Yu Huan Spring

Yu Huan Spring

Yu Huan Spring: Commonly known as Yu Huan Well, it is located on the west side of the middle section of Shengfuqian Street. It is circular in shape, with a diameter of 1.3 meters. The spring got its name because two springs gush out side by side, with their water patterns interlocking like a jade ring. It is recorded in the Jin Dynasty’s "Famous Springs Stele," the Ming Dynasty’s "Poems of Seventy-Two Springs," and the Qing Dynasty’s "Records of Seventy-Two Springs."

The water of Yu Huan Spring is clear, cool, and sweet. In the past, residents of this street all drank from it. A Qing Dynasty poet, Zhong Tingying, once praised it in a poem: “The well is cold, the spring is pure, the jade ring is new; one ring divides its moisture to nourish half the city’s folk. Its cool clarity knows not the refined flow of elegance, yet is wrongly called ‘too true’ by foolish tongues.”

This spring was once covered during the widening of Shengfuqian Street in 1978, but was restored in 1982. Its cover is a precast cement slab with circular holes, forming the shape of two interlocking rings. To the west of the spring stands a stone stele inscribed with the three red-painted characters “Yu Huan Spring,” erected in the sixth year of the Guangxu reign of the Qing Dynasty (1880) by the residents of the entire street. On the north and south sides of the spring are upright rocky outcrops, sheer and bamboo-like, surrounded by railings, forming a small scenic spot in the center of the street.