Yunfeng Mountain Cliff Inscriptions 云峰山石刻

About Yunfeng Mountain Cliff Inscriptions

The hill takes its folk name from its outline: the main peak has a lesser summit on either side like a brush rack, so local people call it Bijia Mountain. Laizhou's culture and tourism bureau counts about forty inscriptions of successive dynasties running from the foot of the hill to the top, while a municipal conservation report breaks the older group down as twenty-three Northern Wei carvings, ten of the Song and two each of the Ming and Qing, calling the result a natural forest of stelae. The Northern Wei official and calligrapher Zheng Daozhao left seventeen inscriptions here in 511, all cut into steep cliff faces. The best known is the stele of Zheng Wengong of Xingyang, 2.8 metres high and 3.6 metres wide, which Chinese writers call the crown of the Wei stelae; others include the 'Poem on Discussing the Classics' and the 'Poem on Watching the Sea Children'. The State Council listed the site as a national key cultural heritage unit in 1988, and it is administered by the Laizhou Museum.

Chinese calligraphers value Zheng Daozhao's hand as evidence of the change from clerical to regular script, and the Yunfeng carvings are grouped with the Longmen dedicatory inscriptions and the Four Mountains cliff texts as the three great repositories of Northern Wei calligraphy. In 2011 the China Calligraphers Association named the hill a famous mountain of Chinese calligraphy and the Zheng Wengong stele a famous stele; the site was rated a national 3A scenic area in 2013. Conservation has put traditional-style shelters over the Northern Dynasties carvings, namely the Zheng Wengong Stele Pavilion, the Lunjingshu Hall and the Guanhaitong Poem Pavilion, and added an archway, a reception hall, a courtyard-style Yunfeng Hall and a Zheng Daozhao memorial room. The rock faces the Bohai Gulf to the north and has long been eroded by damp air driven off the sea; two Song inscriptions on the same rock show that the slab bearing the 'Poem on Discussing the Classics' had already tilted 21 degrees by the Song dynasty. An academic conference on the Northern Dynasties inscriptions of the Yunfeng hills was held in October 1984.

What to look for

• The stele of Zheng Wengong of Xingyang, 2.8 metres high and 3.6 metres wide, under its own pavilion
• The 'Poem on Discussing the Classics' and the 'Poem on Watching the Sea Children', two further inscriptions attributed to Zheng Daozhao
• The traditional-style protective buildings raised over the Northern Dynasties carvings, including the Lunjingshu Hall and the Guanhaitong Poem Pavilion
• The display rooms on the history of Chinese calligraphy, newly unearthed inscriptions and calligraphy works added during conservation
• The brush-rack profile of the main peak with its two flanking summits, which gave the hill its folk name

Location & getting there

Getting to Yunfeng Mountain Cliff Inscriptions

Check which interiors and courtyards are accessible. Active places of worship and protected monuments may have different visitor rules.

• Search for 云峰山石刻 with 烟台市 and 莱州市.