The Historical Origin of Taoist Temple in Shanghai Chenghuang Temple

Pan Yunduan, the owner of Yuyuan Garden, was the son of Paine, a senior minister of Ming Dynasty. In the thirty-eighth year of Jiajing (1559), Pan Yunduan began to build a garden on a large vegetable field in the west of Shichuntang, a family in the northwest corner of Shanghai Chenghuang Temple (now Wu Tong Road and East Mayuanlong, Anren Street). In the forty-first year of Jiajing, Pan Yunyun went abroad to be an official and had no time to build a garden. In his Yu Garden, he said, "Hang up!"

Yu Yuan Garden

For twenty years, I have done it again and again, but it has no result. "

In the fifth year of Wanli (1577), Pan Yunyun returned to his hometown after being dismissed from the post of Chief Secretary of Sichuan, and then devoted himself to the management and expansion of the garden. "Every year, it is all Harunosuke that cultivates and harvests", and hired Zhang Nanyang, a famous gardener, as the designer and overlapping mountains. From then on, the bigger the garden, the wider the pool. It was completed at the end of Wanli, with a total area of more than 70 mu. The whole park has pavilions, winding paths, strange peaks and rocks, ponds and streams, towering old trees, large scale and beautiful scenery.

The middle and late Ming Dynasty coincided with the heyday of Jiangnan literati gardening, and there were thousands of private gardens near Shanghai. The scenery, layout and scale of Yu Garden are no less than those of Suzhou Humble Administrator's Garden and Taicang Garden. Shanyuan

Pan Yunduan noticed in Yu Yuan Ji that "Yu Yuan was written on the plaque to please the elderly". "Yu" means "Antai" and "Peace". It shows that the purpose of Pan Yunduan's garden construction is to let his parents spend the year in the garden. However, due to the long delay, Paine died when the garden was just built, and the Yuyuan Garden actually became a place where Pan Yunyun lived in seclusion and enjoyed himself. Pan Yunduan often holds banquets in the garden, invites fairy goddesses to tell fortune, celebrate birthdays and worship ancestors, writes songs and books, plays cricket, flies kites, buys and sells antique calligraphy and paintings, and even punishes servants with shackles. Monks and nuns, fortune tellers, prostitutes, three religions and nine streams, as well as diners frequently go in and out of Yu Garden. The family business has declined due to long-term profligacy and gardening expenses. When Pan Yunduan was alive, he made a living by selling fields and antiques. After Pan Yunduan died, the garden became increasingly deserted. At the end of Ming Dynasty, Pan Shi Yuyuan Garden once belonged to Zhang Zhaolin (son-in-law of Pan Yunduan), a member of the General Political Department. In the early Qing Dynasty, Yu Garden changed its owners several times, and its address was also divided by foreign names. In the early years of Kangxi, some gentry in Shanghai converted several halls of Yu Garden into Qinghe Academy, dedicated to the memorial of Zhang Shengqu, the magistrate of Songjiang. Before the academy was built, Zhang Shengqu was demoted and stopped working immediately. Gardens and pavilions in the garden are strewn at random, grass is full of ponds, and some places have become vegetable fields with beautiful scenery.