Whenever someone asks me:

"Where is your hometown?"

I'd love to answer him, "Little Sand! ”

But I'm afraid that others will ask again:

"Where's Xiaosha?"

Then he answered:

"Hometown Zhoushan".

That's it, there will still be people asking:

"Where is Zhoushan?"

I have always believed that the so-called hometown should be the location of the township where I was born or grew up and lived.

When I was a child, the sands were big enough that I couldn't name many of my villages.

I remember that meeting in 1976, when I lined up in the commune auditorium to bid farewell to the statue of the great leader, I realized that there were so many people in the township.

Xiaosha is located in the northwest of Zhoushan Island, surrounded by mountains on three sides, and the Changbai River or Changbai Waterway is located in the north.

At present, Xiaosha in the concept of administrative division includes the districts and towns of Changbai Township and Dasha Township.

I have consulted a lot of historical materials, and the largest area of Xiaosha District in the administrative division is more than 20 years before and after liberation, and Xiaosha District has been set up, with jurisdiction over half of Zhoushan Island and 11 townships under its jurisdiction.

The geographical concept of Xiaosha is the mountain that extends south along the mountains on both sides between the small mountain where I was born and the Maozhi fishing team on the opposite side.

In ancient times, it was also called Xiaoshaao.

Before there was no human activity, the tide of the Changbai River should have been able to rise all the way to the innermost part of the gentle mountain area, where the small market town of Xiaosha Street is now located.

There must have been a sandy beach there.

And I don't understand, "Why does Xiaosha, located in the northwest corner, rule half of Zhoushan Island?" ”

Based on my affection and curiosity for my hometown, I have been searching for it.

Because of the 200-year sea ban in the Ming Dynasty, the history and civilization of Zhoushan have a dynastic characteristic.

I finally retrieved some information, Xiaosha was an important Buddha place in Zhoushan before the sea ban, and there used to be a very large temple, which was more famous than Putuo Mountain.

It is said that at that time, all the famous ministers and high-ranking officials, as long as they arrived in Zhoushan, must first go there to worship and incense.

There are still remnants of the ancient road from Dinghai County to Xiaosha, the most famous is an ancient bridge between Ma'ao and Xiaosha Siling.

When we were in middle school, we went to the martyrs' cemetery in the county seat to sweep the tombs, walked through the ancient road, and there were pavilions on the side of the road for people to rest.

According to the chronicles, in the middle of the Tang Dynasty (713-741), the figure of a high monk appeared in the quiet bay full of Shage, saying that he was the first person to enter Xiaosha.

His legal name is Hui Chao, who was previously the abbot of Ningbo Tiantong Temple, and once found a stone Buddha by the sea and offered it in the meditation room.

One night, Hui Chao dreamed that the stone Buddha said to himself:

"Send me to Yongdong Jiufeng Mountain."

So he took two apprentices, holding the stone Buddha, boarded a boat from Ningbo, and came to the foot of Xiaosha Jiufeng Mountain along the coastal road.

He and his disciples built a thatched hermitage in the cedar rock of Jiufeng Mountain, and since then, Jiufeng Mountain has become a holy place for all beings to look up to.

The morning bell and dusk drum reverberated in the waves and smoke trees, becoming the first ray of heaven in the small sand.

Hui Chao, who walked into Xiaosha, was at least 120 years earlier than the Japanese monk Hui Ye who walked into Putuo Mountain.

Later, in order to facilitate the villagers to make incense, the temple was moved to the small sandy boundary at the foot of the mountain.

In the first year of Song Zhiping (1064), the imperial court gave the amount of auspiciousness, and since then the auspicious temple has become famous.

Huichao's successors are Zhen Dabei, Wenzhen, Zide Huihui, Faning Zen Master, Zigong Zen Master, Weng Jingyi Zen Master, Ziyuan Zen Master, Shouyan Zhichang Zen Master and other generations of high monks to expand the Kichijoji Temple into a "layer view of the Jie Pavilion, splendid...... and Tiantong, Xue Dou Xiang Jie" (see Yuan Dade's "Changzhou Prefecture Atlas") of the famous temple.

