Deqing County 德庆县

Setting and landscape

The county is low mountains and hills, enclosed by high ground on the north, east and west, with the Xi River running through the south. Huabiao Rock (华表石), a 173-metre Danxia landform on the north bank of the river at Jianfeng village in Huilong (回龙镇), carries an inscription that Chinese Wikipedia describes as the largest ancient cliff inscription in Guangdong. Panlong Gorge (盘龙峡), with its waterfall, is one of the county's national 4A scenic areas.

History

Deqing is one of the 15 Qin and Han counties of Guangdong: after the Han conquest of Nanyue in 111 BC, Duanxi County (端溪县) was set up here. In 1131 the Southern Song emperor Gaozong gave it the name Deqing, 'blessing through virtue', and raised it to a prefecture; it became Deqing County in 1912 and has belonged to Zhaoqing since 1988. The county is a provincial historic and cultural city.

What to see

Deqing Confucian School (德庆学宫), in the county town, dates from 1011 and was rebuilt in 1297. Inside its Dacheng Hall, four "thunder-god pillars" stop short of the roof beams, a design meant to spare the hall from lightning. The State Council put the complex on the national list of protected relics in 1996.

At Yuecheng, the Dragon Mother Ancestral Temple (悦城龙母祖庙) keeps mainly Qing halls with fine carving in stone, wood and brick, protected at national level since 2001. It hosts the Dragon Mother festival (龙母诞), on the national intangible-heritage list since 2011, which runs from the first to the eighth day of the fifth and of the eighth lunar months, with rites such as bathing and dressing the goddess.

Two provincial protected sites are Sanyuan Pagoda (三元塔), a 58.13-metre Ming brick pagoda with nine outer and seventeen inner storeys on Baisha Hill east of the town, listed in 1989, and the Sanzhouyan cliff inscriptions (三洲岩摩崖石刻) at Jiushi (九市镇), 91 carvings from the Song to the Qing, listed in 2002.

Food and local products

Local dishes include bamboo-pole rice noodles (竹篙粉) and Nihui chicken (泥烩鸡). Deqing grows gonggan (贡柑) and shatangju (砂糖桔) mandarins and Shatian pomelos (沙田柚), and produces medicinal morinda root (巴戟) and cassia bark (桂皮).

Highlights

• Deqing Confucian School 德庆学宫: Dates from 1011, rebuilt in 1297; on the national protected-relic list since 1996.
• Yuecheng Dragon Mother Ancestral Temple 悦城龙母祖庙: Temple to the Dragon Mother whose festival is on the national intangible-heritage list (2011).
• Sanyuan Pagoda 三元塔: Octagonal Ming brick pagoda, 58.13 metres high.
• Huabiao Rock 华表石: Danxia landform on the north bank of the Xi River, with a cliff inscription described as the largest of ancient Guangdong.
• Bamboo-pole rice noodles 竹篙粉: One of the county's local dishes.