Ancient Sage Temple

　　Ancient Sage Temple was originally named Tiger Roar Temple and was built during the Longqing era of the Ming Dynasty (1567–1572). In the 49th year of the Kangxi reign of the Qing Dynasty (1710), when the temple was being rebuilt, an ancient "Hong Bell" and "fragmented stone tablet" from the Longqing era were unearthed, leading to its renaming as Ancient Sage Temple. It was reconstructed again in the first year of the Xianfeng reign (1851). The temple faces south and is situated on a north-south axis, with structures along the central line including the Grand Mountain Gate, Ox King Hall, Mahavira Hall, Guanyin Hall, and the Goodness Hall. Flanking these are over ten auxiliary halls and side rooms, forming a complex quadrangle layout, covering a total area of 3,375 square meters. The temple features intricately carved beams and painted rafters, upturned eaves with fine craftsmanship, and holds significant cultural and artistic value.

　　In July 1939, under the support of the Southern Bureau of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, the renowned educator Tao Xingzhi resolved to save the nation from peril through education and founded Yucai School here. Tao served as the principal himself, establishing seven departments: Nature, Society, Literature, Painting, Music, Drama, and Dance. He hired prominent scholars and experts of the time such as Jian Bozan, He Luting, and Guo Moruo to teach at the school, while esteemed figures like Xia Yan, Tian Han, Yang Hansheng, Liu Baiyu, and Sha Ting gave lectures or held special seminars.

　　On September 22, 1940, Zhou Enlai and Deng Yingchao visited Ancient Sage Temple to meet Yucai School’s teachers and students and wrote inscriptions. Zhou’s inscription read: “Each generation surpasses the last,” while Deng’s said: “The future belongs to the children.” They also donated 400 silver dollars to the school. The students were mainly refugee children from occupied areas. The education was grounded in the realities of China’s revolution, boldly implementing “life education,” integrating democratic teaching, productive labor, and work-study programs. This approach allowed students to gain true knowledge and develop skills through “life education,” nurturing a large number of talents for the Party and providing many key figures for the anti-Japanese salvation effort.

　　In the autumn of 1945, the Southern Bureau of the CCP Central Committee opened a rural youth cadre training class here, which moved to Hongyan Village in 1946. The original Ox King and Guanyin Halls of the temple served as classrooms and reading rooms for Yucai School, with offices on the sides. The center of the Mahavira Hall was used as an auditorium, with classrooms on the sides, and the remaining rooms as dormitories for teachers and students. Deng Yingchao once stayed in the west wing room during her visit to Yucai School. Tao Xingzhi lived in “Yishao Zhai,” located about 200 meters to the right of Ancient Sage Temple. Yishao Zhai was a thatched cottage of about 150 square meters, serving as the principal’s office and reception room. Both Zhou Enlai and Feng Yuxiang stayed here during their visits to Yucai School.

　　Today, the site boasts beautiful scenery and convenient land and water transportation. The school buildings remain largely as they were, and after restoration and maintenance, have become an important part of the Tao Xingzhi Memorial. Yucai School is an experimental school of the Xingzhi College at Southwest University and a standing council member of the Secondary Education Professional Committee of the China Tao Xingzhi Research Association. Tens of thousands of youths and tourists visit here each year for tours, research, and study. Located on Phoenix Mountain in Gushan Village, Caojie Town, Hechuan, Ancient Sage Temple is the former site of the Caojie Ancient Sage Temple Yucai School founded by the famous modern educator Tao Xingzhi. It is 30 kilometers from downtown Hechuan, adjacent to the Jialing River, and is one of the five scenic areas within the Jialing River Three Gorges section of the Jinyun Mountain–Diaoyu City National Scenic Area. It serves as a patriotic education base for both Hechuan City and Chongqing Municipality, and became one of the first municipal-level cultural relics protection units in Chongqing after the city’s direct administration.

