Filial Piety Platform

Filial Piety Platform

Filial Piety Platform, located in Dongsun Gully, Changhai Village, Baofan Town, Pengxi County. The Qianlong-era (1736–1795) edition of the *Pengxi County Annals* records that in the first year of Guangzheng during the Later Shu dynasty of the Five Dynasties period (938), Cheng Chongya, also known as Mengzong, had an ailing mother who longed for bamboo shoots in the depths of winter. With no way to obtain them, he went to the forest, embraced a bamboo tree, and wept—until the ground split open, revealing several bamboo shoots. He took them home for his mother, and after eating them, her illness was cured. It is said that this is the story of “Mengzong Weeping for Bamboo,” one of the Twenty-Four Paragons of Filial Piety. In the 20th year of Guangzheng (957), in December, a “Filial Piety Platform” was built to honor Cheng Mengzong. In the 51st year of Qianlong (1786), Zhang Songsun, prefect of Tongchuan, visited the site and felt the original name did not properly convey its meaning. Together with county magistrate Xie Taichen, he donated silver to renovate it and renamed it the “Filial Piety Platform.” The site still remains today. Qing dynasty officials such as Wu Shuchen and Zhang Songsun, prefects of Tongchuan, as well as magistrates Zhu Yunjun and Song Jiazheng, and poets like Tu Qingyun and He Zhongquan, all composed poems about the Filial Piety Platform.