The rest of Wuhan: Yellow Crane Tower and Changchun Temple
In an attempt to say that I have been everywhere in Wuhan, I dragged Brittany and Jennifer along to see a few places that I hadn’t yet been to.
Yellow Crane Tower
The first stop was the internationally recognised “Yellow Crane Tower”. According to legend, Yellow Crane Tower was built by the family of an old pothouse owner living in Wuhan City long ago, named Old Xin. One day, a shabbily dressed Taoist priest came to the pothouse and asked for some wine. Old Xin paid no attention to him, but his son was very kind and gave the Taoist some wine without asking for money. The Taoist priest visited the pothouse regularly for half a year when one day, the Taoist said to the son that to repay his kindness, he would like to draw a crane on the wall of the pothouse, which would dance at his request. When people in the city heard of this, they flocked to the pothouse to see the dancing crane. The Xin family soon became rich, and they built the Yellow Crane Tower as a symbol of gratitude to the Taoist priest.
According to less ‘legend-based’ theories, the tower was constructed in 223, originally at the Yellow Crane Jetty, west of Xiakou. It has been destroyed 12 times, in war and by fire, in the Ming and Qing dynasties as was repaired on ten separate occasions. The last tower built at the original site was built in 1868 and destroyed in 1884. In 1907, a new tower was built near the site of the current tower. In 1957, the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge (Bridge number 1) was built with one trestle on the bridge of the site, so the Wuhan City Government commenced reconstruction at a new site, about 1 km from the original site. The Sacred Stupa is a Stupa of Tibetan Buddhism Tantric Buddhism and is also the only existing Lama-style white stupa in Wuhan.
Changchun Temple
A few days later, I convinced Jennifer and Brittany to come along on a second adventure… this time to the Changchun Temple. The temple is the most famous Daoist temple in Hubei. At its peak it had several thousand devotees. It was destroyed in 1851 and rebuilt in the late 1800s.
After Changchun Temple, we went to discover what was on top of the hill and found a great walking path along the back of what we think were tourist attractions. We feel that we found the locals back entrance to all these places and if you know otherwise, don’t tell us, because we feel pretty special. I have no idea what these places are called but here are the photos:
To top the day off we found some fairly random statues and a random pile of rubbish bins.
