The Golden Mountain Nearest to Beijing: Home to a Staggering Number of Folk Artifacts! The Extraordinary Tiger Mountain
When you mention Quyang, perhaps not many know it well, but bring up Ding porcelain, and chances are someone will immediately launch into an animated conversation about it! Indeed, Quyang is renowned for far more than just Ding porcelain, just as the most famous thing in Baoding isn’t only donkey meat sandwiches. Today, we're talking about Tiger Mountain, located 45 kilometers north of Quyang county seat, on the eastern foothills of the Taihang Mountains, and linked to the famous ancient Northern Hengshan, forming a scenic mountainous area rich in ecological resources that "steps on three counties with one foot."
In northern China, Tiger Mountain's ecological resources can absolutely be described as perfect. With nearly 100% forest coverage, diverse flora, fauna, and free-ranging birds, plus abundant water resources, it stays warm in winter and cool in summer. In summer especially, temperatures here are 5 to 10 degrees Celsius lower than in the city. A veritable natural oxygen bar, an excellent spot to escape the heat and enjoy a "forest bath," a travel destination where you can feel a return to nature's simplicity!
Strolling through the scenic area, whether under a brilliantly clear sky or in drizzling rain, lush vegetation continuously provides shade and shelter along the way. Pavilions, terraces, bridges, and streams reminiscent of Jiangnan gardens are everywhere. During the rainy season or wet periods, mountain streams crisscross, clear springs gurgle; high peaks and long waters accompany you all the way, with cascading waterfalls alongside... creating the nearly 40-meter-drop "Immortal Waterfall," where water and mountain embrace, and the multi-tiered falls and springs imbue Tiger Mountain's beauty with a spirited, enchanted-forest-like quality!
But you might not know, Tiger Mountain was once a genuine golden mountain! Since ancient times, the Tiger Mountain area has seen gold mining across multiple dynasties. According to historical records, gold mining here began as early as the Yuan Dynasty. The long history of mining and smelting left behind multiple gold mine tunnels and smelting site relics in the mountain. Although mining ceased in the 1980s and 90s, the well-preserved remnants have formed a unique gold-themed culture at Tiger Mountain. Today, the gold mine tunnel exploration journey, centered on gold culture and set amid the mine relics, has become a major highlight of the scenic area!
The entrance to the gold tunnels sits right inside the Gold Culture Exhibition Hall. I believe most visitors, like me, couldn't wait to find the tunnel entrance before even closely examining the gold mining history and smelting culture displays. At the far end of the hall, you see the entrance. Small, allowing two to enter side by side, but you can’t walk upright. The tunnels are long, narrow, and damp. As the saying goes, "Metal generates water, water nourishes metal," with water droplets continuously dripping from the ceiling but not enough to soak your clothes.
It’s said the main gold vein tunnel in Tiger Mountain stretches over 1,000 meters, and while I don’t know the depth, the length is nearly 500 meters. Inside, under dim lighting, occasional sculptures depict ancient gold panning and mining. You may encounter side tunnels, but it feels like going deeper increases the pressure, sometimes causing a distinct squeezing sensation in the eyes and head. You can imagine how incredibly hard it was for the ancients to mine gold. Yet, since ancient times, people’s pursuit of gold and its value as hard currency even today made these hardships seem like nothing!
A vast golden mountain or a beautifully scenic ecological mountain – if those were its only attractions, it might feel insufficient. Right, what amazed me most about Tiger Mountain is yet another major highlight! I think this can absolutely be called a folk culture museum with an unequaled private collection. The exhibits here win top honors on sheer scale, spanning an extraordinarily broad range of categories and content – not to be underestimated! More importantly, almost everyone from eighty- or ninety-year-olds down to twenty- or thirty-year-olds can find something here that evokes childhood memories!
Look, an old-fashioned heavy-duty bicycle is rigged with a white wooden box reading "Ice Cream, Snow Popsicle" in Chinese – familiar, isn't it, heart-warming? It cost just a few pennies back then for the sweetest, most delicious luxury. You’d sometimes have to pester your parents for ages to get an ice pop from that box. I miss that taste so much...
Then see the other items displayed in this vast hall – my goodness, all are household appliances or everyday items rich with vintage charm! From large pieces like refrigerators, TVs, tape recorders, and radios, down to tiny mirrors, mugs, clocks, and badges, even the most primitive telephones, pagers, brick cell phones, and early mobile phones are all exhibited! And the sheer quantity is incomparable elsewhere. Take black-and-white TVs and cassette recorders: they line a corridor lengthwise, stacked into a wall of TVs and recorders. You might just stumble upon the very same model your family once owned...
