On the evening of June 5, the old arch of Wuhan University, located at the intersection of Luojia Mountain at the intersection of Hongshan District, Wuhan City, was damaged when it was forcibly passed by a super-high vehicle. A large piece was hit in the middle of the archway, the steel bars were exposed, and the word "li" in the six-character seal script "Graining, Science, Technology, Agriculture and Medicine" has been completely destroyed. As an important part of the fifth batch of national key cultural relics protection units (hereinafter referred to as "National Five") "Early Architecture of Wuhan University", the old archway of Wuda University was damaged and caused great concern. When was this cultural relic building built and why was it not on the campus of Wuhan University? It has experienced and witnessed the historical changes of a university and a city, and what kind of protection problems is it facing?
Not "school gate" but "street sign"
In 1929, the newly established National Wuhan University, after repeated investigations by Li Siguang, Ye Yage and others, decided to select a new school site in the area of Luojiashan and Shizishan on the east bank of the east lake in the eastern suburb of Wuchang City at that time. Renamed "Luojia Mountain". At that time, the area of Luojia Mountain was very desolate. Tongshan was so sparsely populated that transportation was extremely inconvenient. The only road from Wuchang Dadongmen to the east (now Wuluo Road-Luoyu Road) is about 3 miles away from the new campus. Therefore, the school cooperated with the provincial construction department to build a new road connecting Wuluo Road and the new campus from the street entrance to the northeast to facilitate the construction of the new school building and the future communication between teachers and students. This car-accessible road was completed in 1930, and principal Wang Shijie named it "University Road".
Although it is called "University Road", most of the sections of this road are not in the campus of the University of Wu, but are the municipal roads of Wuchang. At that time, the University of Wuda passed through the university road at the border of the campus. Instead of building a school gate, it decided to build a wooden archway at the entrance of the southern end of the university road. The reason why the archway was built here is because it is the intersection of University Road and Wuluo Road, and it is easy for people and vehicles to come and go. Therefore, this archway is actually not the "school gate" of Wuda University in the sense of today, but more like a "street sign", which indicates that the road will lead to Wuhan University.
The arch was completed in 1931 and is a three-story wooden archway structure painted with paint. The archway has a large span between the Ming Dynasty and the hanging name "National Wuhan University" is a six-character regular script plaque, and there is also a hollow money pattern. From the old photos, we can see that the front and back sides of the wooden arch at that time were all the same text hanging, namely the school name inscription plaque. Although this archway is colorful, its pillars are slender, top-heavy, and there is no stalk, so the overall structure is relatively fragile. Sure enough, in the year after its completion, it was destroyed by a strong wind.
In 1934, Wuda decided to rebuild a new archway at the original site of the wooden archway at Jiekou. This time, the school learned the previous lesson and decided to switch to a stronger and more reliable reinforced concrete structure. The new archway is a three-story sky arch, similar to the Nanjing Zhongshan Lingboaifang built earlier, but the overall style is more concise and simple. The whole archway is decorated with turquoise gray water brush stone, and the eaves are decorated with green glazed tiles, which is consistent with the architectural style of the main school buildings on the Luojia campus.
It is worth noting that after the completion of the new archway, the characters engraved on the back of the new archway are no longer the same school names as the front, but are replaced by six Chinese characters in the seal script: "Wenyu (French) Science, Technology, Agriculture and Medicine". These six characters are the six colleges established by the National Wuhan University during the Republic of China. However, in 1934 when the archway was established, Wuda University only built four major colleges, such as the College of Arts, Law, Science, and Engineering. The College of Agriculture has just established a preparatory office and has not yet recruited students. The Agricultural College was formally established in 1936, but it was cancelled due to the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War. It was not until the victory of the Anti-Japanese War that Wuda resumed the College of Agriculture and established a medical school. In 1934, the University of Wuhan University engraved the names of the six colleges on the archway, which undoubtedly showed the school's ambition and also showed the society's goals.
Historical heritage spanning over 80 years
Although this archway was not built at the border of the University of Wuhan University, but for a long time, the University of Wuhan University did not build a real "school gate", so teachers and students alumni and Wuhan citizens have always regarded this archway as the "school gate" of Wuhan University. Treat it. Before today's construction of roads such as Bayi Road and Luoshi North Road, the archway is still the only way from Wuchang City to Luojia Mountain.
With the development of urban construction, the old archway and "University Road" (later renamed "Luojia Mountain Road") built in the wilderness were gradually surrounded by urban buildings. In 1992, Wuhan University decided to build a new school gate at the intersection of Bayi Road and Luojia Mountain Road, that is, the southwestern border of the Wuhan University campus, to greet the following year's celebration. After soliciting and discussing the plan, the design of the new school gate decided to highlight the historical heritage. In the flower bed in the center of the school gate, an old archway at the street entrance was copied in equal proportions, and motor lanes and sidewalks were arranged on both sides of the flower bed. At the same time, the guard rooms on the east and west sides mimic the roof style of the Humanities and Science Museum (Yifu Building) completed in 1990.
It can be said that this new school gate is the result of the fusion of old and new architectural styles of Wuda University. Among them, this new archway, while imitating the old archway as a whole, has also undergone some changes, such as the addition of embossed patterns and Xumi seats on the pole stone. The amount of the plaque was changed to a marble background, etc., and the overall style was more refined.
