Opposite Meng Liang Stairway is a coffee-colored
precipice called Bellows Gorge (Fengxiang Xia). On
the upper sections of some fissures in the cliff are some rectangular
wooden boxes which look like bellows used by Chinese blacksmiths. It was
said that these bellows belonged to the master carpenter Lu Ban, who came
to help Yu, the legendary emperor of the Xia Dynasty, dredge the river.
The best place to view the "bellows" is from the cliff path.
Upon the cliff, several rectangular wooden boxes suspended high within
the crevices can be seen clearly. It was said that towards the end of
the 19th century in the Qing Dynasty, a climber got a wooden case down
from the crevices for sale. His deed was considered blasphemous and the
case was sent back.
The age-old
puzzle was eventually solved when two skilled herb gatherers climbed to
the upper part of a fissure in 1971. The
so-called "bellows" are in fact coffins of the Ba people, an
ancient tribe in the period of the Warring States about 400 BC. Suspending
the coffins on the mountains was an ancient burial custom that prevailed
in Sichuan during the time from the Western Han Dynasty (206 B.C.A.D.
24) to the Southern and Northern Dynasties (420-589). Inside
the coffins, many precious relics such as bronze swords, axes, straw shoes
and coins were found. Three
coffins still remain here and can be seen from the river.
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