The Tiger Hill is said to be the most attractive spot of historical interest in Suzhou.
Long time ago, it was a vast sea in this area.This hill used to be one of the small islands.Later, due to the movement of the earth, the sea turned into the mulberry fields.Then the Yangtze River Delta came into being, This Island became the hill on the plain.So it was called the hill of Emergence from the Sea, with 34 meters above sea level, and some 20 hectares in area.In 514 BC, He Lu, king of State Wu, founded the city of Suzhou and made it his capital.This hill was his summer resort.
In 496 BC the king took the troop to the State Yue, the battle happened in Jiaxing area.The king was seriously injured in the battle and died on his way back home.Then his son named FuChai ordered 100,000 labors to build tomb for his father.Three days after the king’s burial, a tiger was said to appear on the top of the hill to guard his tomb.So the hill’s name was changed into the Tiger Hill.
Then the local people said the shape of the hill looks like a crouching tiger.The building ahead is its head.The gate is regarded as its mouth, two round windows as its eyes and flying eaves as its ears.The hill path is its back, the pagoda atop is its tail.In the hill, we can see many interesting rocks, behind them, are stories and legends of the king.The most famous highlight is the pagoda, it is known as the leaning pagoda of Pisa in China.
The famous poet Su Dongpo in the Song Dynasty once remarked, “To visit Suzhou without seeing the Tiger Hill would be a thing for regret.”
Here is the Bridge of Emergence from the Sea.In 1956, when the hill moat was dredged the bridge was built, and it was built of granite.We can see 12 lovely stone carved lions on the railings of the bridge, they are vivid and lifelike.The lion sculpture is a symbol of auspicious in China.
The second entrance hall is also called the Broken Beam Hall.In the hill there are only two things which are original, one is this hall, and the other is the pagoda.This hall was built in the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) some 700 years ago.Since the main beam is made of two logs looking like a broken beam, so that’s why we call it the Broken Beam Hall.
Under the roof around the building are the bracket sets, they bear the weight of the roof and scatter the weight on to the ground through those columns, so we said the walls of the building don’t bear weight, if you move them away, the building will not fall down.All the joints of the wooden structure were connected with the traditional tenons and mortises, with out a single nail.That’s why the building has been kept so long.It is regarded as a masterpiece of claical architecture.The wooden tablet facing the south has with four big Chinese characters on it, which means “The well-known place of interest in Suzhou”.The four characters on the other one facing the north mean “containing the real and hiding the ancient.” That is, the real hill, real water, real persons and real deeds, and the ancient pagoda, ancient temple, ancient spring, and ancient tomb in the hill.
The famous Sword -Testing Rock is a big oval rock.It is cleft in the middle as though by a sword.Legend has it that a couple, Ganjiang and Moye, were skillful sword-smiths.They were forced by the king to forge the sharp swords for him.The couple had quiet a few experiments and finally succeeded in forging two swords.After the king got one of them, he came here to test whether it was sharp.Down came the sword.The rock split in two, so that’s why called Sword Testing Rock
In the later dynasties, a lot of literatis and men of literature came to visit the Tiger Hill, they sighed and praised about the sword when they saw the rock.So on the stone we can still see a poem written by Gu Ying in the Yuan Dynasty, which goes “While the sword was tested, the rock was cleft, the clef fell and blocked the brook.Why, hundreds of years later, was it not used to decapitate the sinister eunuch Zhao Gao?”
The legend of the sword is similar to Excalibur, King Arthur’s sword.
A little further on the left is the Pillow Stone, which was said to have been used for that purpose by the monk Mr.Sheng Gong.Shen Gong was a famous high ranking monk in the East Jin dynasty.He had his new Buddhist theory that those who have the sense of Buddhism would all become Buddhist.For his theory was against by other monks, he was driven out of the capital of the country, and then he traveled to everywhere.One day he came to the Tiger Hill for preaching.He rested on this stone as a pillow when he was tired.Hence the name.
Here is the Thousand-Man Rock, after king was buried, his son Fu Chai, the new king, ordered to kill all the tomb-builders here to keep the tomb’ s secret.Their blood stained the rock, even now, after raining, the rock still appears reddish.In Chinese, Thousand doesn’t mean one thousand, which means a lot.
