Jiaozi Mountain (also known as Jiaozishan)

Jiaozi Mountain (Jiaozishan)

Jiaozi Mountain (Jiaozishan)

The story of Wang Yangming teaching local children is widely told in the Mopan River area near Jiaozi Mountain. Wang Yangming frequently traveled to the countryside, visiting farmers, and wherever he went, he built good rapport with the locals. Upon learning that Mr. Yangming was both the magistrate of Longchang Post and a teacher, the villagers requested that he teach their children. He readily accepted. Since there was no classroom in the village, Wang Yangming held classes in the courtyards of local homes, using an eight-immortal table as his teaching desk. He copied the earliest versions of the "Hundred Family Surnames," "Thousand Character Classic," and selected excerpts from the "Five Classics" onto locally made coarse paper, relying on his remarkable memory. He then taught these to the villagers. Being from Yue (a region in eastern China), Wang Yangming faced communication challenges due to the local dialect. To overcome this, he taught the "Hundred Family Surnames" and "Thousand Character Classic" through sung melodies in the form of Yue-style ballads, making them easier for the villagers to understand and remember. Because Wang Yangming arrived at Jiaozi Mountain by sedan chair and mentioned that if time allowed, he would establish a rural academy there, the locals named the spot where he stopped to give impromptu lectures “Jiaozi Mountain,” which is also called “Sedan Chair Mountain.”