See those mirrors, either placed or hung on the wall? Perhaps you can still find mirrors of that shape in shops, but the patterns on their backs are rare today, yet oddly familiar. Just as the front of a mirror reflects the youthful prime of a generation, the back unfolds a story’s twists and turns or mirrors a era’s dramatic changes!
And exhibition halls like this are far more than just one or two, covering far more categories than you’d imagine! The "Chinese Happiness Culture Museum" is one such unique place, where you can not only learn about Chinese wedding culture but also see some of the earliest marriage certificates in the country!
And these certificates, too, are present in staggering numbers! Not only that, but it also displays a complete array of wedding-related items: tea cups, teapots, washbasins, thermoses, even pots, bowls, and pans – everything is here!
From the "36 legs" desired in weddings of the 1950s-60s – a wardrobe, a cabinet, a table, four chairs, a bed; evolving to the "three turns and one sound" of the 1970s – a sewing machine, a bicycle, a wristwatch, a radio; then the "four big items" of the 1980s, upgraded to "new four big items" in the 1990s; all the way to today’s car and house, called the "moveable" and the "immovable." Most visitors more or less recall the nervous yet overjoyed sweet memories and happy moments of their own weddings...
In the Abacus Culture Display Hall within the scenic area, over a thousand abacuses of various shapes and materials are on display. As the saying goes, "If you don't manage money, money will ignore you," this hall showcases the tools working people relied on for careful calculation. As is well known, the abacus originated in China, evolving over time from the counting rods commonly used as early as the Spring and Autumn Period, predating the emergence of Arabic numerals.
The abacuses exhibited here were largely collected from local former gold mining households, including rare and valuable ones made of materials like turquoise or jade. The most precious is a Ming Dynasty abacus over 300 years old! This is also a great place to bring children, letting them touch an abacus and try their hand at using it. As fingers fly up and down, click and clack, they fully experience the magical charm and cultural depth of this tool!
And the Myriad Lamp Cave is another hall that wins through sheer numbers, much like the millstones omnipresent throughout the scenic area. It’s said that Tiger Mountain holds as many as 9,999 millstones of all sizes, even in Millstone Valley where entire sites are built from millstones – on pathways, steps, walls, even in water features, millstones are everywhere. Just like the countless kerosene lamps and oil lamps inside the Myriad Lamp Cave – you dare not even try to count them!
Inside, walls and ceilings are hung with all kinds of kerosene lamps, mining lamps, or oil lamps. Legend has it that the national treasure "Changxin Palace Lamp" was unearthed from the Mancheng Han Tombs not far from Tiger Mountain, hailed as "China's First Lamp." And here at Tiger Mountain, the gold miners of old relied on oil lamps to toil in the dim tunnels!
Not far from the Myriad Lamp Cave, there’s also an Oil Lamp Art Display Hall, exhibiting over a thousand oil lamps of various styles and materials, earning it the name "Corridor of a Thousand Lamps." On display are porcelain, copper, iron, and glass lamps, recounting the glorious history of ancient Chinese lamp development. Though electric lighting is widespread today, in the Tiger Mountain region and some old villages deep in the Taihang Mountains, oil lamps are still used by some.
And the scenic area is not just about exhibition halls and beautiful landscapes – the children’s playground and family fun zone offer abundant play facilities and simple competitive amusements for kids. "Angry Birds" is a very entertaining contest; as long as you follow the rules, you can not only have a blast but also win quite adorable prizes. Of course, it’s all about the competition: whoever has the highest hit rate gets their favorite plush toy!
To highlight Tiger Mountain’s gold culture theme, the eighth annual Tiger Mountain Scenic Area Gold Culture Festival is once again in intensive preparation. The festival will run from August 14th to 16th, featuring a gold brick-lifting challenge with big prizes: if you can lift Tiger Mountain’s "gold brick" with one hand, a 6,666 RMB cash prize is yours! Female participants can try smaller bricks at different levels, with a 666 RMB prize for lifting one! There are also plenty of additional prizes and accessories for challengers. Of course, during this period, folk art performances will add to the festivities!
In fact, winning or not is beside the point – the joy is in participating! Moreover, with Tiger Mountain’s fresh air and delightful scenery, and being just an hour or two’s drive from anywhere in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, it’s well worth a visit just for the scenic escape, let alone trying your luck at winning big! Why not, right?! Next weekend, let’s meet at Tiger Mountain – don’t miss it...