The Platform for Mr.Sheng Gong, In the Jin dynasty, the famous high ranking monk Mr.Shen Gong once preached here.A lot of believers (worshipers) got here to listen to his preaching.What he preached was so excellent that all the listeners kept nodding their heads to expre their approval.Even the hard rock in the pond was moved by his preaching and nodded.So today we can still see the Nodded Rock in the Pond.
Two Immortal’s Pavilion, it is aociated with two Taoist immortals, Lu Chunyang and Chen Tuan, they once played Chinese che here.The pavilion is made of stone, its roof was nicely carved from one single piece of stone in the early Qing Dynasty.Inside there are two stone tablets showing their portraits.
The four big characters in red is “Tiger Hill’s Sword Pond”, this great handwriting was originally written by Yan Zhenqin, a noted calligrapher in the Tang Dynasty (618-907).After the time went by, two characters “Tiger Hill” fell down, and then was rewritten by Zhang Zhongyu in Qing Dynasty.So here is a saying that: real Sword Pond, pseudo Tiger Hill.
Situated east of the White Lotus Pond are 53 steps, which are a neat flight of granite stone steps leading up to the main hall of Cloud-Rock Temple.These steps can be found in the Buddhist saying:” Climb53 steps to pay tribute to Buddha.” According to Buddhism, the Boy of Treasures worshipped 53 bodhisattvas as his teacher.So 53 steps can be seen sometimes near Buddhist temples in hilly area.Now we arrived at the Cloud-Rock Temple.During the culture revolution, the temple was damaged, all statues inside were destroyed, the present three statues restored later.In the middle is a statue of Sakyamuni.He was a prince of a small kingdom beside Nepal.When he saw the citizens suffering from birth and death, sickne and aging,, he gave up his luxurious life and went to forest to think deeply.After 6 years meditation, he was suddenly enlightened,, and then became the Buddha and the Patriarch.
On the both sides in front of statue are two disciples.The younger one named Ana was his cousin.He had followed Sakyamuni for over 20 years and he had good memories.He had kept all the teachings and all instructions from Sakyamuni in his mind, recited them and copied them on the bodhi leaves after Sakyamuni paed away, which are the Buddhist sutras we can see today.The elder one was Jiashe, once presided over a gathering in Linjiu Mountain, attended by 500 Indian monks after Sakyamuni died.
There are 18 portraits of 18 arhats hang on wall.
The shape of the pond below looks like a sword, so named The Sword Pond.According to the historical record, the King He Lu liked to collect the sharp swords very much.It is said, when he was buried, 3000 sharp swords were buried together with his tomb.Since then, many people in the different period of history came to this hill, tried to find his tomb to get these valuables.In 220 BC, when Qingshihuang, the First Emperor of the Qing Dynasty, unified China, he sent a lot of soldiers here to dig in the tomb, but failed.Because water gushed out from underground.
In 1956, when the pagoda was getting repaired, our local government tried to open to see this tomb. After dredging and digging, they found the entrance to the tomb at the tip of the pond.Entered 10 meters, one had to turn to the left, there the workers found 4 huge piece stone plates.One was lying underground as its base, the other three piled up, like a Chinese character Pin.That a new entrance to the tomb, but they happend to be under the pagoda.They couldn’t be moved away, if they are moved away, the foundation of the pagoda will be affected.For the protection of the pagoda, the excavation couldn’t be continued.The tomb now is till a mystery.
The Tiger Hill pagoda octagonal with 7 floors, it is 47.7 meters in height, built of bricks, not a single piece of wood.Because of its foundation, the pagoda stated to learn onto the north side in the Yuan Dynasty.The tip of the pagoda is 2.34 meters away from its central line, forming a learning angle of 2.48 degree.During repairing in 1956, many valuable objects were found behind a wall on its third floor.They are a Buddhist scripture box, bronze Buddhas, bronze mirrors, etc.An inscription with the date of construction of the pagoda was found from the bottom of the scripture box and supplied the answer to the exact date of the completion of the pagoda .It was built in 961 without controversy.In the 1980s, exactly from 1982 to 1986, the pagoda was reinforced because there were a lot of cracks appeared in the foundation of pagoda.Now the pagoda stop leaning.
