Tian'e County 天峨县

Setting and landscape

The county government bills Tian'e as the first county the Hongshui River reaches: the river runs 115 kilometres through it and passes straight through the county town. Tian'e is the site of the Longtan Hydropower Station (龙滩水电站), and the county holds 45 percent of the hydropower potential of the whole Hongshui basin.

The land is high around the edges and low in the centre. Mountains, hills and valley plains shaped by erosion cover about 80 percent of the county; the highest are sandstone and shale mid-mountains in the southwest near Leye (乐业) and in the north, at 1,000 to 1,419 metres. The remaining fifth is karst, where mostly bare rock forms peak clusters and peak forests, with short surface streams and frequent underground rivers. The county reports forest cover of 79.97 percent.

What to see

Tianfu Mountain (天福山), beside the Hongshui River at the county town, is laid out as an urban leisure and ecology park. It contains the Dongxi Literature Museum (东西文学馆), devoted to the writer Dong Xi (东西), a Tian'e native and the first Guangxi winner of the Mao Dun and Lu Xun literature prizes.

Tianlong Bridge (天龙特大桥) crosses the Hongshui six kilometres upstream of the Longtan dam on the Nandan-Tian'e Xialao expressway. The county describes its 600-metre main span as the world's largest for a deck arch bridge of its concrete type and the first arch bridge to exceed 600 metres.

The Lahao Rock Red Army battle site (拉号岩红军战斗遗址) is a cliff cave above Dulou village (都楼村) in Bamu township (岜暮乡), still fronted by two stone defensive walls. In September 1932 soldiers of the Red Army's 63rd Regiment held out here against Guangxi warlord troops; when food and ammunition ran out, nine of them, seven men and two women, each seized an enemy soldier and leapt from the cliff. It became a county-level protected site in 2001.

Food, products and traditions

Tian'e is one of three core counties, with Nandan (南丹) and Donglan (东兰), of the national experimental zone for the ecological protection of bronze-drum culture. Two Zhuang traditions from the county are on the national intangible heritage list: the Frog Festival (蚂拐节) and bronze-drum customs. The Longtan pearl plum (龙滩珍珠李), a variety bred in the county, is registered with the Ministry of Agriculture as an agricultural geographical indication. The county also has about 120,000 mu of wild golden camellia (金花茶) and plantings of tung-oil trees, walnuts, chestnuts and oil-tea camellia.

Highlights

• Tianlong Bridge 天龙特大桥: Hongshui River crossing with a 600-metre main arch span, six kilometres above the Longtan dam.
• Tianfu Mountain 天福山: Riverside park at the county town, home to the Dongxi Literature Museum.
• Lahao Rock Red Army battle site 拉号岩红军战斗遗址: Cliff cave in Bamu township where nine Red Army fighters died in September 1932; county-level protected site since 2001.
• Longtan pearl plum 龙滩珍珠李: Plum variety bred in Tian'e and registered as an agricultural geographical indication.