Yuhuatai

 

 

 

Yuhuatai (雨花台) means "Dais of Rain of Falling Flowers", which is a truly moving heroic and romantic name. The dais situates on a 100-meter-high hill just south to a gate tower of Zhonghuamen Gate in Nanjing. The top of the hill is a spacious plane, where about 100,000 Communists and revolutionaries have been martyred here in the past.

 

A legend goes that in sixth century AD, one day, a local Buddhist master was preaching Buddhism to the mass public on the platform. The great sayings of him had inspiringly moved the Buddha, and then the heaven dropped pretty flowers like falling rain. A few

hundred years later in the Tang Dynasty the dais was formally named as Yuhuatai. There were two crystal-clear springs in a Buddhist Gaozuo Temple (高座寺). The water could be drunk, with pleasant and sweet taste. Although the springs are dried nowadays, the good name still.

 

 

The solemn gate of the cemetery is made from blocks of granite, height 11.7 meters. Pass through the gate, you will see a sculpture of a group of heroic martyrs, which magnificently stands at the cemetery square surrounding by hills on its three sides. The sculpture is also made of granite that 179 pieces of the stone have been used. It is the biggest granite sculpture in China today. Face expressions are being emphasized in order to impress visitors the lofty sentiment possessed by China's national heroes. The round-cemetery road is located on the edges of the cemetery, it can reach the main peak of Yuhuatai, where a tall stele is stood there and a giant bronze martyr statue erected. On the front of the stele, Deng Xiaoping inscribed the golden characters "The Memorial Stele of Revolutionary Martyrs" (革命烈士纪念碑) and monumental epitaph is on the back of it. The Memorial Hall of Revolutionary Martyrs is on the hill located at the south of the stele. The hall is having a U-shaped base, granite built and full of Chinese characteristics in architecture. It exhibits the pictures, last words and mementos of revolutionary martyrs.

 

At the second spring is a tea house located, you can sample Chinese tea in a very leisurely way.

 

Yuhuatai's stunning specialty is Yuhua Stone (雨花石). In geology, this stone can be called a kind of gravel. It is massy and colorful with pretty and changing patterns.