Stone Forest - Fascinating Limestone Karsts
The Stone Forest is a creation of prehistory.
In the Permian period - roughly 270 million years ago - the
earth flexed its muscles, caused an ocean to drain and the
limestone seabed to rise up.
The wash of the receding waters, wind and
acidic rains, all lent to the erosion of the limestone until
only tall narrow karsts remained dotting the otherwise barren
landscape.
Of course, Chinese legends have far more
fanciful tales than this. One says that a young boy, seeking
to create a dam to help his starving village, stole a magic
whip with the power to move mountains from the tomb of the
gods.
Unfortunately, the whip's powers failed with
the rising sun and the mountains ceased their journey to the
dam site - inadvertently creating the Stone Forest.
The young man was to have much worse luck
for, finding their magic whip missing, the gods howled out
of their tomb and found the boy still trying to move the mountains.
They extracted a merciless punishment and
the cracks in the karsts are said to be the whip marks from
the boy's flogging.
As with the karsts at Halong Bay, in Vietnam, the locals
have given names to many of the rocks pillars - names that
say a lot about how they see the rocks.
Mother and Son Going for a Walk, Rhinoceros Looking at the
Moon, and Phoenix Preening its Wings are some of the more
unusual titles given to the many karsts.
Click here to see
Stone Forest Photos
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