Changjiang Bridge leads to Tortoise Hill, in the north-east of the Hanyang district of the town. Here visitors can see the Memorial Temple of the Mythical Ruler Yu (Yugongji Ci), the Tomb of General Lu Su (172-217) and that ofthe revolutionary Xiang Jingyu (1895-1929).
The Guqin Tai Terrace was laid out probably in the 11th c. in memory ofthe famous qin player (a qin is a seven-stringed zither-like instrument) Yu Boya, who lived over 2000 years ago and is thought to have come here often to sit and seek solace in his music. It seems that his close friend, Zhong Ziqi, was the only one who appreciated the quality of his composition “Mountain Brook”; when Zhong Ziqi died Yu Boya decided never to play his zither again. On the terrace stands a small pavilion on the ledge of which hangs a small wooden plaque with four Chinese characters which mean “mountain brook”; a commemorative column marks the spot where Yu Boya used to sit and play.
The Temple of Regained Perfection, about 1 km/1100yd south-west of Guqin Tai Terrace, was built in the Qing period (1644-1911), through the efforts of the monk Bai Guang, on the site of a mandarin’s private garden, and the architecture is to some degree secular.
The main buildings – evenly distributed over the courtyard which is adorned with pools, trees, flower-beds and artificial hillocks-are similar to all other Buddhist temples in China; they include the Buddha Hall, the Luohan Hall (Luohan Tang) containing 500 Luohan statues, and the Chang-jian Ge Pavilion with sutras (Buddhist teachings).
This bridge, erected in 1955-57 and the first to be built across the Changjiang river, links the Wuchang and Hanyang districts. 1670m/1832yd long and on two levels; the lower is used by trains and the upper by road traffic.
Mount Tonglushan lies some 75km/47 miles south-east of Wuhan. Excavations in this region have revealed several hundred underground tunnels, together with tools for mining copper-ore and nine smelting furnaces, some of which date from the Spring and Autumn period (770-221 b.c.). The mining area covers about 8sq.km/3sq.miles, most of which is covered by a layer of slag weighing 40 tonnes, the waste product of copper-smelting.
Cockerel Mountain, 200km/125 miles north of Wuhan on the border with Henan province, is famous for its springs, forests and mild climate (the average summertemperature is 24°C/75°F). The mountain is named after a
