Many of the most conspicuous hills in the northern portion of the Territory can be seen to advantage from the Huan-ts'ui-lou. The small hill immediately behind the city wall and the tower is the Nai-ku-shan.[16]
Like many other hills in the neighbourhood and along the coast, it possesses the remains of a stone-built beacon-tumulus (fêng tun), on which signal fires were lighted in the old days of warfare. To the northward lie Ku-mo Shan, the hill of Yao-yao, and Tiao-wo Shan, all included in the range that bears in the British map the name of Admiral Fitzgerald.
The highest point of the range is described in the local chronicle as "a solitary peak, seldom visited by human foot," though it is nowadays a common objective for European pedestrians, and also, indeed, for active Chinese children. The height is barely one thousand feet above sea-level. Tiao-we Shan and a neighbouring peak called Sung Ting Shan were resorted to by hundreds of the inhabitants of Weihaiwei as a place of refuge from the bands of robbers and disorganised soldiers who pillaged the homes and fields of the people during the commotions which marked the last year of the Ming dynasty (1643). To the northward of the Huan-ts'ui-lou may be seen a little hill—not far from the European bungalows at Narcissus Bay—crowned with a small stone obelisk of a kind often seen in China and known to foreigners as a Confucian Pencil. This was put up by a graduate of the present dynasty named Hsia Shih-yen and others, as a means of bringing good luck to the neighbourhood, and also, perhaps, as a memorial of their own literary abilities and successes. It bears no inscription.
A loftier hill is Lao-ya Shan, which is or used to be the principal resort of the local officials and people when offering up public supplications for rain. Its name (which means the Hill of the Crows) is derived from the black clouds which as they cluster round the summit are supposed to resemble the gathering of crows. An alternative name is Hsi-yü-ting—the Happy Rain Peak. The highest point in this section of the Territory lies among the imposing range of mountains to the south of Weihaiwei city, and is known to the Chinese as Fo-erh-ting—"Buddha's Head"—the height of which is about 1,350 feet. This range of hills has been named by the British after Admiral Sir Edward Seymour.
The enumeration of all the hills of so mountainous a district as the Weihaiwei Territory would be useless and of little interest. Some of them, distinguished by miniature temples dedicated to the Shan-shên (Spirit of the Hill) and to the Supreme God of Taoism, will be referred to later on.[17] The loftiest hill in the Territory—about 1,700 feet—lies fourteen miles south of Port Edward, and is known to Europeans as Mount Macdonald, and to the Chinese as Chêng-ch'i Shan or Cho-ch'i Shan.[18] The Chinese name is derived from a stone chessboard said to have been carved out of a rock by a hsien-jên, a kind of wizard or mountain recluse who lived there in bygone ages. Most of the more remarkable or conspicuous hills in China are believed by the people to have been the abode of weird old men who never came to an end like ordinary people, but went on living with absurdly long beards and a profound knowledge of nature's secrets. There are endless legends about these mysterious beings, many of whom were in fact hermits with a distaste for the commonplace joys of life and a passion for mountain scenery.[19]
On the rocky summit of the Li-k'ou hill (situated in the range of which Fo-erh-ting is the highest point) there is a large stone which is symmetrical in shape and differs in appearance from the surrounding boulders. Legend says that a hermit who cultivated the occult arts brewed for himself on the top of the hill the elixir of life. An ox that was employed in grinding wheat at the foot of the hill sniffed the fragrant brew and broke away from his tether. Rushing up the hill in hot haste, he dragged after him the great grindstone. Arriving at the summit, he butted against the cauldron in which the hermit had cooked the soup of immortality, and eagerly lapped up the liquid as it trickled down the side. The hermit, emulating an ancient worthy called Kou Shan-chih who was charioted on the wings of a crane, jumped on the ox's back, and thereupon the two immortal beings, leaving the grindstone behind them as a memorial, passed away to heaven and were seen no more. This is only one of many quaint stories told by the old folks of Weihaiwei to explain the peculiar formation of a rock, the existence of a cave in a cliff, or the sanctity of some nameless mountain-shrine. Thus even the hills of Weihaiwei, bare of forests as they are and devoid of mystery as they would seem to be, have yet their gleam of human interest, their little store of romance, their bond of kinship with the creative mind of man.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] The three characters in question are depicted on the binding of this book.
[6] The following list of distances by sea to the principal neighbouring ports may be of interest. The distance is in each case reckoned from the Weihaiwei harbour. Shantung Promontory, 30 miles; Chefoo, 42 miles; Port Arthur, 89 miles; Dalny, 91 miles; Chemulpo, 232 miles; Taku, 234 miles; Shanghai 452 miles; Kiaochou, 194 miles; Nagasaki, 510 miles.
[7] "The magistrate is the unit of government; he is the backbone of the whole official system; and to ninety per cent. of the population he is the Government."—Byron Brenan's Office of District Magistrate in China.
[8] England and Wales contain 58,000 square miles, with a population perhaps slightly less than that of Shantung.
[9] As early as the seventh century B.C. deforestation had become a recognised evil in the State of Ch'i (part of the modern Shantung), chiefly owing to the lavish use of timber for coffins and grave-vaults. (See De Groot's Religious System of China, vol. ii. pp. 660–1.)
[10] Especially some of the sea-beaches, the defiles that lie between Yü-chia-k'uang and Shang Chuang, and the valleys in which are situated Ch'i-k'uang, Wang-chia-k'uang, Pei k'ou, Chang-chia-shan, and Ch'ien Li-k'ou.
[11] The story is quoted in the T'ai P'ing Huan Yü Chi (chüan 20).
[12] With regard to this assistance from spirits, cf. the Jewish legend that King Solomon by the aid of a magic ring controlled the demons and compelled them to give their help in the building of the great Temple.