Linghai 凌海市

History

The Liao dynasty first founded Jinzhou here, and under the Qing the area was Jin County (锦县), governed from Jinzhou prefecture. After 1949 the county government sat at Dalinghe town (大凌河镇), and on 16 November 1993 the State Council approved replacing Jin County with Linghai city.

During the Liaoshen Campaign the Northeast Field Army's forward command post for the Jinzhou battle was at Mangniutun village (牤牛屯村) in Cuiyan town (翠岩镇), with its observation post on Mao'er Mountain (帽儿山) at Wendilou (温滴楼镇). The writer Xiao Jun (萧军) was born at Nianpangou village (碾盘沟村) in Shenjiatai town (沈家台镇); the command post, the Xiao Jun Memorial Hall and his tomb are listed by the city government as well-known national red tourism sites.

What to see

Shisanfeng, the Thirteen Peaks (十三峰), belongs to the same range as Mount Yiwulü (医巫闾山). The Qianlong Emperor passed it on a tour of the northeast and wrote a poem about it. The city also lists Cuiyan Mountain (翠岩山), Chashan Temple (茶山寺) and a Liao-dynasty flower pagoda, which it counts as one of more than ten flower pagodas surviving in China.

The Yanjing Temple (岩井寺) scenic area has nearly a thousand mu of old-growth forest, with more than a hundred tree species including pine, cypress, oak, maple and birch. About 40 metres from the temple a small well cut into a boulder, 20 centimetres across, holds water all year.

On the coast, the Linghekou wetland reserve covers 99,168 hectares between the mouths of the Daling (大凌河) and Xiaoling (小凌河) rivers. Red-crowned cranes, oriental storks and Saunders's gulls use it, and in autumn more than 2,000 mu of seepweed (碱蓬草) turns the flats at the Daling mouth red. In the hungry years of the 1960s, villagers steamed the seeds, leaves and stems of this plant with cornmeal into red buns.

Local products

Linghai calls itself China's home of ecological sea cucumber, with nearly 300,000 mu of ponds.