Fengdu, a famous cultural city since ancient times, is a famous historical and cultural town with Chinese characteristics. It used to be a small town, where there are many legends of ghosts and gods. So, how did the name of Fengdu ghost town come from? What are the myths and legends of Fengdu?
The formation of Fengdu ghost town
One is Taoism. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Zhang Daoling founded wudoumi sect, which absorbed a lot of witchcraft and became the later ghost sect. In 198 A.D., his grandson Zhang Lu established "pingduzhi" in Fengdu, which became the center of Taoism. Later, Taoism also called it 'Luofeng mountain', saying that it was the ghost capital ruled by the great emperor of Beiyin, who was the seventh level central God of Taoism and specialized in hell. Li Daoyuan, a geographer of the Northern Wei Dynasty, named Fengdu as the 45th of the 72 blessed places of Taoism in his notes to the water classic.
The second is the theory of the ghost Emperor (TU Bo): when human society was still in the ancient times, due to the underdeveloped science, it was unable to make a correct explanation when encountering some natural phenomena, believing that all these were dominated by ghosts and gods. Ba and Shu are two tribes dominated by Diqiang. In the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, Fengdu was once the capital of Bazi. With the continuous exchanges between Bashu and Bashu, politics, economy, culture, thoughts and customs permeated each other, resulting in a common religious God -- Tubo, which was the first generation of ghost emperor of Bashu GUI nationality. The ghost emperor lives in the Youdu. By 2018, Fengdu still has the remains of Youdu.
The third is the Buddhist theory of "king of hell". Yama, originally transliterated from Sanskrit, was the king of the underworld in ancient Indian mythology. Buddhism follows this saying and calls it the devil of hell. It is said that he had 18 judges in charge of 18 hells. According to the Yinyi of all scriptures, "King Yama" is the king of equality, who can treat crimes equally.
The fourth is the theory of yin and Wang Chengxian, which is the most popular one in Fengdu. As early as around 270 A.D., Ge Hong of Jin Dynasty said Yin and Wang Chengxian in his biography of immortals. It is said that in the Han Dynasty, there were two alchemists, one named Yin Changsheng, who was the great grandfather of empress Liu Zhao, and the other named Wang Fangping, who was an official in the middle of the court. Because they were dissatisfied with the social situation, Shuangshuang first went to Fengdu for cultivation, and in the early years of Wei Qinglong, they became immortals. In the Tang Dynasty, they became the two people of Yin.
In addition, the successive ruling class continued to deliberately exaggerate, and the literati and officials described it through novels, poems, travel notes and inscriptions, such as journey to the west, strange tales of Liaozhai, complete biography of Shuoyue, Western records and so on. Therefore, a more comprehensive ghost city was formed in Fengdu. It has experienced more than 2000 years of history from fantasy to material object. It has organically combined Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and Chinese ghost culture; combined Bayu culture, Central Plains culture and foreign culture; combined folk myth and legend imagination with reality; combined architecture, sculpture, painting and other art forms to form the world-famous' ghost city culture '.