Ming-Qing Wharf of Hukou
- Cultural Highlights
- Source：HUKOU
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Shipping on the Yellow River was greatly prosperous in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.Due to the natural barriers of the Hukou Waterfall, it often took several days for passing ships to load and unload goods, repair ships, burn incense for praying, and accommodation transactions. Thereupon, a water and land wharf was formed at Longwangchan on the bank of Hukou Waterfall. When it was greatly prosperous at Longwangchan, there were nearly a hundred business houses, hundreds of cave dwellings, and three streets up and down, row upon row in unique style seen from far. At that time, there were money houses, pawn shops, wine shops, restaurants, inns, salt shops, dyeing workshops, leather goods shops, grocery stores, pharmacies and other all kinds of shops. It was especially prosperous during the Qianlong period in Qing Dynasty. Moreover, there are two rallies each year in spring and autumn. Businessmen from various provinces and villagers from far and near gather here. Some of Longwangchan's business houses also invite theater troupes to perform on the stage of Dragon King Temple or Horse King Temple to create an atmosphere for the exchange of materials. The scholar Jia Yushi of the Qing Dynasty described in "The Ode to Longwangchan" in this way: This land, mighty mountain, overlapped in ten thousands of ren, grand river water, a thousand layers of waves…it is adventurous as natural moat, when boats arrive here, isn’t water abandoned but landing? It is a star-collection of passenger ships, connected like fish passing through, with a forest of shops, endless like a wild goose row, and with main roads in east and west, connecting north and south. In spring and autumn, none is as good as this place, the water and land wharf, where pursuing benefits is like breaking branches, with recruiting vagrants from all places...Although the land is small, it wins the origin of Jingyang; it looks like a projectile, and it surpasses the eight rivers of Chang'an." This shows the prosperity of the time.
In the 1940s, with the completion and service of the Jing-Bao Railway (Beijing-Baotou) and the North-South Highway, and the wharves and ferry crossings in Hukou were militarily controlled by Yan Xishan during the Anti-Japanese War, the water transport in the midstream of the Yellow River gradually was desolate. Afterwards, sailing on dry land gradually withdrew from the stage of history. After the 1950s and 1960s, the number of merchant ships coming down from upstream significantly decreased, and in the 1970s and 1980s, there were very few left. In the early 1990s, only one or two boats passed by occasionally a year, but the owner no longer hired ordinary people to pull the boat. Instead, he hired a tractor or car and the boat was pulled to "Tekou" without taking the time of a bag of cigarettes. The spectacular scene of "everyone shoulders their shoulders with the young and old roaring hard and the gorge full of horns" have never been seen again. Longwangchan Wharf has lost the prosperous scene of the past, leaving only rows of cave dwellings narrating the past stories.
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Sailing on Dry Land
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Banjuan Performance