Banggāo
Banggāo: On a calm-lake cruise of Maoyan Lake, visitors can see a stretch of ruined buildings along the shore: amid wild grass and tangled trees, broken walls and stone-paved mountain streets emerge... This is the Maoyan Ancient Village that vanished overnight. Records show it was built in the Song Dynasty and served as the seat of the Maogang Wu family's Tusi office during the Yuan Dynasty. In the Ming Hongwu era, the Qin family's Tusi...
This article has been compiled from historical materials on 'Zhangjiajie Tour Guide Network' (33519.com · Specialty Foods / Cuisine / Customs section). Prices, business hours, administrative divisions, and statistical data mentioned in the text may already be outdated. Before traveling, please refer to the latest announcements from merchants, scenic areas, and local competent authorities; the parts involving folk legends and folk customs are local historical and cultural anecdotes, provided for cultural reference.
Bangao
Taking a calm-lake cruise on Maoyan Lake, visitors can see a stretch of ruined buildings along the shore: amid the wild grass and tangled trees, broken walls and stone-paved mountain streets emerge here and there... This is the Maoyan Ancient Village that vanished overnight.
According to records: Maoyan Ancient Village was built in the Song Dynasty, and in the Yuan Dynasty it was once the seat of the Maogang Wu Clan Tusi office. It was only during the Hongwu period of the Ming Dynasty, when the Qin Clan Tusi inherited Maogang, that the office city was built at Maogang below. Maoyan Village was originally the water dock through which the Maogang Tusi entered the Sangzhi Tusi territory, and it was very prosperous—when a pig was slaughtered at the east end, the squeals could not be heard at the west end. Because it was isolated from the outside world, with only the Lishui River as a passage, it was called the 'Little Kingdom of the Tuman (native barbarians).'
On the fifteenth day of the sixth month in the fifty-first year of the Qianlong reign of the Qing Dynasty (AD 1786), the weather was clear and bright. An old man came walking along the Maoyan River, dressed in rags, dirty and smelly, carrying a bamboo pole on his shoulder. As he walked he shouted: 'Bangao yo—bangao.' 'Bangao yo—bangao.' He walked up and down like this, shouting again and again. The people of Maoyan Village all disliked him, saying: 'Bangao, bangao—who doesn't know you're carrying a bamboo pole!' Everyone ignored him. But the old man still walked and shouted: 'Bangao yo—bangao.' 'Bangao yo—bangao.'... Each cry more urgent than the last, each cry more pitiful than the last. And at this time, groups of rats, venomous snakes, and wild beasts hurriedly fled from the stone-paved streets. But the villagers were completely unaware of this abnormal phenomenon.
In the village there was a young couple, the man named Liu Siyou and his wife of the Ou family. That day they had gone to the He family village opposite to visit her parents, and they saw the old man carrying his bamboo pole and shouting so pitifully, but they did not know why. The young couple ate lunch at her parents' home, and in the afternoon wanted to return, but his mother-in-law would not let them go, saying she would make buckwheat cakes for them. So the young couple stayed. That night at midnight, there was a 'rumble—' a earth-shaking roar, and half of Yuejia Mountain behind the ancient village collapsed. The mountain body, carrying the ancient village, slid into the river, cutting the Lishui River in two and blocking it.
The next day, when Liu Siyou and his wife opened the door and looked, the Maoyan Ancient Village was gone. Of the more than nine thousand people in the village, some died, some perished, some fled; the sound of weeping shook the earth, and the scene was too horrible to witness. His family of one hundred and eighteen people were all buried in the earth. Only then did Liu Siyou remember the old man who had shouted 'bangao' during the day—he was originally an immortal, calling them to 'move higher'! But not one of them had seen through the heavenly secret.
Regarding this disaster, the Daoguang edition of the Yongding County Gazetteer records: 'In the fifty-first year of Qianlong, at Maoyan, eighty li west of the city, an earthquake caused a mountain collapse. The residents on the mountain who were on the south bank were carried along with the mountain to the north bank, and their houses remained intact. Only the river was blocked, and the water flowed backward for several tens of li, reaching Chixi in Sangzhi. From then on, boats could not pass.'
Later, someone excavated an ancient Liu family stele from the mountain, which read: 'In the bingwu year of the Qianlong reign of the Great Qing, in the sixth month, the Liu household, one hundred and eighteen persons in all, perished; the filial son-in-law and the wicked son, the family was exterminated.'