The story of Jianchi
2 min readPaying a visit to Jianchi is a must-do in your tour of the mountain. It is the place where Gan Jiang and his wife, Mo Ye forged a couple of swords. Some different folk-tales about them have been passed down from ancienttimes. According to the most popular story, the King of Wu Kingdom in the Spring and Autumn Period was told that Gan Jiang and Mo Ye were very skillful at forging swords.
The king ordered them to manufacture a pair of unrivalled swords for him. The couple stayed in the mountain and took water from the pond to grind the pair of swords on the nearby rock. It was because they did not present the swords to the king in time, and only handed out one of the two swords, Gan Jiang was killed by the cruel and tyrannical king of Wu in spite of his wife in pregnancy. When his son, Mo Gan grew up and knew what had happened on his parents, he decided to take vengeance for his father. At last, he avenged his father’s death upon the king at the cost of his own life.
To memorize Gan Jiang and Mo Ye, the pond has been called Jianchi(Sword Pond). The two bold characters in Chinese calligraphy from the handwriting of Zhou Qingyun are large-scaled and carved on the cliff as the setting of the pond. Jianchi now covers about five meters square with iron rails around. As the core of the scenic site, many attractions about are easy for visitors to get to, such as four-overlapping waterfalls, Guanpu Pavilion (Pavilion for watching waterfall) and MoyaRock Carvings. Some of them have interesting stories derived from the legend of Mo Xie, Gan Jiang, like Mo Jian Shi(Grinding Stone for Sharpening Sword), Shi Jian Shi(Testing Rock for Trying Sword) as well as the statue of Gan Jang and Mo Xie.
