Ｕｎｉｑｕｅ Ｆｅａｔｕｒｅｓ ｏｆ Ｙｕｅ Ｆｅｉ Ｔｅｍｐｌｅ ｉｎ Ｔａｎｇｙｉｎ

Ｇｏｎｇ　Ｇｕａｎｗｅｉ

Of all the Yue Fei memorials across the country, the temple in his hometown Tangyin County, Henan Province has five unique features that other temples dont have.

Five Kneeling Figures

In other Yue Fei memorials across the country, only four people who framed the great general and were responsible for his death are found guilty by history and the people. They are sentenced to kneel in the temple forever. But in the memorial in Tangyin, Wang Jun kneels there in addition to the big four conspirators. Wang Jun was a local of Tangyin County and knew some kongfu. In 1136, he joined General Yues army when the general merged local military forces. For lacking any military prowess, Wang did not get promoted and remained an ordinary soldier. Four years later Wang Jun sold himself to Qin Gui and Zhang Jun and fabricated a case in which he and a few friends accused General Zhang Xian and Yue Yun of a conspiracy against the state. The two generals were arrested. Yue Fei was arrested as Zhang was his subordinate and Yue Yun was his son. Wang Jun has been cursed by the whole nation for fabricating stories, betraying his commander for personal gains, and framing the loyal people.

All the five figures are bronze statues, their faces dirty, their hair unkempt, their chests bared and their hands tied behind their backs. They kneel with their heads bowed, looking sinister and ugly. Even today some visitors spit on them.

The Yue Family Honored

The Yue Fei memorial in Tangyin County is a large facility where a lot of people are commemorated. Yue Feis great grandparents, grandparents and parents are honored in special halls. There is a separate hall in honor of Yue Feis mother who tattooed “Absolute Loyalty to State” on his sons back. Yue Feis son Yue Yun is honored in one hall. Another hall is dedicated to the memories of Yue Feis other four sons.

Shi Quan, a guard at the royal palace, tried in 1150 to assassinate the Prime Minister Qin Gui who was the man behind the conspiracy of killing Yue Fei. The assassination failed and Shi Quan was executed. Today, a statue of Shi Quan stands in the temple. Beside this statue stands a statue of Huai Shun, a prison guard. After Yue Fei was killed, Huai Shun stole the body and buried it in the North Hill. He put a jade ring under the back of the general and planted two orange trees on the grave to mark the burial ground. A few years later he revealed the secret to his son. Twenty-one years after the generals death, a new emperor ordered to rehabilitate the wronged general and wanted to find out the body of the general. The son of Huai Shun reported the grave. Yue Fei was reburied at todays site and a temple was built.

Yue Ke, the grandson of Yue Fei, is also honored at the temple. He wrote two books in altogether 58 volumes to clarify his grandfathers name so that his grandfathers name would not stay wronged in times to come. Historians view the two books highly valuable because they keep truthful records of the dynasty.

Yue Xiaoe, the daughter of Yue Fei, receives special commemoration at the temple. Her hall has three rooms. After her father was thrown into prison, she tried hard to appeal to the emperor, but she was stopped by guards at the royal palace. She was so angry that she carried a silver bottle and killed herself by jumping into a well. People sympathized with her. In Zhejiang and Henan provinces, she was known as Miss Silver Bottle. It is said that a lot of elegiac couplets were received at her funeral. Some of these couplets can still be seen in the hall.

Yue Feis Handwriting

The temple keeps steles more than any other Yue Fei memorial does across the country. What makes these steles unique is the Yue Feis handwritings kept and treasured by the people in his hometown. Some carvings are his handwritten short phrases declaring his heroic spirit and loyalty to the state. But most unique is the 37-stele handwriting of Zhuge Liangs “The Second Memorial to the King Before Setting Off for War”.

Yue Fei copied this famous text in the autumn of 1138 on his way northward to recapture the lost land. He stayed at Zhuge Liangs Temple one night as it rained. In the evening he took a stroll in the temple and saw a carved text of Zhuge Liang. More than 1,000-year-old text echoed in the generals heart. When a Taoist requested him to write an inscription in memory of his visit to the temple, Yue copied the historical document on paper. The handwriting was later converted onto steles. Hundreds of years later the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty Zhu Yuanzhang read Yues calligraphy and commented that the style of the generals calligraphy reflected his integrity.

Yue Feis Poetic Answer to Challenge

Yue Fei is also known as a poet. His best poems are in numerous anthologies of the Song poetry. However, the temple in his hometown has a poem presumably written by Yue Fei on a very special occasion. As the story goes, after winning a few battles in his northern expedition, Yue Fei became famed. Qin Gui hated him and said to the emperor that the general had no classical education at all. In February, 1136, the general was invited to attend a royal banquet. Qin Gui and his fellows asked Yue Fei to write a poem on the spot in celebration of the military victory. Qin Gui said Yue must used a requested rhyme. Yue Fei did not hesitate and wrote a poem that describes the difference between the frontier military life and the life back at the court and invites these present at the banquet to visit the frontier and compose poems on the battlefield.

His hometown people firmly believe that it was written by Yue Fei, although the poem is little known anywhere else.

The Poem Stele Reveals Truth

In the 1960s some Chinese scholars questioned if Yue Fei was really the author of the famous “The River All Red”. Xia Chengtao, a professor with Hangzhou University, contended that the poem was a fake in the name of Yue Fei written in the late Ming Dynasty. Mr. Gu Sifan wrote two arguments, published in the literary supplementary of Zhejiang Daily, against the fake theory. Professor Xia cited history to support his argument. The debate came to stop when the Cultural Revolution broke out.

A poem stele has been found in the Yue Fei temple in Tangyin in recent years. The inscription was done by a scholar named Wang Xishu in 1458, more than 100 years earlier than the previously earliest evidence of the existence of the poem. The new stele proves that the poem was popular before the late Ming Dynasty and that it was not faked in the late Ming Dynasty. □