The second day I spent in Suzhou we went to Tiger Hill, with its millennium-old leaning Yunyan Pagoda. Tiger Hill is more of a history park rather than a garden. It has several historical memorials and at it's base is a small village that depicts the traditional scenes of ancient China. On the actual hill part is where the tomb of the founding father of Suzhou, King He Lu (600 BC) lies. He is supposed to be buried with his 3000 swords. The name Tiger Hill came about because a white tiger showed up just after it was finished to guard the tomb. To keep the exact location of the tomb a secret the 1000 workers were killed by a large flat rock, appropriately titled the 1000 Men Rock. The rock has red stains in it, supposedly from the blood of these men.
Mountain Villa at the bottom of the hill has several life size diorama depicting life of historical China. It also has some scenes of everyday life beautifully etched into both marble and glass. One of fun things that happened while on Tiger Hill was being asked to have my picture taken with some visitors who were from Nanjing. The only reason being was because I was a Mei Guo Ren, (an American). Later on in the Mountain Villa I ran into the same group, so we all shared a canal boat ride. Unfortunately I didn't find out until the end of the ride that the oars' person would have sung us a song for 10 yuan, just like a Vienna gondolier, only in Chinese of course.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment