Taipingguan Stele

Taipingguan Stele

The Taipingguan Stele is a cultural relic protected at the provincial level in Jiangxi Province.

Erected when the Southern Tang Dynasty established Qingjiang County (now Zhangshu City), it is the only well-preserved thousand-year-old stele from the county’s founding to the present. The stele is located on the north bank of the Meng River, northwest of Taiping Street in Changfu Town, 38 kilometers southwest of Zhangshu City proper. Made of bluestone, it stands 4.07 meters tall overall, with the main body being round-topped and square-based, measuring 3.75 meters in height, 1.25 meters in width, and 0.31 meters in thickness. The top is carved with cloud-pattern decorations, and there are three raised ridges on each side. A circular hole with a diameter of 0.10 meters is located in the center of the stele’s top. The base is a plump and solemn stone turtle, carved with bold and simple lines. The inscription consists of over 1,200 characters written by Jiang Wenwei, Vice Minister of Rites in the Southern Tang Dynasty, as a preface for the establishment of Taipingguan. The characters are as large as eggs, incised in intaglio, finely carved, with dignified style and strong strokes. Due to years of weathering, most of the text has faded, with only a few characters still visible. The Taipingguan Stele is a valuable physical artifact for studying the design of stelae and the art of calligraphy and carving during the Southern Tang period. In July 1957, the People's Government of Jiangxi Province designated the “Taipingguan Stele” as one of the first batch of “Provincial-Level Cultural Relics Protection Units.”

Changfu Town: Geographic Location

Changfu Town is a township under the jurisdiction of Zhangshu City, situated in the southwestern part of the city, about 35 kilometers from downtown. The terrain is flat in the south and hilly in the north. It borders Linjiang Town to the east, faces Xin’gan and Xinyu across the river to the south, borders Huangtugang Town to the west, and neighbors Wucheng Township and the Provincial Shuangjin Horticultural Farm to the north. The town government is located on Chengtou Street (in 1958 it belonged to Huanggang Commune, in 1961 Changfu Commune was established after being split off, in 1984 it was restructured as a township, and in 1996 it was upgraded to a town). The town currently administers 17 administrative villages, 1 neighborhood committee, 118 village groups, 8,297 households, and a population of 27,565.

Changfu is...... Detailed Information About Changfu Town++

Further Reading:

· First Batch of Jiangxi Provincial Cultural Relics Protection Units