Badashanren Memorial Hall
3 min readBadashanren Memorial Hall,a monastery in the ancient times, is situated in the southern outskirts of Nanchang City, about 8 kilometers away from the downtown. It is said that over 2,500 years ago, Prince Jin of the Zhou Dynasty came here and set up a house to make pills of immortality. In the end of the Western Han Dynasty, MeiFu,a marshal of Nanchang, abandoned his official life and lived here in seclusion.
People after him built a”Meixian Temple”here to enshrine and worship him. In the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Xu Xun came here to control the devastating flood here. He initiated the Jingming Sect of Taoism and built a”Taiji Monastery”, which was changed to”Taiyi Monastery”in the 5th year of the Taihe Reign of the Tang Dynasty and then changed to”Tianning Monastery”in the 2nd year of the Zhihe Reign of the Song Dynasty. In the 18th year of the Shunzhi Reign of the early Qing Dynasty (1661A.D.), Zhu Da(his Pseudonym: Badashanren), the 10th generation great grandson of Zhu Yuanzhang, rebuilt the monastery on the ruins, and then lived here in solitude. He gave the monastery a new name: Qingyunpu. Since the early Qing Dynasty, it had been destroyed and rebuilt for several times. It was listed as the key cultural relics under the provincial special protection in 1957 and was turned into the present Badashanren Memorial Hall in October 1959. It covers an area of about 10,000 square meters. There is a pond before it, white walls surrounding it, many green old trees shutting the sun out in it, and a level stone bridge leading to it. Its environment is graceful and quiet. The present museum with a totally new look was the rebuilt in 1979. The layout of its courtyard took the advantage of its physical features skillfully, forming the special scenes, palaces, corridors, bridges, ponds, hills, flowerbeds and trees.
The whole building covers 10 exhibiting rooms,2 wax statue rooms,a Badashanren photo displaying room and a bronze statue of Badashanren. In the memorial hall, many exhibits are Badashanren’s calligraphic works and paintings.
It is not only a tourist resort, but also an important art gallery.
Referring to this memorial hall, Badashanren is a very important person to it.
Badashanren was a famous Chinese painter in the Ming and early Qing Dynasties. Hewas born in the 6th year of Tianqi Reign of the Ming Dynasty(1626 AD) and died atthe age of 80 in the 44th year of the Kangxi Reign of the Qing Dynasty(1705 AD).
Zhu Da was his real name, Geshan was his monk name, and Badashanren is his Pseudonym.Actually，he was one of the 9th generation great grandsons of Prince Zhu Chuan，the 16th son of the Ming Dynasty’s first Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang.With the fall of the Ming Dynasty，he still didn’t ohey the Qing rulers and left his family to become a monk.Then he built a thatched house in the outskirts of Nanchang，which he named“Wuge Cottage”.He spent his lonely and poverty-stricken old age there.
He was unique in Chinese painting and made great contribution to it.He is famous for his freehand brushwork in light ink and his paintings are characterized by vivid painting and bold outline.For the past 300 years，he influenced subsequent painters such as Wu Changshuo，one of the”8 Eccentric Painters of Yangzhou”in the QingDynasty and some other painters in the modern times including Qi Baishi，Zhang Daqian，Pan Tanshou，Li Kuchan.
