Bao Mo Pavilion

Bao Mo Pavilion. Originally located within Qianming Temple in the northwest corner of the old city (now Chenghu Lake). On the 21st day of the intercalary fourth month in the first year of the Shaosheng era of the Song Dynasty (April 21, 1094), Su Shi was demoted and exiled to the remote Lingnan region (present-day Guangdong). While traveling, he encountered rain and spent the night at Qianming Temple in Xiangyi. At the request of local residents, he hand-copied two of his earlier works: “Ode to Dongting” and “Ode to Zhongshan Pine Resin Liquor.” Later, the locals had these two essays engraved on stone, built a pavilion to shelter them, and named the pavilion “Bao Mo” (Treasured Ink). After the Jin and Yuan dynasties, the temple collapsed, the steles were lost, and the pavilion fell into disuse. The handwritten essays, known as the Treasured Ink, made their way into the Qing imperial palace. They flowed out of the palace in the late Qing and early Republican period and were kept in private collections. After the Cultural Revolution, the descendants of the collector donated the calligraphic treasures to the Jilin Provincial Museum. In 1985, Chen Xu, a calligraphy enthusiast from Suixian County, took photographs of the treasures from the museum back to Suixian. The county’s cultural authorities then recarved the stones and rebuilt the pavilion in front of Yuanjia Mountain, retaining the name Bao Mo Pavilion.