　　The mountain gate of the temple features a stone gate structure inscribed with the characters “Phoenix Mountain.” It is a stone-built hip-and-gable roof, memorial archway-style building, with a flat, splayed layout (five bays wide, 6.35 meters; total height 9.55 meters). The gate is elegantly shaped, adorned with exquisitely carved theatrical figure patterns and lively, flowing calligraphy on the sides. On the outer walls flanking the gate, the characters “Loyalty” (忠) and “Filial Piety” (孝), each with a diameter of 1.8 meters, are inscribed—reportedly in the handwriting of Feng Yuxiang. The entire temple complex consists of the mountain gate — Ox King Hall — Mahavira Hall — Guanyin Hall — Goodness Hall, along with side rooms, ascending gradually from low to high. The overall layout forms an elliptical shape.

　　The pair of stone lions behind the mountain gate are not ordinary temple guardian lions but actually the bases of corridor pillars. Judging by their size, you can imagine how grand the temple must have been in its heyday. The lush, large tree on the right is over 200 years old.

　　Behind the mountain gate, the characters “是” (This) and “岸” (Shore) are inscribed on the left and right respectively. You may wonder where the characters “回” (Return) and “头” (Head) are—they were originally located on the sides of these lions. The corridor pillars extending from the lions connected all the way to the upper hall—the Ox King Hall.

　　This hall houses seven Qing Dynasty stone tablets, including one engraved with the four characters “恩沛佛门” (Grace Pours Upon the Buddhist Realm), personally inscribed by Emperor Xuanzong of the Qing Dynasty in the 20th year of the Daoguang reign (1840). The left half of the Ox King Hall was demolished during the Cultural Revolution, leaving only the right half. Yucai School used two rooms in this hall as classrooms, with the left and right side rooms serving as the original sites of the school’s music and dance groups and infirmary. The dance group was founded by the renowned dancer Dai Ailian; shortly after its establishment, it held a highly acclaimed dance and music performance in Chongqing, thrilling the city. Tao Xingzhi spoke highly of Director Dai Ailian. She not only introduced Labanotation but also brought the yangge dance from Yan’an. During the 1945 Spring Festival, Yucai School and nearby farmers held a grand joint celebration. Amidst the clamor of drums and gongs, Director Dai led a performance of northern Shaanxi yangge dance, which soon spread across the Bashu region. The head of the music group, He Luting, was a famous Chinese musician, known for compositions such as “Guerrilla Song” and “On the Jialing River.” The music group offered specialized courses in music theory (including music history and composition), piano and sight-singing, physical training, and appreciation. Students could compose their own music and songs, and frequently held “music evenings” featuring piano, violin, and vocal performances. Chen Yixin, a renowned conductor today, was a student in this group.

　　The adjacent exhibition hall was the infirmary of Yucai School. It served not only the school’s teachers and students but also actively provided services to local residents. At the time, the school trained students knowledgeable in basic medicine to deliver free medical care to nearby farming families, alleviating their suffering and building rapport. Every Tuesday afternoon, students would visit “relatives” (local families) to perform social work, using the “little teacher system” to run literacy classes for workers and farmers and teach anti-Japanese salvation songs, spreading the Party’s policies. At its peak, over forty literacy classes were established, serving more than a thousand people. Tu Gongze once served as the school doctor at Yucai.

　　Ascending the steps, you’ll see the Mahavira Hall ahead. The inscription “Love Fills the World” on the hall is a famous quote by Tao Xingzhi. He embodied “love filling the world” and fulfilled his promise: “Come with a heart full of love, leave without taking a single blade of grass.” (Insert story: At the time, the political situation was tense, and finances were dire. To keep the school running, Tao Xingzhi often had to travel extensively to raise funds, living a very frugal life himself.)

