Historical Story of Yiwu Xiuhu Lake
The story of Da'an Temple Pagoda
The Da'an Temple Pagoda was built in the fourth year of Daguan in the Song Dynasty (1110) and is closely related to Xiu Lake, 899 years ago.
In the meantime, it has undergone many collapses and repairs.
It has a beautiful legend: In ancient times, there was a large lake in Yiwu that often flooded.
One day, a white-haired Taoist came to the lake. After walking around the lake, he said that the flood was caused by the buffalo spirit at the bottom of the lake.
Under his guidance, the local people drained the lake, and sure enough, a buffalo turned its head, shrank its feet, and slept soundly.
The crowd quickly brought dry firewood to cover the buffalo, poured oil on it, and burned it for three days and three nights before finally burning the buffalo to ashes.
Worried that the ghost of the buffalo would linger, the people filled the place where the buffalo was burned with soil and built a tower to quell the demon.
It is the current Daan Temple Pagoda.
This legend represents the wishes of Yiwu people in the past generations to pray for blessings.
The story of Kong Gongdun
In the eleventh year of Hongwu, Kong Keyuan, a native of Qufu, Shandong, served as the magistrate of Yiwu County.
He personally came to the shore of Xiuhu Lake, looked at the Xiuhu Lake that was in urgent need of management, and sighed: "Without water from Xiuhu Lake for irrigation, how can farmers farm! Isn't it the county magistrate's responsibility to manage Xiuhu Lake? ?" After returning to the county government, he discussed with his colleagues to summon villagers from eight townships and twenty-eight capitals to build water conservancy projects and dredge Xiuhu Lake.
They divided the area around Xiuhu Lake into several plots, each township was responsible for one plot, and small flags were placed on the edges so that they would not be confused with each other and could carry out labor competitions.
On the day when the work started, the villagers were full of energy, carrying dustpans and hoes on their backs.
Magistrate Kong County was afraid that the villagers would be too tired, so he ordered the people by the lake to prepare drinks and snacks to reward everyone.
Thanks to everyone’s efforts, *** spent more than 12,000 hours and finally completed the treatment project.
The north side of the lake used to be a road. Because Xiu Lake was washed out day and night, some places had collapsed. People used big stones to revet the bank and widened the roadbed.
There used to be a passable path on the south side of the lake. People on the lakeside dumped debris into the lake, and the lake was buried for dozens of meters. This time it was all dug out and restored to its original appearance.
The excavated soil piled up into a hill beside the lake.
Strangely enough, since dredging of Xiu Lake began, the weather has been fine, and even if it rains or snows, it is always at night.
After it was completed, it rained heavily and filled the entire Xiuhu Lake.
That year, there was a severe drought in seven counties in the Jinhua area, but the Duxiu Lake Irrigation District had a bumper harvest.
In order to thank Magistrate Kong, the villagers named the hill beside the lake Kong Gongdun, and asked Song Lian to write a commemorative article and carve it on a stone tablet to remember it.