SoleSky » Zhaoqing

Mountain, Lake, and the Naughty Rain – Part 4@ On the Top of Dinghu Mountain

calcifer — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 09:13:54 +0000

As we talk about at the last post, Dinghu Mountain is named by its shape on the top. And to make this name more attractive, people built a park to place many real “Ding”s. So that is the Bao Ding park, sited on one of three tops of Dinghu Mountain.

At the front gate, we can see two tall bronze men statues. Let’s see who are them.

This girl is so funny. Maybe she wanted to cos-plays that bronze statue behind her.

Look at this, a huge stone ink-slab

And maybe you have seen the cycas(苏铁,铁树) blossomed out, but have you seen that it has two bunches of flowers at the same time?

So as its name said, this is a library of Ding culture. Of course, There are lots of Dings here, lots of ~

Dings are related with ceremony and commemorate, something about history. They can tell the history they saw to us.
Look at this, these two Dings is made for commemorating the return of Hong Kong and Macao. And the poison felt beside them maybe is waiting for another Ding for the return of Taiwan.

Then came to the final one, the biggest bronze Ding in the world~~
So huge ~ isn’t it. Many people came to it and take photos with it and so did us~

Have a rest and take some traditional snack~
The white one is call Mountain Stream Tofu. And the other is called Pig Red…maybe

What’s over there?

Yep, a very cute kid, a little mixed-blood boy

Oh, he is so active and ran here and there, and his father and family memebers were just following behind him.

Here is one top of the Dinghu Mountain, we can have a great view from this position.

Ha, that’s a big ad. post of Dinghu Stream Water.

After leaving the Bao Ding Park, we went to the Qingyun Temple. Many tourist came here would go to this temple to pray and make a wish and so on.

Butterfly time~ They “killed” us many camera memery

When we went down from the top, we also found some good views~

And this statue is … I don’t know how to explain. He is a famous for his upstanding and bravery and fighted for the right of ordinary people at the ancient time. So people respect him as the symbol of justice.

So, the tour at Dinghu Mountain was over now ~ Wish you will like it.

Mountain, Lake, and the Naughty Rain – Part 3@ Up to the Dinghu Mountain

calcifer — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:57:59 +0000

It was still Raining on the next day’s morning. But this naughty rain couldn’t stop us, we finished our breakfast and take a bus to our main target of this trip — the Dinghu Mountain.
“Ding(鼎)” is an ancient Chinese vessel with legs and a lid. In Chinese history and culture, possession of an ancient ding is often associated with power and dominion over the land. Therefore, the ding is often used as an implicit symbolism for power. And “hu(湖)” means a lake. This mountain is called Ding hu Mountain because there is a large lake(the lid of the great “Ding”) on the top that surrounded by three mountain tops (three legs of the Ding) as the picture shows below:

Dinghu Mountain (鼎湖山) is located in Dinghu District, 18km to the east of Zhaoqing City. It is one of the four famous mountains – Danxia, Dinghu, Xiqiao and Luofu in Guangdong Province. Known as the “green gem on the Tropic of Cancer”, the mountain’s peaks rise above ancient towering trees, flying waterfalls, fresh air, various birds and colorful flowers.
Dinghu Mountain has been well-known for its deep and serene gorges, cold and clean waters, major scenic areas. Heavenly Brook-Qingyun Scenic Area includes the Hundred Buddha Cave, Green Trees Surrounded by Clouds, Flying Waterfalls of the Dragon Pond, and Double Rainbows, etc. The Dinghu-Tianhu Scenic Area features the Black Dragon Playing Pearls, Dragon Mother Borrowing a Vessel, Exploring the Heavenly Lake, and so on; and Yunxi-Laoding Scenic Area has the traces of bottle gourds, Water Curtain Cave, Dragon Hidden in the Ancient Pond, White Clouds Embracing Ancient Trees, etc.

OK, that’s our “homework” before we enter the Dinghu Mountain. Let’s go to buy the tickets~

You see, though it was raining, there are still many people came to climb Dinghu Mountain.
The first thing we got to do is to capture the map. It’s seemed that we have quite a long way to go.

We choose to climb by our own feet rather than rent electric motor cars. And… Later we discovered that it was not so clever to make it all by feet… It’s too large….
The scenery of Dinghu is so beautiful even when it was raining. We were surrounded by trees, rock, and a stream where run along with us. The stream sometimes became wide and quiet, sometimes became narrow and raging, sometimes a waterfall.
That’s a amazing adventure, I bet that you will like it when you come here.

