Guilin tour story: the Zhaoban Hill

After you appreciated the Yellow Cloth Beach (Huangbutan) and the Red Wall Beach (Zhubitan), Xingping is the next place ahead of you. It’s only 63km from Guilin and 20km from Yangshuo. So many tourists in Guilin tour have visited here.
Xingping is a town with a long history. It is located in the center of the most beautiful landscapes around the Li River. And on the way from the Red Wall Beach to Xingping, you will see a hill on the left side of the Li River which shapes like a tablet named “ZhaoHu” that officials held before breast when they had an audience with the emperor every morning in the past China. And “Zhaohu” can be translated as “the morning tablet” (“Zhao”---- morning). So this hill is called the ZhaoBan Hill (“Ban” and “Hu” have a similar meaning in Chinese).
Talking about the origin of the Zhaoban Hill, we should start with Taibaijinxing. Taibaijinxing was one of the most famous immortals, and someone said that he was the poetic genius---- Li Bai before he became an immortal. And this story also bases on this account.
One day, Taibaijinxing invited all famous poets in ancient China to his Taixu Palace to have a versifying competition. They versified while drinking the top-quality wine, soon Taibaijinxing got drunk.
Meanwhile, the Jade emperor and the Queen Mother of the West were playing around the Jasper Lake too. They order the fairies to make all flowers blossom and all the birds singing. At last, they thought that the only thing they need were Taibaijinxing’s poems. So they sent immortals to ask Taibaijinxing to come and versify for them. But Taibaijinxing was already drunk during this time, so he said:” If the Jade Emperor knows poem, the sun would rise from the west.” When the Jade Emperor heard this he certainly got raged and ordered to kill Taibaijinxing. The other poets all begged for leniency since Taibaijinxing was drunk and didn’t really mean it. The Queen Mother thought that it was dangerous to incur the anger of the masses, so she persuaded the Jade Emperor to do her a favor and forgive him. The Jade Emperor complied and the Queen Mother asked Taibaijinxing to thank her for her kindness.
Although Taibaijinxing was already sober, he also thought that it was just a wimp to do such things. He was originally treated unfairly when he was working for the temporal emperor, and he didn’t expect that it was the same way things going in the celestial world. The more he thought of this, the madder he got. So at last he decided to leave the sky palace.
When he was out of the South Sky Gate (Nantianmen), he found that he still held the morning tablet in his hand. Since he didn’t want to be an official in the sky palace, he didn’t need this anymore. So he threw it conveniently, and the morning tablet fell aside the Li River turned into the Zhaoban Hill.

 

 

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