Yunlong Mountain
By admin on 2015-01-12

Yunlong Mountain is also called Shifo Mountain (Stone Buddha Mountain) because of the stone Buddha housed in Xinghua Temple on the Mountain. As legend has it, Liu Bang, an emperor of the Han Dynasty (206 BC - 24 AD), once came to this mountain, and his wife, unable to find him, began to search for him. She finally was able to find him when she saw a misty mountain, upon which a dragon appeared, surrounded by clouds. Though, in truth, she only saw a series of nine small cloud-covered hills, the name Yunlong (Dragon in the Clouds) Mountain remained.

Yunlong Mountain lies to the south of Heping Street, in the southern suburb of Xuzhou City. It is 142 meters (155 yards) above sea level and about three kilometers (about two miles) long from north to south. From the top of the mountain, the view is incredible – with the Yunlong Lake to the west, and the Yellow River to the east. Yunlong Mountain is famous for both its natural scenery and its historical relics, of which Setting Free Cranes Pavilion (Fanghe Ting) and Xinghua Temple are the most well known. Many other historical areas are located throughout the mountainside, including Dongpo (Su Shi) Stone Bed (Dongpo Shichuang), Clothes Trying on Pavilion (Shiyi Ting), Boat Pavilion (Chuan Ting), Zhang Shanren's (Zhang Tianji) Former Residence as well as the inscriptions carved on cliff surfaces of the Tang (618-907) and Song (960-1279) Dynasties.