Friday, October 10, 2008

Zichuan District

The Zichuan District is one of eight divisions within the city of Zibo in the province of Shandong. It is a highly industrial area, the major industry being .

Zichuan is famous in this region for "Clothing City" and The Former Residence of Pu Songling. In Clothing City, one can bargain with a multitude of vendors for a low price on clothing.

Travel:

A bus ride to and from costs 3.5 yuan each way.

Zhoucun District

Zhoucun district is a town and district of agricultural land inside Zibo city. Its main industry is textiles and furniture manufacture. The centre of the commercial district has a recently rebuilt and refurbished area with traditional buildings.

Zhangdian District

Zhangdian is the central city district of Zibo city, Shandong, People's Republic of China.

It contains the administrative offices of Zibo central government, and has major and bus stations. The outer area is highly industrialized. The central area is a mixture of high rise office buildings, newly constructed condos, government offices and large shopping malls/plazas. The CBD is located around the the central park in Zhangdian.

Zhangdian, the central part of Zibo, is, compared to other parts of China, a relatively small city; however, like many other parts of China, there is a large amount of apartment building construction. If you can tell the value of the city by the value of the apartments, then an average apartment in Zichuan is about 1,000 RMB per square metre, whereas in Qingdao is about 6,000 RMB per square metre, and in Zhangdian it's between 2,000 to 3,000 per square metre, thus showing that it is beginning to feel the pressure of inflation.

As cities go, it's relatively safe, with a low crime rate - citizens walk alone in dark streets at night without fear, and the People's Park in the central part of the CBD is a popular place for walking, jogging and other forms of exercise and recreation.

Tourism


Zibo is still relatively new at opening up its borders to people - whereas a foreign tourist or worker wouldn't even get a side glance in Beijing or Shanghai, foreigners are stared at, pointed to and even waved at with the obligatory, "Hello" in passing.

There is a fair sized group of foreigners who work in Zhangdian, mainly either teachers or workers in foreign-based enterprises. Although there is currently no official 'foreigners club' per se, informal get togethers are common, and aid is always available to newcomers and tourists if needed - and, as finding English-speaking shopkeepers is an almost impossible task, it is often needed.

Yantai Economic and Technological Development Zone

Yantai Economic and Technological Development Zone , is an economic development zone established in 1984 in Shandong Province, China. It is administratively under . It covers 16 km? and has a population of 115,000.

Industry


YEDA is the largest producer of automotive parts in China . Core industries at YEDA include industrial machinery, automobiles and parts, electronics, artificial fibers and textiles, and .

Thousand-Buddha Cliff

The Thousand-Buddha Cliff is historical site of mostly Tang Dynasty rock carvings in central Shandong , China. Along a cliff face of 63 meters length over 210 statues and 43 inscriptions have been reported.


The Thousand-Buddha Cliff is located near Liubu Village, in Licheng County, under the administration of Jinan City, about 33 kilometers southeast of the city of Jinan proper. It stands immediately to the west of the site of the former Shentong Temple , which is now in ruins. The cliff is oriented in the north-south direction.


The first is said to have been carved into the cliff by a 70-year old monk named Sha Dong in the year 619 AD. After a hiatus of 25 years, two more Buddhist sculptures by another old monk named Ming De. Because Ming De felt his live was coming to an end at the time, he also donated money towards the carving of additional statues. However, in the year 657 AD he was still alive and carved more statues and inscriptions into the rock face. Because the official policy during the Tang Dynasty was to encourage conversion to Taoism, the carving of Buddhist statues implied a political risk. Hence, the inscriptions left by Sha Dong and Ming De point out that the sole purpose of the statues was prayer and not the expression of political opinions. Despite these difficulties, the work of carving the sculptures into the was continued by other Buddhist and eventually the Thousand-Buddha Cliff became the largest collection of Buddhist cliff statues in Shandong.


Besides the Buddhist sculptures, there are also secular statues depicting nobility such as relatives of the emperor, government officials, and famous monks. Among those are statues of Princess Nanping , the daughter of Emperor Taizong of Tang and her husband Liu Xuanyi.

References and external links


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Thousand Buddha Mountain

The Thousand Buddha Mountain is a hill located southeast of the city of Jinan, the capital of Shandong , China. It is renowned for its numerous images which have been carved out of the hill's rock faces or free-standing structures erect since the times of the Sui Dynasty and its Xingguochan Temple.

Location



The Thousand Buddha Mountain is a small hill located about 2.5 kilometers southeast from the center of the city of Jinan 济南. The hill's ridge runs in east-west direction and the summit rises 285 meters above sea level and
slightly more than 200 meters from the hill's base. Since 1959, it has been a public park which also comprises ''Yellowstone Cliff'' to the south and ''Jueshan Mountain'' to the east and covers a total area of 1.66 square kilometers.


The Thousand Buddha Mountain Public Park is flanked by a cemetery honoring the fallen of the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 on the east side, the Shandong Provincial Museum to the northeast, and the Jinan Botanical Garden on the west side.

Legend



According to a legend related in the ''Youyang Zazu'' by the Tang Dynasty writer Duan Chengshi , the Thousand Buddha Mountain was originally located by the sea and the sea god had locked it in place there by a large lock in order to prevent the god in charge of the mountains from moving it around. However, eventually the lock broke and the mountain was hurled through the air into its present position. An artwork shaped as a large lock and a piece of chain has been placed on the summit of the mountain as a reference to the legend.

