Century-old Fir King

Century-old Fir King

Next to Erkeng Village in Nankun Mountain stands a towering fir tree over twenty meters high, so thick that it takes two people to encircle its trunk with their arms. With an age of over a hundred years, it is known as the “Century-old Fir King.” There is a legend about this ancient fir:

It is said that the bamboo in Nankun Mountain was introduced from Fujian, and since then, the mountain has been covered with lush green bamboo. Local villagers used bamboo for the rafters when building houses. However, bamboo is prone to rotting, and over time, the rotten rafters would break and injure people. One night, a young man surnamed Lin dreamed of an elderly man with white hair and a youthful face who claimed to be the deity of Nankun Mountain. The old man told him that on Dikeng Mountain there was a tree with leaves like saw teeth called a fir tree, which was suitable for use as a construction material, and instructed him to gather seeds from this tree to cultivate and plant. Following the mountain deity’s guidance, the young man went to the Erkeng mountain area and indeed found a tall fir tree with a straight trunk. He collected seeds from the ground, sowed and transplanted them, and within three to four years, they had grown into trees as thick as bowls. From then on, the villagers of Nankun Mountain began using fir wood for house rafters. There was once a greedy man who coveted the large fir tree on Erkeng Mountain and secretly went to chop it down with an axe. As he raised his axe to strike the fir tree, somehow the axe swung back and cut him instead. The greedy man died under the tree. The people of Nankun Mountain regarded this tree as sacred and decreed that their descendants must never cut it down. To protect the fir tree, the young man surnamed Lin built a hut next to it. Over the course of more than ten years, the settlement grew into a village, which is now known as Erhang Village.