Long'an District 龙安区

Setting and landscape

The west of the district is low mountain, the southwest is hill country belonging to the foothill belt on the eastern side of the Taihang, and the rest is alluvial plain. The highest point, 607 metres, is on Ma'anshan (马鞍山) in Majia (马家乡); the lowest, about 70 metres, is in Tiancun (田村街道). The Huan River (洹河), also called the Anyang River, enters the city through Majia, where it forms the Zhaohe (赵河) scenic area. In Shanying (善应镇), 35 kilometres southwest of the city, the Xiaonanhai Reservoir (小南海水库) holds back floods, working with the Zhangwu Reservoir (彰武水库) 10 kilometres downstream, whose earth dam was begun in 1958 and finished in 1979.

History

Digs at the Xiaonanhai cave (小南海洞穴遗址) show people living here 25,000 years ago, in the late Palaeolithic, and Neolithic remains survive in Shanying. The district itself was created in December 2002, when the State Council abolished Anyang's suburban and Tiexi districts, and its government opened on 25 February 2003. Shanying and Majia were moved in from Anyang County (安阳县) in 2017.

What to see

Three sites are national protected monuments: the Lingquan Temple grottoes (灵泉寺石窟, listed 1996), the Xiaonanhai grottoes (小南海石窟, 2001) and the pagoda of Xingyang Chan Temple (兴阳禅寺塔, 2013). The Anyang city government describes Lingquan, in Nanping village (南坪村), as more than 200 cave statues and cliff-carved pagodas from the Eastern Wei to the Song, the pagodas arranged by date so that they show how pagoda forms changed; it is known locally as the Valley of Ten Thousand Buddhas (万佛沟). Kunyu Mountain (昆玉山) in Shanying has cedars, smoke trees, bamboo and waterfalls, and a Taoist temple, the Changchun Guan (长春观), already stood on it in the Tang.

Food and local products

The district government lists bianfen cai (扁粉菜, a dish of flat starch noodles), fenjiang fan (粉浆饭), mixed stew (烩菜), pizha (皮渣) and blood cake (血糕) among its local snacks, and millet, sesame oil, tribute apricots (贡杏), hawthorn, winter jujubes and Sichuan pepper among its products. Folk performances include yangge dancing, stilt-walking, land boats and 'two ghosts wrestling' (二鬼摔跤).

Highlights

• Lingquan Temple grottoes 灵泉寺石窟: Over 200 cave statues and cliff-carved pagodas from the Eastern Wei to the Song; national protected site since 1996.
• Xiaonanhai grottoes 小南海石窟: National protected site, listed in 2001 in the fifth batch.
• Kunyu Mountain 昆玉山: 3A scenic area in Shanying with waterfalls and the Changchun Taoist temple, recorded from the Tang.