　　The main hall of the Mahavira Hall served as the reception area for Yucai School, with the left side functioning as the drama group’s classroom. The head of the drama group, Zhang Min (original name Xie Xing), was a famous Chinese playwright and drama theorist. After liberation, he returned to Beijing to help establish the Beijing Film Academy, serving as its Party Committee Secretary and Dean. By then, the drama group students were capable of writing their own scripts, directing, composing music, and writing lyrics. They performed plays such as “Little Masters” in Chongqing and Beibei, as well as yangge operas like “Siblings Reclaim the Wasteland” and “A Red Flower,” yangge dances like “Farming Dance,” “Aunt Zhu Delivers Eggs,” and “Policeman Zhu Checks Households,” and Sichuan dialect plays like “What Should We Do?” and “Conscription.” They also performed musical skits like “Teahouse Tune,” “Strange Song,” and “Granny Wang Repairs the Jar.” In addition to ticket sales for fundraising, Yucai teachers and students often gave free performances for local farmers and coal miners near the school, promoting anti-Japanese ideals and the truths of democratic revolution.

　　The floor above the drama group was the former dormitory of Fang Yuyan, the school’s administrative director. A native of She County, Anhui, Fang was both a fellow townsman and a student of Tao Xingzhi (he had studied at Xiaozhuang Normal School). After liberation, he was assigned to the Education Group of the CCP Central Propaganda Department, served as a member of the First Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, attended the founding ceremony of the People’s Republic of China, and later held positions as Deputy Director of the Department of Primary Education and the Department of Ethnic Education under the Ministry of Education.

　　The two rooms on the right were the bedroom and office of Ma Lüxian, the school’s general affairs director. He had previously served as principal of Xiaozhuang Primary School and leader of the Shanhai Work-Study Group. Later, he became the general affairs director, vice principal, and principal of Yucai School. After liberation, he served as principal of Shanghai Xingzhi Art School, principal of Shanghai Xingzhi Middle School, and deputy head of Shanghai’s North Suburban District.

　　The podocarpus tree in the courtyard is over 400 years old, having weathered countless extraordinary events since the temple’s construction during the Ming Dynasty.

　　The adjacent classroom was the former site of the society group. Li Peng, former Premier of the State Council and Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, studied in this classroom as a child. The society group was the largest and most populous at Yucai School. Its students created two large, brightly colored maps on white cloth: one displayed on the left wall of the classroom, showing the situation of China’s War of Resistance against Japan, and the other on the back wall, depicting the Soviet-German war situation, with small colored flags indicating troop movements, allowing everyone to clearly understand the battle zones and war dynamics between the Soviets and Germans, as well as the Eighth Route Army, Kuomintang forces, and Japanese puppet troops. Three students were responsible for updating important news from the daily Xinhua Daily on small blackboards on the walls of the tunnel. Sun Mingxun and Liao Yilin successively served as heads of the society group.

　　The head of the painting group was the renowned Chinese printmaker Chen Yanqiao. Despite extremely difficult conditions—no sketch paper, so they used Jia Le paper; no charcoal sticks, so they burned mulberry and maple twigs in iron boxes; no plaster models for still-life drawing, so they whitewashed the surfaces of jars, basins, bottles, and bowls—the painting group established a “Painting Research Association,” regularly held “Sunday Art Exhibitions,” and published a woodcut collection titled “Saplings.”

　　The Guanyin Hall above served as the school’s small auditorium and teachers’ office. The two intricately carved root-wood pieces are over 200 years old; though somewhat damaged, they still retain an antique charm.

　　In this hall, which served as an auditorium, two banners once hung. One read: “Inspiration of Awareness,” the other: “Cultivation of Creativity.” These slogans encapsulated Tao Xingzhi’s educational philosophy. He ridiculed those who merely read books as “reading dead texts.” He said his school aimed to nurture what he called “real people”—genuine, upright individuals. At the podium mentioned earlier, he proposed the “Four Daily Questions”: “Have you made progress in your health? In your studies? In your work? In your morals?” It was here that he articulated his famous “Declaration of Creation”: “Educators do not create gods, or statues, or... they aim to create living beings of truth, goodness, and beauty. These living beings are our gods, our statues, our beloved. The success of a teacher lies in creating someone worthy of admiration. A teacher’s greatest joy is to create students worthy of admiration. More precisely, teachers create students, students create teachers, and together they create living beings worthy of mutual admiration. Thus, everywhere is a place for creation, every day is a time for creation, and everyone is a creator.”