Shunchang County 顺昌县

Setting and landscape

The Futun rises at Wushan (巫山) in Shaowu and enters the county from the northwest at Fuwen (富文); the Jinxi, 224 kilometres long from its source in Ninghua County (宁化县), comes in from the southwest. They join near the county town in Shuangxi subdistrict (双溪街道) and flow east past Yangkou (洋口) into Nanping and the Min. The ranges are offshoots of the Wuyi Mountains, and peaks above 1,000 metres ring every border except the southeast; the highest in the northwest is Baoshan (宝山) at 1,304 metres, and Guoyanshan (郭岩山) reaches 1,384 metres in the northeast. The county has been named a home of bamboo, of Chinese fir and of bamboo fungus (竹荪).

History

In 629 the Tang carved a settlement called Jiangshui (将水场) out of Jiangle County (将乐县). Later renamed Yongshun (永顺场), it was raised to a county named Shunchang in 933, under the Later Tang; a Qing gazetteer of Yanping Prefecture explains the name as "obedient and prosperous", because the area submitted early. Yangkou, on the Futun, was a river port in the 1930s, nicknamed "Little Fuzhou" (小福州) and counted among the four famous towns of Fujian. In 1933 Peng Dehuai's Eastern Army stayed there for 39 days and set up a soviet government.

What to see

Baoshan Temple (宝山寺), on Baoshan in Shanghu village in Dagan town (大干镇), was founded in 1363 under the Yuan, and its surviving main hall is a Yuan building. It is a stone building imitating timber construction, carries more than a dozen Yuan, Ming and Qing inscriptions, and became a national protected site in 2001.

Huayang Mountain (华阳山), a national 4A scenic area 6 kilometres northwest of the county town, covers 12 square kilometres around a 586-metre main peak. Water falls in three tiers to form a cascade, and more than 100 kinds of climbing vine grow in the area. Jiulong Lake below is crossed by the Jiulong covered bridge (九龙廊桥), built in 2005 on the model of the rainbow bridge in the Song painting "Along the River During the Qingming Festival": 99 metres long, it spans the 19.9-metre dam in a single timber arch joined without iron nails.

Highlights

• Baoshan Temple main hall 宝山寺大殿: Yuan-dynasty stone hall of a temple founded in 1363; a national protected site since 2001.
• Huayang Mountain 华阳山: National 4A scenic area with a three-tier waterfall and the Jiulong covered bridge.
• Yangkou 洋口镇: Old Futun river port nicknamed Little Fuzhou.