Xifo Cliff Carvings

Xifo Cliff Carvings

The Xifo Cliff Carvings are a cultural tourism attraction.

Xifo Cliff Carvings

The Xifo Cliff Carvings are located on Xifo Cliff in the western part of Liping County, Guizhou. Xifo Cliff is the burial site of He Tengjiao, a hero who resisted the Qing dynasty during the late Ming period, and has long been a popular tourist destination. In the 16th year of the Republic of China (1927), Zhou Yueyang, a colonel in the Hunan Army, led his troops to Liping and paid homage to He Tengjiao’s tomb. Highly praising He’s sense of national integrity, he immediately inscribed the four characters “Mighty Spirit Endures” (浩气常存), presented gifts, and personally visited the home of Li Bo, a renowned calligrapher in Liping, to request that he write the inscription. Zhou funded the hiring of artisans to carve the inscription onto Xifo Cliff. The four large characters are in horizontal regular script, bold and free-flowing in brushwork, and are recessed into the stone cliff. Each character is 60 cm square. On both sides, smaller vertical regular script characters are recessed as well: at the top, “Erected in the Winter Month of the Dingmao Year, Republic of China,” and at the bottom, the signature: “Zhou Yueyang, Colonel of the Hunan Army, Western Hunan.” The entire cliff inscription is 2.75 meters long.

The “Mighty Spirit Endures” cliff inscription remains well-preserved to this day. It is one of the affiliated cultural relics of He Tengjiao’s tomb and has been listed as a key cultural relic protection unit of Guizhou Province.