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Nanchong, Real Source of Culture of Three Kingdoms
Updated:2013.09.04

  Walking at Xishan Scenic Spot in Shunqing District, Nanchong, you will be impressed with Wanjuan Tower (literally meaning a tower which has thousands of volumes of books), grand and brilliant. A huge golden board on which three colossal characters are inscribed, 4.7 meters long and 1.8 meters high, by Mr. Zhao Puchu, a well-known social activist, is very attractive.

  The Tower was initially built during AD 222 to 237. According to records of ancient books, there was a fruit mountain in western Nanchong, in which many distinguished scholars and writers were born. The Tower, a three double-hipped roof tower with wood and stone structure, was built beside rocks. In Tang Dynasty, a temple, Ganlu Temple, was built before the Tower. Therefore, a group of buildings were formed. Due to disrepair for years, they were destroyed in the 1960s. 

  Nowadays, the culture of the Three Kingdoms has been the most important one for Nanchong. The present tower was rebuilt by the government with 4 million yuan in 1990, consisting Reading Tower of Chen Shou(a famous historian in West Jin  Dynasty), Chen Shou Memorial Hall and Collecting Books Tower, with total building area of 2,400 square meters, making it a remarkable symbol for the culture of the Three Kingdoms.

  Although many tourists may have read Records of the Three Kingdoms, be familiar with Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and comment a lot about the culture of that period, after they have been here, Wanjuan Tower, they realize that it is the real source of the culture of the Three Kingdoms.

  The reason is that Wanjuan Tower is the place where Chen Shou, a distinguished historian in West Jin Dynasty who wrote Records of the Three Kingdoms, read and studied in his youth. There was a folk joke that without Chen Shou, there would not be Records of the Three Kingdoms. Without Records of the Three Kingdoms, there would not be no Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and no bustling culture of the Three Kingdoms.

  Certainly it was well founded to declare that here was the real source of the Three Kingdom. In October 1993, Culture of the Three Kingdoms International Seminar was held here in Nanchong, hometown of Chen Shou, about one hundred experts and scholars from the America, Canada Japan and China gathering here to conduct academic exchanges and visits. In the seminar, it was formally identified Nanchong as the source of the Three Kingdoms.

 
 
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