Villagers say that in order to build Kichijoji, the monks lined up to cross the Great Zhouling to the Ma'ao kiln factory, and handed over the bricks and tiles to the Kichijoji Temple.

You can imagine the grandeur of the temple when it was first built.

The places to which Kosha now belongs, such as Jiyi-ri, Changmon-ri, Teraki-ri, Hanahall, Yokoji-ha, Sekbut-an, and Taryubashi, were originally built within Kichijoji.

I vaguely remember when I was a child, my mother took me to her grandmother's house on Xiaosha Street, which was a large family with a floor and an attic, and the dim sum rice cakes were very particular.

The mother, whose name was Grandma, once said that there was a big temple there.

In other words, most of the current Xiaoshaji town is the temple boundary of Kichijoji. For example, the flower hall is the back garden of Kichijoji.

During the Daitoku period, Kichijoji reached 4,515 acres of land, 616 acres of land, 7,343 acres of mountains, and more than 1,000 monks, an unprecedented scale.

Shi Hao, the prime minister of the Song Dynasty, once wrote a poem praising Kichijoji:

Chaozong Wanpai,

Yintao is all in Dongming;

Xiu Jiufeng,

The golden brake is suddenly marked on the other side.

Unfortunately, Kichijoji was destroyed by an unknown fire in the early years of the Ming Dynasty after more than 600 years of prosperity.

There are many theories about this fire, and the most popular one is the following version:

Princess Daming once came to Kichijoji to burn incense. In order to welcome the princess of Daming, the abbot of Kichijoji mobilized monks and Xiaosha villagers to pave stone slabs all the way from the pier to Kichijoji.

The foreman of the paving contract changed the horizontal slate (short slate) to a straight slate (long slate) without authorization, and deducted the slate to fill his own pocket.

And the evil monk of Kichijoji is greedy for the beauty of the princess, and skillfully sets up an organ to hide the princess in the inner road of the temple.

Shengyan was furious and ordered Kichijoji to be burned.

The thousand-year-old temple was destroyed.

I've been thinking: what was destroyed by the fire was not only a temple, but also the maritime culture and civilization with obvious Xiaosha regional characteristics after 600 years of development before the Ming Dynasty's sea ban!

In addition to the temple, Xiaosha also went out of the good people who asked for the people's lives, one by one.

During the Hongwu period of the Ming Dynasty, due to the one-sided speech of the minister Tang He, Zhu Yuanzhang, the Taizu of the Ming Dynasty, issued an order to move the residents of 46 islands of Changguo (now Zhoushan) into the mainland.

People who do not want to leave their homes are fleeing in all directions, and they are temporarily displaced, and people are panicked.

Wang Guozuo believed that the rise and fall of Wengzhou (present-day Zhoushan) was related to the security of the maritime frontier, and that pirates harassed the coastal areas by abandoning the rules of the maritime frontiers, and that thieves in the interior were also prone to wandering the seas. The restoration of Wengzhou is actually to protect the hinterland.

Wang Guozuo went through all the hardships, only went to Jinling (now Nanjing) to meet Emperor Taizu, and urged Chen Changguo not to move and Wengzhou not to abandon the reason, and proposed to leave the villagers and officers and soldiers to guard together, which was adopted by Taizu.

Wang Guozuo returned to his hometown to spread the will of Taizu, and the officials who handled the sea ban thought that Guozuo had spread rumors, so he was captured and sent back to Jinling, and was released with the consent of Taizu.

More than 8,000 people in Changguo were able to live and work in peace and contentment.

The people admired him, respectfully called him "Mr. Fu Weng", and built "Fu Weng Hall" in his residence to commemorate.

I slowly understood that Xiaosha is a place with a story, with deep and developed humanistic roots, waiting for us to excavate, understand, and experience.

No wonder the famous writer Sanmao, when he came to Xiaosha, he held a handful of the countryside, knelt on the land where his ancestors were born, and repeatedly chattered with tears:

My hometown is Xiaosha, and my roots are here!