Jingming Spring

Jingming Spring

Jingming Spring (Mingshui Spring), also known as Mingjing Spring, is located at the northern end of Xima Bay, on the north side of the road west of Tangzi Bridge. It was included in the *Poems of Seventy-Two Springs* from the Ming Dynasty under the name “Mingshui Spring.” The *Qi Chuan* from the Yuan Dynasty records: “Mingshui, also called Jingming Spring, emerges by the stone bridge northwest of Baimai.”

Its water is extremely pure, free of even the finest dust. Locals use it to wash their eyes and relieve blurred vision. It flows together with the waters of Xima Bay for over three li before entering the Xiuhu River... and then flows north into the Xiaoqing River.” The *Jinan Prefecture Annals* from the Daoguang era of the Qing Dynasty also contains records. According to local legend, when Emperor Taizong of Tang, Li Shimin, passed through this area during his eastern campaign, many soldiers suffered from eye diseases. At that time, a boy and a girl appeared, leading the soldiers to wash their eyes at the spring. In an instant, their ailments were cured and their vision restored, and then the boy and girl quietly vanished. Since then, people have called the spring Jingming Spring, and built an “Eye-Clarifying King Temple” nearby, with statues of the boy and girl inside. Though the statues are now gone, the temple remains, along with a stone stele from the 24th year of the Daoguang era of the Qing Dynasty inscribed with “Record of the Reconstruction of the Eye-Clarifying Hall.” The spring stopped flowing due to the cutoff of its underground water source, and the stone-walled, well-shaped spring pool was filled in recent years. During the wet season, however, underground flow can still be seen emerging from cracks in the rocks along the riverbank north of Tangzi Bridge.