The Inverted Reflection of the Thousand Buddha Hill in Daming Lake and Tie Gong Memorial
In spring or autumn, visitors can enjoy the nice view of the inverted reflection of the Thousand Buddha Hill in Daming Lake at sunrise or sunset time. The best position to watch the view is around Xiaocanglang Pavilion in Tie Gong Memorial. In the book of The Travels of Laocan, the author Liu E vividly described this amazing scene which became popular all over China. This chapter of his book has been collected into the textbooks in China since Minguo Period.
Tie Gong Memorial is located on the north bank of Daming Lake. It was built to memorize Tie Gong, the Minister of Defense in the Ming Dynasty. Tie Gong, also named Ding Shi, was born in Dengzhou in Henan Province. He was the provincial assistant administrator of Shandong in Emperor Jianwen’s reign of the Ming Dynasty. In 1400, Zhu Di, one of the emperor’s uncles marched from Beijing to scramble for the throne. At Jinan, Zhu Di was fought against fiercely by Tie Gong. Later, Zhu Di had to leave Jinan unconquered and finally broke through the defense of the capital Nanjing and became the new emperor. In the reign of Zhu Di, Tie Gong was defeated and refused to surrender. At last he was captured and tortured to death in Nanjing. It is not clear when Tie Gong Memorial was first built. In 1792, in the reign of Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty, Tie Gong Memorial was rebuilt by A Linbao, the official in charge of salt affairs in Shandong. It consists of the Shrine of Tie Gong, Xiaocanglang Pavilion, the Moon Pavilion, the Lakeside Corridor, the Lotus Pond and so on. It is a compound of garden. Inside the shrine, there is Tie Gong’s bronze statue which is 2.3 meters tall and weighs 1.8 tons. The statue is vividly modeled by traditional and modern artistic skills. On the walls of the shrine, there are eight calligraphies written in various styles of Chinese calligraphy among which are cursive hand, running hand, seal script, and regular script. There are also a lot of inscriptions including travel notes, poems, rebuilding record, commemorative articles which were written by some well-known poets or writers.