On August 1664, the third year in the reign of Emperor Kangxi of Qing Dynasty, the famous general Zhang Cangshui who had resisted Qing Dynasty died a martyr as a result of a traitor's betrayal.
His remains were buried secretly by his bosom friends at the foot of Nanping Hill of the West Lake. The inscription on the gravestone simply read “the tomb of Mr. Wang”. This grave was not marked with a real name out of fear and was mysterious for nearly 80 years before the truth was made known.
He was another hero buried in the beautiful scenery just after Yu Fei and Yu Qian. Zhang Cangshui (1620-1664) was born in Yin County of Zhejiang. In the last years of Ming Dynasty, he organized a militia force to fight the army of the Qing dynasty. He once joined hands with Zheng Chenggong and the united army controlled the Yangtze River, conquered Wuhu and besieged Nanjing. His victories won him a great reputation in southeast China. He failed because his army was greatly outnumbered and therefore overpowered by the army of Qing Dynasty. Zheng Cangshui retreated to an island in the eastern China Sea, still planning to rise again with a new army. He was captured when someone revealed his whereabouts to the Qing Dynasty government. He refused to defect and was executed. The tomb and memorial temple of Zhang Cangshui were rebuilt in 1985. The memorial temple is in a style imitating the traditional ancestral hall typical of the south of Yangtze River valley. In the middle of the temple sits the statue of Zhang Cangshui.
On display both in and outside the temple are inscriptions of Zhang's poems and many horizontal inscribed boards and antithetical couplets in Zhang's memory written by later generations. The tomb is to the left side of the memorial temple. The tomb passage is spacious. In front of the tomb stands a stone archway and there are stone tigers and stone horses standing on the both sides of the tomb. The pines and the cypresses set each other off. |
Asia Travel 
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