Beautiful legend of a Taihu Lake rock Shigong Hill, literarily means the hillof the stone grandpa, so named because of a giant rock on it, which looks likean old man. The Shigong Hill is not high, however, grotesque rocks, precipitouscliffs, grottoes and caves are everywhere. Water and wind, vapour and rain,light and shadow, all are combined by the Creator through years of depositionsand water washing to carve out the spectacular rock. “Of all types of rocks,those from Taihu Lake are the best”. Gui Yun Cave will be the first spectaclethat meets your eyes in climbing the hill: rocks hang over the cliff, and ithollows in to form a cave, and there is a stone inscription over the cliff:‘Read books by saints, perform righteous deeds, and have a royal and filialheart’. At the entrance to the cave, there hangs a stalactite rock, as if awhite cloud just returns. Inside the cave, there is carved a mother buddha witha boy on a blue stone. The stone was a natural piece, and therefore thesculpture looks very true to life. According to legend, residents around theTaihu Lake used to come here to pray for begetting sons. Shigong Hill is fullof greenery, and looks like a floating jade on the lake, and therefore the name‘fuyu’. Fuyu north hall is currently a good place to view scenery and sip tea.Underneath the cliff, there is the Cuipingxuan veranda, among precipitousrocks, extending out horizontally like a screen, with green cypress trees overthe hill. In summer, pomegranate flowers around are red as if in fire. PrimeMinister Wang Ao in the Ming Dynasty from Dongshan wrote the following versewhen he was touring around Taihu Lake: “Hills greet men, heaven floats withwater. The setting sun glow is over the evening dock, and and slanting sun overthe orange trees”.
Xiguang Cave is another scene of theShigong Hill. At sun set, a beam of sunray shines in brightly through thewestward cracks in the rock. To the east, a slightly tilted giant rock in 12meter high looks like blue clouds dropping on the hill. It reaches from themiddle of the hill to the top. Viewed from the side, it looks like a ladderrising to the cloud. The inscription ‘Cloud Ladder’ is magnificently inscribedon the cliff. At the middle of the east side of the hill, there is ‘LanxiPavilion’, where you wait in early morning to see the sun rise up from thelake.
In Autumn, when there is moon on the skyin the evening, waves shine out and strike on the rocks, the moon appears onthe lake in three reflections. This is the scene of the so-called ‘ShigongAutumn Moon’. More marvelously, on the late afternoon of September 13thin the Chinese calendar, the moon rises from the east and the red sun sets inthe west. The moon looks like a morning sun and the sun looks like in blood,with golden glow all over the lake. This scene of viewing the moon and the sunat the same time is called ‘Double Shining of Moon and Sun’
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