Cliffside Carvings and Memorial Gateways
2 min readThere are more than 30 cliffside carvings over the mountain. The rock carvings are mainly distributed at the central district of Mogan Mountain, particularly in the section between Sword Pond and Lingque Bridge. Most of them are duplicated and amplified from the handwritings of modern calligraphers. As the token of the scenic site, two eye-catching Chinese characters “Jianchi”are carved on the background cliff of Sword Pond.
They are neat and upright with the character of the writer’s usual style.A largest mass of cliffside carvings appears on the Jiashou Rock near Lingque Bridge. The whole inscription has approximately 400 words and each wordmeasures about 15 centimeters in size. It was written by Bai Zengran to congratulate Zhou Qingyun on his 60th birthday. The biggest inscription on the cliffside is situated between Wuling and Luhuadang. It is believed when Qian Juntao was invited to stay at this summer resort in 1987, he found it unpleasant to one’s eyes that the cliffside was so deserted without any plants, he wrote down in his life the biggest word “Cui”, which means bright green in Chinese. There is no bigger carving on the mountain than this one. It is in the size of 12 meters. The local administrative department spent two years to engrave it on the bare Cliffside.The green word with its graceful stylesymbolizes the natural vigour of verdant plants.It is not only an uncommon sight on the mountain，but also an outstanding artistic work.
There are two memorial gateways on the mountain.They are separately located at the west and the south the mountain.The western memorial gate was built in 1988.The inscription of three words“Mogan Mountain”on the horizontal beam is taken from the handwriting of Sha Menghai，a great master of calligraphy.The lines on the middle pillars in regular script style are taken from the handwriting of Tan Jiancheng，a local calligrapher.The original poem was written by Lu Qian.The southern memorial gate was set in 1989.The inscription of three words“Mogan Mountain”on the horizontal stone is taken from the handwriting of Mao Dun，a great master in literature.The verses on the posts in the style of official script are taken from the handwriting of Qian Juntao.The original poem was written by Lu Qian.These poems all praise the beautiful sceneries and peculiar features of the mountain.
