "grave" in the suburbs of Beijing. The more famous ones are Suojiafen, Yingjiafen, Tieshizifen, Bawangfen, Gongzhufen, etc. etc. These place names all evolved from the family cemeteries built by noble families outside the city during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. In addition to the word "grave", there are also some place names with the word "fu" at the foot of Xishan Mountain, which are also related to tombs, such as Niangniangfu, Xixiaofu, Siwangfu, etc.

I have seen newspapers publish articles written by outsiders traveling to Beijing, saying that there are too many characters for "grave" in Beijing's place names, which hinders sight, hearing and sight. I suggest that the relevant departments can make appropriate changes to these place names. Little did they know that this concept was born out of a lack of knowledge about Beijing’s traditional history. It can be said that the numerous place names with the word "grave" are the result of Beijing's long-term historical and cultural accumulation, reflecting the richness and depth of Beijing's history, geography and culture as the ancient capital of six dynasties. According to the author's statistics, there are still more than 100 place names with the word "grave" and nearly 20 place names with the word "fu" still existing in the Beijing area. The place names with the word "grave" are transformed from the place names and are related to tombs. There are countless of them, accounting for about 1/5 of the total place names in suburban areas.

So where did so many place names with the word "grave" come from? It turns out that during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, people could not be buried in the city after death, so powerful families looked for places with better feng shui in the suburbs or outer suburbs to build family tombs. At the end of the feudal society, there were more and more of these cemeteries. According to the "Wanshu Miscellaneous Notes" written by Shen Bang of the Ming Dynasty: "Within a hundred miles around the city, the places where princes, concubines, honorary relatives, nobles and nobles guard the tombs of incense and other places are all exhausted. "It can be seen that the family cemeteries of noble families were scattered everywhere in the suburbs at that time.

Among these cemeteries, most of them are the cemeteries of princes and nobles, except for the government-established Luze Garden (a place where ownerless corpses are buried) and public and private donated land (public *** cemetery). . Because they were afraid of others stealing or digging, they sent their servants or hired people to guard the graves. These gravekeepers were called "grave guards" or "grave guards." In the Ming Dynasty, the sources of "grave-watching households" were divided into five categories: first, the pro-army forces who "swept the north", that is, the soldiers who followed Xu Da and Chang Yuchun to capture the capital of the Yuan Dynasty at the end of the Yuan Dynasty; the second were those who "Jingnan" The soldiers are the soldiers who helped Zhu Di, the founder of the Ming Dynasty, seize the throne in the early Ming Dynasty; the third are the servants of the palace, that is, the slaves of the original palace; the fourth are the tenants, that is, the farmers who rent land to cultivate on their behalf; the fifth are the nearby residents who take care of them on their behalf. These gravekeepers built houses and lived in the cemetery or near the cemetery, forming small residential areas with single families. They named the cemetery after the surname or identity of the tomb owner, such as Majiafen, Zhoujiafen, Caojiafen, Wenjia Tomb, Wang Ye Tomb, Shi Wang Tomb, Rui Wang Tomb and so on. As the grave-guarding families multiplied from generation to generation, small villages gradually formed. The name of the village did not change, so it has been passed down as a place name. However, there are also a few who use the surname of the tomb protector to replace the surname of the original tomb owner, such as Lijiafen in Haidian District.

Place names with the word "Fu" are mainly concentrated at the foot of the West Mountain in Beijing. Fu means "Hades", which is also a tomb. Most of these tombs belong to various dignitaries of the Yuan Dynasty. Because the dignitaries in the Yuan Dynasty believed that the West Mountain in Beijing was a treasure mountain with beautiful scenery and spiritual energy, they often chose to build their own cemeteries here. It is said that from Hongshan Pass to the east, the first one is Xiadaofu, the second one is Laofu, the third one is Hanjiafu, the fourth one is Xiaofu, the fifth one is Niangniang's Mansion, and the sixth one is Hanjiafu. Daoguang Mansion, the seventh one is Xi Xiaofu, the eighth one is Xiu Mansion, the ninth one is Liu Empress’ Mansion, the tenth one is Nai Nai Nai Nai Mansion..., to the Fourth Prince's Mansion, the mountain road is about 20 miles. The most famous one has seventy-two tombs, so it is called "a mountain with seventy-two mansions". When the Jingyi Garden was built during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, someone reported that the 72 graves occupied the Xishan Wangqi, so Emperor Qianlong ordered all these graves to be excavated, leaving only the fourth tomb of Dong and the graves of several famous officials from the Yuan Dynasty.

In fact, there are still many place names in the suburbs today that are closely related to cemeteries. Some of them directly replace the word "grave" in the original place names: for example, Gaojiayuan in the north of Chaoyang District was originally called "Grave". Gaojiafeng; Xinfadi in the south of Fengtai District, formerly known as Xinfendi.

There are also some place names that have changed the homophony of the original place names: for example, Zhongguancun in the central part of Haidian District was originally called Zhongguan Fen; Lixian Village in the northwest of Chaoyang District was originally called Lixian Fen. Some of them are directly named after the tomb owner’s name or title: for example, the Marquis of Xianning in the eastern part of Chaoyang District was named after Qiu Yue, the Marquis of Xianning in the Ming Dynasty, who was buried there. Others are named after the buildings or attachments on the ground in the cemetery: For example, the Sitong Stele in the southwest of Haidian District is named after the four stone steles in the nearby cemetery; Dashanzi in the central Chaoyang District is named after Qingche Deng. The Tushan behind the tombs of Bazaar and his son, Prince Dalma, is commonly known as Dashanzi by the locals; Wukesong in Haidian District was originally the five pine trees in front of the tomb of Shao Ying, the admiral of the Qing Dynasty, and was later used as a nickname for this place.