Tangyue Archways
Last Updated: September 14, 1998
The Tangyue Archways are located outside of Tunxi. We rented
a car and driver for the day, and this was our first stop.
There are seven arches, and a tour guide tells a short story
for each arch (well, for at least five of the arches). Our
tour was Mandarin only, so Mei translated bits for me.
The story for the first arch is something like the following:
A bandit came to the area, and threatened a man and his son.
The man said kill me and spare my son; the son said kill me
and spare my father. The bandit was touched, and left them
both alive. Word of this story reached the emperor, who
was touched, and built this arch to commemorate the event.
The other arches have similar stories.
This is me, in front of the second arch.
This is a shot of five of the arches, with me at the lower
right of the nearest arch.
Near the arches are two pseudo-temples. The buildings are
no longer temples (pictures are allowed), and the insides
are a bit tacky. One of the temples was a building for
the women (apparently, the people who lived in the area
treated women better than the rest of China at the time).
The above is a picture of some of the elaborate stone work
on the women's building; such elaborate stone work is
typical of older Chinese buildings.
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