Shimen Tower in Jingxing?
"Shimen Tower" is the doorway facing the street. When the Jingxing villagers built houses and surrounded their houses, they attached great importance to the construction and decoration of the "Shimen Tower" because it represented the life style of a family. According to "Huan Yu Ji", Jingxing is "high on all sides, with the center lower, as deep as a well, and as deep as a kitchen stove; Yan and Zhao called the ridge a play, and it looks like a well when viewed from below, so the Jingxing is a place surrounded by mountains on all sides. High-quality granite deposits, "relying on mountains and water," have formed a unique folk street gate custom that uses granite as raw material and integrates architecture and stone carving art.
The land in Jingxing is tight, and most of the villagers’ residences are courtyard houses. The "Shimen Tower" is usually built at the left end of the temporary house, which is called the "Shunzhi Gate", or it is built in the middle, called the "Main Gate". However, due to the natural limitations of facing the street, some become street gates at other locations, and the villagers regard them as "crooked gates". "Slope", "Ghost Meridian Gate", such doorways cannot be built as "Shimen Tower", they can only be built with the characteristics of "shabby, dilapidated and casual", otherwise it will "lead to disaster". The "Shimen Tower" is generally higher than all the houses. The villagers believe that this way they can hide their "good fortune" and "the door is locked and passers-by can't see it", so it is also called the "Gaomen Tower".
The entire building of "Shimen Tower" is built from one stone to the top without any other materials. Skilled craftsmen use only their hands to "chisel, grind, carve and carve" stones of various specifications. Each stone can weigh more than ten kilograms and weigh up to three or four hundred kilograms. During the renovation, the craftsmen erected an artistic "Shimen Tower" like "children playing with building blocks".
"Shimen Tower" is mainly composed of "hidden peak, hooked door, door pier, eaves stone, stone plaque" and so on. Every part of it is a beautiful piece of folk art, whether it is the "men pier drum" that gives people a sense of stability, the lifelike "Peacock Playing Peony" or "Mandarin Duck Playing Lotus" in the hidden peak; The "turning lion", or the "climbing magpie" that seems to hear the "chirping" call; whether it is the eagle on the door to "ward off evil spirits", the humorous "two birds returning to the nest", or the "birds returning to their nests" that entrust the owner's wishes for the family. "Prosperity, longevity and health", "Purple Qi Welcomes the Door", etc., all give people a beautiful enjoyment.
The carving art of "Shimen Tower" can be divided into two types, one is "high relief", this kind of work Rugged and bold, with a strong three-dimensional feel, it can produce realistic artistic effects; the other is "bas-relief", which expresses delicacy, bright lines, and flickers, like a beautiful "hazy poem" from the composition point of view. Artists still adhere to the conceptual characteristics of traditional Chinese paintings that "there must be drama in the painting so that you will not get tired of it after viewing it a hundred times."
Although "Shimen Tower" has a short history, it is "earthly but not earthy". The artistic effect of "vulgar, flashy and realistic, solemn and generous" has become more and more popular among the local people and has become a new type of street custom.