When the stream slowed down and became quiet, people liked to go down and played with the cool and pure water.

The water that comes from the upper mountain had been filtered by the rocks and sand. It’s very pure and cool~ Many folks here often climb this mountain very morning to fetch water. And Dinghui Mountain’s stream water is sold quite well too.
Wanna wash your tired feet and make yourself cool down ?

Sometimes we had to went across the stream and it’s quite exciting~

We climbed higher and higher, the view became more and more extensive. And the rain seems to be smaller. Dinghu Mountain was covered by some frog or cloud or smoke? Anyway, something mystical.

After a long long climbing, we arrived at the lake of Dinghu Mountain. which we talk about before.

There is a small island in the lake which the tourists can buy a ticket to ship to there. It said that after going through a hanging bridge there is a valley called butterfly valley. Sounds interesting, but that isn’t our destination. After having a short rest, we head for the next stop, the Bao Ding Park. What will we see at there? That the story to tell at the next post.

Mountain, Lake, and the Naughty Rain – Part 2@ Star Lake

calcifer — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:00:32 +0000

On 28th May, Our journey began. ~~:cool:
The rain fall during these days is called Dragon Boat water. That means it bring enough water to help people to row the dragon boats. Anyways, it’s a good sign for the farmers too. So it rains several times when we were on the coach. But luckily it stopped raining when we just arrived at the urban area of Zhaoqing city.
As I mentions before, the Seven Star Crags (七星岩) are located at the fringe of Zhaoqing by the Star Lake and form one of the most scenic places in Guangdong Province, in southern China.
We made Seven Star Crags as one of our target place at first, but … When we finished our lunch at a restaurant not far away from the Star Lake, An unexpected friend came to welcome us… It started to rain again Ok, plenty of dragon boat water, but too much for us really.
It kept raining and had no sign for sun coming out. So we had to change our plan. No walking on the Seven Star Crags, we could only look at them far from the ship which would go around the Star Lake.

Here are some photos taken from the ship. Star Lake in the rain seemed to be some kind of mysterious.

The Star Lake is so large and the Seven Star Crags are spreaded in it . When we got to the middle of the lake, the tour guide noticed that we are near the turtle island. I didn’t get it at first. But when the ship turn to another angle, I found that turle !

Then we carried on and the tour guide showed us a strange building.

Maybe this photo is not clear cause the heavy rain, the tour guide said that this building is OYC Seven Star Convention Resort Hotel. In our opinion, the high-class hotels should have a high building too. But this hotel is an exception. It is built very near by the star lake, the ground is not enough strong to support the high building, so this hotel is built “horizontally”. That shape makes it one of the widest hotel in the world.

When we turn around the ship and made our way back, we met some amazing men.

Guess what? Yeah rowboat ! Star lake is also the national rowboat training area. The rowboat athletes are training right now, for the coming Asia Game.
Let’s took more photos for them~

And then we were back to the port which there should be many racing dragon boats…

And…. the it still kept raining, so … we go to the shopping mall to kill time…

Mountain, Lake, and the Naughty Rain – Part 1@ Beginning of Auspiciousness

calcifer — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 02:04:50 +0000

Dragon Boat Festival is one of the distinctest Chinese festivals. And of course, the dragon boat and Zongzi is the key words of that days. And the place where we chose to make a trip is the very place to have a nice festival, cause Zhaoqing has both two leading roles of this festival. First, Zhaoqing Zongzi is very famous, maybe for its big size. And the second, the International dragon boat competition is held here at this day.
So before we start our trip, let’s do some homework first.
“Zhaoqing” means “beginning of auspiciousness” in Chinese. In C.E. 1118, Northern Song Dynasty Emperor Huizong bestowed its current name upon the city.

Zhaoqing is located 110 km northwest of Guangzhou, in the west Pearl River Delta. It lies on the north shores of the Xijiang River, which is flows from west to east, and opposite of Gaoyao. A plain area lies to the south and west of Zhaoqing, with mountains to the east and north.The city lies in a south subtropical monsoon climatic zone. The yearly average temperature is 21.9 °C, and annual precipitation is 1605 mm.
Tourism is very important for Zhaoqing. When I was a young boy, I always play the poker cards which were printed landscapes of China. And I still remember one of those card was printed with the Seven Star Crags pictures. That was the first image I saw about Zhaoqing. And the other famous place is the Dinghu Mountain. It’s well-known for its good quality spring water and nature conservation district.