In 2012, due to the construction of the Bayi Road Tunnel, the new archway of the University of Wuhan University was demolished, and the University of Wuhan University also rebuilt the new school square in order to welcome the celebration. The core element of the new school gate is still the old archway where the street entrance was reconstructed. This time it was enlarged to a certain extent, and it was not placed in the flower bed, but directly placed in the center of the square. Visitors can get close to it. The author once participated in the collection of the school door design plan at that time, and the school made a clear request that the school door design must retain the core element of the old arch. After more than 80 years of time, the old archway has changed from a simple "direction sign" to an important symbol bearing the culture of Luojia Mountain University, and it has been popular among generations of Wuhan University alumni and Wuhan citizens Too. Master Wu students even conducted many interesting "attachments" to the archway's architecture, such as the four octagonal prisms, which was interpreted as that Wuda welcomes students from "all directions".
In fact, the old archway of Wuda University not only became an important landmark architectural symbol at Wuda University, but also produced an overflow effect of architectural style and culture in Wuhan. The architectural shape of the three green glazed tiles with soaring arches has become the object of imitation by many other units in Wuhan. Located in the heart of East Lake, the Huguang Pavilion (formerly known as "Zhongzheng Pavilion"), also built in 1934, is also a reinforced concrete green roof Chinese retro-style building. On the roadside of the East Lake Green Road in front of the Pavilion, there is also a archway, the architectural style is highly similar to the gate of the University of Wuhan. The gate of Shiyang Martyrs Cemetery at the southwestern foothills of Hongshan Mountain in Wuchang is also a three-story skylit green glazed tile archway. These archways located near the East Lake Scenic Area, their architectural style, more or less inherited from their ancestors-Wuda old archway in Jiedaokou.
Urgent need to improve the protection of cultural relics
In June 2001, the State Council announced the list of "National Five", among which "the important historical sites and representative buildings in modern times" include the item "Early Architecture of Wuhan University" with the reference number 497. Also among the "National Five", there are No. 475 "Wei Ming Lake Yanyuan Building", No. 476 "Tsinghua University Early Building" and No. 479 "Northeast University Old Site", which is the earliest listed in China A group of modern university buildings for the key cultural relics protection units of the country.
The "Early Architecture of Wuhan University" listed in the "National Five" has a total of 15 buildings, including the National Wuhan University Archway, the Faculty of Letters, the Faculty of Law, the Faculty of Science, the College of Engineering, the Library, the Song Qing Stadium, the male dormitory, and the student dining room And the auditorium, Huazhong Hydraulic Engineering Laboratory, Banshan Lu, Liuyi Memorial Pavilion, Zhou Enlai's former residence, Guo Moruo's former residence, Li Da's former residence. Among them, except for Li Da's former residence, the remaining 14 buildings were built during the Republic of China period.
Of these 15 national security units, 14 are located on the campus of today's Wuhan University, only one archway of the National Wuhan University, a few miles away from the solitary campus. For this reason, the situation of this building is quite different from the other 14 buildings on campus. When the school buildings on the campus have been properly protected and repaired, the old archway in the downtown of the street is not only unknown, but its surrounding environment and protection status are also very disproportionate to the status of "national security". Before the time of this serious collision, the doorpost of the old archway Mingjian landed on the ground, and there have been many car rubs and many injuries. The oil stains generated by the surrounding restaurant stores have continued to stain the surface of the old archway for many years.
Due to the special location of Wuda Archway outside the campus, there are some difficulties in the protection of its cultural relics. There are cases of cultural relics like this in some other cities in China. The most similar is that the two old arches of Guangzhou National Sun Yat-sen University, also built in the 1930s, are also located outside the campus and once faced an awkward situation.
During the adjustment of the faculties in the 1950s, Sun Yat-sen University was relocated to the original Lingnan University campus, while the original Sun Yat-sen University Shipai campus was divided and used by the newly established South China Institute of Technology and South China Agricultural College. The original National Sun Yat-sen University archway in Wushan was also smeared with the words “Serve the People”. In 2014, part of the cultural relics in Guangzhou was restored to the old archway, and the words "National Sun Yat-sen University" and "Ge Zhicheng are repairing Qi Zhicheng" written by the principal Zou Lu on the original archway were restored, and the archway itself was properly repaired. In 2016, the school gate archway rebuilt on the campus of Sun Yat-sen University was immediately restored to its original appearance.
The old archway of National Wuhan University at the street entrance has stood here for more than 80 years. It is not only a landmark of a famous Chinese university in modern times, but also witnessed the vicissitudes of the heroic city of Wuhan in the past more than 80 years. Because of the remoteness of Luojia Mountain in the past, it had to build a "street sign" on the side of the road to guide the road. Today, it is among the most prosperous downtown in Wuchang. This huge environmental change is one of the rapid development of China's urbanization process. miniature.
After the collision, some enthusiastic netizens and citizens made suggestions, hoping to relocate and protect the old archway. Not to mention that as a national security unit, the legal procedures for its migration are complicated, and this suggestion itself is also undesirable to the author. The original site of immovable cultural relics itself carries important historical information. It should not have been easily moved for reasons other than force majeure. Properly protecting the old archway of Wuda University is imminent, and the fundamental way should be to completely renovate the surrounding environment and return the historical dignity of this heritage building.
Author: Liu Wenxiang