Jiangsu Province 江 苏 省 简 介 - Wuxi 无锡市 - Other Scenic Spots 其它景点

Lake Tai 太湖

Since ancient times, the fascinating beauty of Lake Tai and Wuxi have attracted poets, painters, men of letters, and eminent personages. The third largest freshwater lake in China, Lake Tai encompasses 2,425 square kilometers. Its banks touch 38 cities. The elevation of lake surface is 3.14 meters, the deepest being 3.33 meters with a storage capacity of 4.428 billion cubic meters of water. There are 48 islets in the lake, with the largest one being Dongtingxishan洞庭西山. As a natural reservoir, it supplies life-giving water to vast tracts of land; land which produces, in addition to grain, oranges, pears, loquats, apricots, and other fruits, and a celebrated variety of tea called biluochun, a famous green tea. In the lake there are three islets joined together. Some say they look like three floating hills, others argue they are the head, body, and tail of a turtle. Reaching the islet by steamboat the tourist will find traditional Chinese pavilions and arbours nestled in the midst of luxuriant trees and blooming flowers.

The salient feature of the Lake Tai rocks is wrinkles皱, brightness透, thinness瘦, and leak漏, and sometimes strangeness 怪..

Lake Tai rocks, boulders found on the edge of Tai Lake, are highly prized by builders of rock gardens for their convolutions caused by weathering.

Tang City 唐城

Tang City—Tang-dynasty-style architecture—is one of the scenic spots of Wuxi Lake Tai Movie and Television Base of CCTV, for the purpose of shooting film and television series in ancient costume. It encompasses 15 hectares (37.06 acres) and the building area is totally up to 30,000 square meters. In order to provide producers with kinds of scenery, from 1987, nearly 100 scenic spots were built, such as the Tang Palace, Agalloch Eaglewood Pavilion, Lishan Drawing Pavilion, Tang Street, Imperial Garden, Immortal Appears, Dufu Poetry Hall, the fresco of tour of Imperial Consort Yang, etc. It demonstrates the style of the imperial city of the Tang Dynasty. The large scale palace etiquette and the songs, dances in Tang style performed by the Tang City ensemble will give the tourist deep impression. The Tang City has the good function to shoot movie and television series. In includes a studio of 720 square meters, prop rooms and costume rooms in various sizes. It can also provide producers with accommodation and entertainments. The movie (Imperial Consort Yang), the television series (Emperor Tang Minghuang), and (Upright Comprehensive Art), (1992 Lantern Festival ) and so on, were shot in the Tang City.

The Grand Canal 大运河

The Grand Canal starts in Beijing in the north and ends in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province in the south, totaling 1,747 kilometers. Like the Great Wall, the canal is the symbol of the ancient Chinese civilization. The canal was first dug in the 12th and 11th centuries BC. It was lengthened and widened during the 7th and 14th centuries. Wuxi can be regarded as the origin of the Grand Canal. The Wuxi section of the Grand Canal starts at Wumu in the north and ends at Wangting in the south, with a total length of 40 kilometers, of which 14.6 kilometers flows through the city. With a history of more than 2,400 years, this green belt of water still flows, with many scenic spots and historical sites on both bands. The Wuxi section of the Grand Canal is narrow and deep, and row upon row of old residential buildings with white walls and black tiles stand on both sides. The Qingming Bridge, built over the canal during the middle period of Emperor Wanli’s reign (1572-1620) of the Ming Dynasty. It is the largest and best-preserved ancient stone arch bridge still standing in Wuxi. In front of the former South Gate of the city, the tourist can see a grand ancient octagonal pagoda with seven storeys. Built in the 10th century, Miaoguang (Brilliant Light) Pagoda of Nanchen Buddhist Temple is renowned on the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. The Wuxi section of the canal starting from the South Gate of the old city to the North Gate is rather wide. It is often crowded with sculled wooden boats, small rowboats and concrete-reinforced motor sailboats. Sightseeing on this crowded and busy section the tourist will surely be impressed by the vigour of the thousand-year-old canal.

Tortoise Head Garden 鼋头楮

By the lakeside are Plum Garden Li Garden, Tortoise Head Garden, each known for its unique beauty and history. Of the three, Tortoise Head Garden is the largest. Extending into the lake like a tortoise frolicking in the water, it offers the best view of the lake. On a misty day, it is especially poetic. With the fog-covered Turtle Islets in the distance and a fishing boat drifting past, it is a scene found elsewhere only in a traditional Chinese landscape painting. Tourists pick their way over lakeside rocks to have a look at the famous inscription on the cliff carved during the Ming Dynasty by an anonymous tourist. Done in powerful strokes, it days “Embracing Wu and Yue.” Lake Tai is so big that it takes in part of Wu and part of Yue, the ancient names for Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces.

Xihui Park 锡惠公园

In the Xihui Park, tourists will find the celebrated Jicheng (Ease of Mind) Garden. Small as it is, it is ingeniously planned: at every turn, the tourist is presented with a different landscape. The pavilions have nothing of the splendour of traditional Chinese architecture. The walls are whitewashed, the roofs of black-tiles simple and elegant. The one major attraction in Xihui park is the famous Erquan Pool. It was dug during the Tang Dynasty, and the water, bubbling for over a thousand years, was considered by Lu Xu, the tea connoisseur, to be, as the name indicates, “the second best spring waster in China.” Pure and refreshing, the water, because of the high surface tension, does not spill even when poured several millimeters above the rim of a glass. The image of the full moon reflected in the pool is so absolutely enchanthing that the blind folk musician A′ Bing﹡ was inspired to compose The Reflection of the Moon in the “Erquan’s Spring” for the Chinese fiddle, the erhu. This mjoving work is extremely popular in China and is known and enjoyed the world over. Garden of Harmonious Interest谐趣园 in the Summer Palace in Beijing is an imitation of Jichang (Ease of Mind) Garden in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province.

﹡Hua Yanjun 华彦钧 （1893-1950）， modern folk blind musician, also known as A’Bing, was an erhu (a two-stringed bowed instrument with a lower register than jinghu—a woo-stringed bowed instrument with a high register; Beijing Opera fiddle) player, who often wandered the streets while playing erhu, hence the nickname, Blind A’Bing瞎子阿炳 . His life was full of frustrations, but his erhu and pipa (a plucked string instrument with a fretted fingerboard) solo works are profound and beautiful. The Moon Reflected in the Second Best Spring Under Heaven二泉映月 , his representative work, is not only acclaimed as a rare piece of Chinese folk music, but also famous international music.

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