Hebi 鹤壁市

Setting and landscape

The mountainous west gives way to an eastern plain long known for grain, remembered in the saying that a Liyang harvest feeds the nine provinces (黎阳收、顾九州). The city government calls Hebi a cradle of the Book of Songs (诗经), 39 of whose poems describe life along the Qi River (淇河).

History

Qi County (淇县), anciently Zhaoge (朝歌), was the capital of the last four Shang kings, and the city presents it as the birthplace of the Fengshen (封神) stories. The last king, Di Xin (帝辛), burned himself on the Lutai (鹿台) terrace when the Zhou took Zhaoge around 1046 BC. Xun County (浚县), anciently Liyang (黎阳), held the Liyang Granary (黎阳仓), one of the great Sui granaries, built in 583 at the northern foot of Dapi Mountain (大伾山); the granary site is now World Heritage. The Tang physician Sun Simiao (孙思邈) lived as a recluse on Wuyan Mountain (五岩山).

What to see

The city government notes that Xun County is the only county-level national historic and cultural city in Henan. Its old town keeps a Ming wall, begun in 1369, along the Wei River (卫河) and the Wenzhi Pavilion (文治阁) at its centre, together a national key cultural relics protection unit. In Tianning Temple (天宁寺) at the eastern foot of Dapi Mountain, a seated Maitreya 21.33 metres high, begun in the Northern Qi and finished in the early Tang, was cut from the rock facing the Yellow River; Wang Yangming's (王阳明) Dapi Mountain poem is among the inscriptions around it.

Xun County's first-month temple fair, which the city says has run for more than 1,700 years, brings out the lion dances, stilt-walkers and dragon lanterns of its shehuo (社火) troupes, on the national intangible heritage list since 2008; its small painted clay whistles, nigugu (泥咕咕), were listed in 2006. In Qi County, Yunmeng Mountain (云梦山) is where, by tradition, Guiguzi (鬼谷子) taught Su Qin (苏秦), Zhang Yi (张仪) and Sun Bin (孙膑).

Food and local products

The city names crucian carp, silk-thread duck eggs (缠丝鸭蛋) and donglingcao (冬凌草) as the three treasures of the Qi River. The carp, called 'double-backed fish' for their broad backs, were a Ming tribute, and the eggs, from villages along the river, show rings of colour in the cooked yolk. Qi County's seedless dates (无核枣), grafted from wild jujube, have an edible soft stone, and Xun County is known for Wangqiao tofu (王桥豆腐) and Xiaohe cabbage (小河白菜).