Xuyi County 盱眙县

Setting and landscape

The land steps down from low hills in the southwest to plain in the northeast, a fall of more than 220 metres. The county government describes Tieshan Temple National Forest Park (铁山寺国家森林公园) as ridges extending from the Dabie Mountains (大别山) under secondary forest, and includes in it Tianquan Lake (天泉湖), about 9 square kilometres, which it calls the largest mountain lake in northern Jiangsu. Chinese Wikipedia explains the name as "to open the eyes wide and look straight ahead", because the county seat once stood on a hill.

History

The county government counts more than 60 ancient sites here, and Pleistocene human fossils found at Xiacaowan (下草湾) in 1954. A carved wooden star chart dug up at the old city of Dongyang (东阳故城) in 1974, which the Nanjing Museum matched to a comet recorded in 44 BC, is now a national first-grade relic known as the Xuyi star chart. In 2011 the Han tombs at Dayunshan (大云山) were identified as those of Liu Fei (刘非), Prince of Jiangdu. Xuyi belonged to Anhui until 1955, when Jiangsu took it over to manage the Hongze Lake area.

What to see

The Ming Ancestral Tomb (明祖陵), begun in 1385, holds memorial tombs that the founding Ming emperor Zhu Yuanzhang built for his great-great-grandfather and great-grandfather, and the actual burial of his grandfather. The Huai and Yellow rivers flooded it in 1680, and it was rediscovered in the drought of 1962-63; 21 pairs of spirit-way stone figures survive, and it has been a national key cultural relic site since 1996. Mount Diyi (第一山) on the south bank of the Huai got its name, "First Mountain", from the calligrapher Mi Fu (米芾) in 1097, and keeps 168 inscriptions, including works by Su Shi (苏轼). Tieshan Temple (铁山寺), in the forest park, is named after its mountain and linked by the county government to Yan Fotiao (严佛调), whom it calls the first Han Chinese monk. The New Fourth Army headquarters memorial at Huanghuatang (黄花塘新四军军部纪念馆), about 30 kilometres southeast of the county town, marks where the army's headquarters was based from January 1943 until victory in the War of Resistance against Japan.

Food and local products

Crayfish sales took off in Jiangsu from 1998. "Xuyi crayfish" (盱眙龙虾) is recognised as a national well-known trademark, and the county is widely known as the "home of crayfish" (龙虾之乡).

Highlights

• Ming Ancestral Tomb 明祖陵: Tomb site of Zhu Yuanzhang's ancestors, begun 1385, drowned by Hongze Lake in 1680.
• Mount Diyi 第一山: Named by Mi Fu in 1097; 168 carved and stele inscriptions.
• Tieshan Temple 铁山寺: Temple in a national forest park, linked to the early monk Yan Fotiao.
• Huanghuatang New Fourth Army memorial 黄花塘新四军军部纪念馆: Headquarters site of the New Fourth Army from 1943.
• Xuyi crayfish 盱眙龙虾: Nationally recognised trademark.