History



Buddhism became popular in the Jinan area during the reign of
, the founder of the Sui Dynasty. With Buddhism, monks came to area and chiseled Buddha statues out of the flanks of the hill, which was originally called ''Miji Hill'' or ''Li Hill''. A temple, called the ''Thousand Buddha Temple'' was founded at the foot of the hill. Eventually, the hill was renamed after the temple into "Thousand Buddha Mountain". One of the old names, ''Li Hill'' , survives in the name of ''Lishan Road'', the major avenue which runs through Jinan towards the Thousand Buddha Mountain in north-south direction.


The ''Thousand-Buddha Cliff'' is located on the northern flank of the hill behind the Xingguochan Temple . The foot of the cliff is pierced by five caves, which are named : Longquan Cave, Jile Cave, Qianlou Cave, and Luzhu Cave. The caves' height ranges from 3 meters down to only 20 centimeters. About 130 Buddha statues which were carved into Thousand-Buddha Cliff during the Sui period remain today. The Jile Cave houses 16 Buddha statues, the tallest of which is 3 m high.


Along with the Buddha statues, temples and other buildings were erected on the hill. The most renown of these structures is the ''Xingguochan Temple'' which was originally build during the reign of of as an expansion of the Sui-Dynasty Qianfo Temple. Further enlargements were undertaken during the Song Dynasty, but the temple was destroyed by war afterwards. Rebuilding was undertaken in 1468, during the Ming Dynasty. The Guanying Hall, the Foye Hall, and the Thousand-Hands Buddha statue were added during the Qing Dynasty.

The temple is located about half-way up the hill and can be reached via 300 stone steps. A large inscription cut into the cliff face to the southwest of the identifies it as the "Number One Temple" . The temple's courtyards feature several stone tablets bearing inscriptions from renown calligraphers. In one of the temple's courtyards stands a sculpture of the legendary Emperor Shun, who is -- according to the local tradition -- credited with first ploughing the soil in Jinan as well as with inventing the writing brush. Because of its mythological association with Emperor Shun, the Thousand Buddha hill is also known as ''Shungeng Hill''. The main structure of the temple are: Grand Prayer Hall, Guanying Hall, Dharma Hall, Maitreya Hall, and the Buddhist Scripture building. Lishanyuan courtyard, to the east of the temple, is surrounded by sites of worship belonging to Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. The names of these buildings are: the Shun and the Luban Ancestral Temples, the Wenchang Cabinet, and the Yilan Kiosk. The temple has been the site of two annual temple fairs held on the 3rd day of the third month and 9th day of the 9th month of the Chinese Lunar Calendar since the times of the Yuan Dynasty. It was burned down in wars and rebuild during the Ming Dynasty. Other notable buildings on the hill are: the ''Pagoda Tree Pavilion'' , ''Cloud Passing Zen Temple'', and the ''Tanghuai Kiosk''.

Many of the statues on the Thousand Buddha Mountain were damaged or lost during the Cultural Revolution, but restoration started in 1979 already. Since then, many new statues have been added. The largest largest new statues are a 20 meter-tall sitting Maitreya Buddha completed in 2000 and lying Buddha with a swastika on his chest. The latter statue was carved out of granite in 1996, has a length of 10 meters and weighs approximately 50 tonnes.

The Thousand Buddha Mountain Public Park has been developed extensively for -- mostly local tourism -- by the creation of access roads and walking paths as well the addition of amusement park features such as a 600 meter-long chairlift, a summer slide down the hill, a kart racing track, and numerous souvenir stalls . A major tourist attraction is the ''Myriad Buddha Cave'' at the foot of the hill's northern slope. Inside the more than 500 meter-long artificial cave, late-20th-century recreations of Buddhist statues from four famous Chinese grottoes are on display. The original artworks were created during the , , and dynasties. According to the operators , around 28 000 Buddhist images are on display inside the cave, the biggest statue -- a lying Buddha -- is 28 meters long.

Shanwang

The Shanwang National Geologic Park is located in Shandong Province, China, about 22 kilometres from Chengdong, Linqu county. It has an area of about 13 square kilometres. The Park is world famous for its fossil bearing diatomitic deposits, one of only a few such deposits in China. It is also well known for its volcanic topography.

The fossils are found in the Miocene Shanwang Formation diatomite beds and are approximately 17 million year old. They are noted for the prolific number of specimens found and the diversity of the species recovered, as well as the remarkable state of their preservation. The fine grained diatomite strata have led to exquisite preservation of external body features such as outlines of skin, hair, scales and feathers, rarely seen elsewhere in the world. Fossils have been found in a dozen categories, representing over 600 separate species. Animal fossils include insects, fish, spiders, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. Insect fossils have clear, intact veins. Some have retained beautiful colors. Those studied to date include 11 orders, 46 families, 100 genera and 182 species. Fossil birds recovered at Shanwang are the most abundant and best-preserved found so far in China. Fossils of ancient deer and bear are among the best-preserved from this period of time found anywhere in the world. Plant fossils include moss, fern, gymnosperm, and angiosperm species. In addition to 100 species of algae, other plant species are from 46 families, 98 genera and 143 species. Their research holds an important position in the world study of paleoecology, paleoclimatology and the evolution of plants and animals. Chinese and foreign experts who study the Miocene recognize Shanwang as an "integrated paleontological laboratory" and a research resource of the highest value.