Archive for June, 2009
Reed Flute Cave
Located 5 kilometers northwest of Guilin city, the Reed Flute Cave is located highway up the Guangming Hill (Bright Hill). It gets the name from the reeds used for making flutes and pipes that grow at its entrance. The cave is regarded as the largest and most impressive cave in Guilin The cave is 240 meters long, and the length of the tour is about 550 meters offering a magic land of stalactites, stalagmites, stone pillars, stone curtains, birds, plants and animals in fantastic shapes and colors. One grotto called the Crystal Palace of the Dragon King can hold about 1000 people.
During the World War Two, the grotto once served as an air-raid shelter. Over 70 wall inscriptions from the Tang dynasty (618-907) have been found on the walls proving that the cave has been used extensively for many hundreds of years. The highlight of this cave is a great slab of white rock hanging from a ledge like a cataract, with a human-shaped stalactite opposite it. A legend says that visiting scholar tried to write a poem depicting the beauty of the cave. It took him so much time to find the right words that he finally turned to stone. Another story goes that the slab originally was the Dragon King’s needle. The Monkey King used it as a weapon to defeat the dragon’s army and left it in the cave. The cave was opened to public in 1962. Famed as the Palace of Natural Art, the cave is now equipped with artificial lighting system to emphasize the visual effect.
Bell Tower in Xian
Erected in 1380, the Drum Tower is the counterpart of the Bell Tower, which is 300 meters to the southeast. Like the Bell Tower, the Drum tower was used to tell time. An enormous drum once declared the hour at dusk, but later it was only used to warn of attacks.
Standing 34 meters high, the tower was until recently one of the tallest structures in the city. The base is made of stone, while the upper stories are wood. The base of the tower is 1337.4 square meters in size, with a height of 8.6 meters and a length of 35.5 meters. The whole building is 36 meters high with its “blue brick” base and a “brick and wooden” body. It’s a two-storey construction with colored “dougong” on the eaves. “Dougong” refers to the sets of brackets on top of the columns supporting the roof. They are quite unique in Chinese construction, and make the building more stable and beautiful.
A legend has it that in the Ming dynasty, continuous earthquakes killed many people, and according to a popular explanation an evil gigantic dragon in the huge undercurrent below the city caused them. Later the dragon was trussed up with a 300-meter iron chain, and people built a tower over the place to contain its spells forever. Another story concerns the first emperor of the Ming dynasty who was born into a poor family. As an orphan following his parents’ deaths, he herded sheep for rich landowners.