Hanging Stele Well

Hanging Stele Well

The Hanging Stele Well is a protected cultural heritage site of Guangzhou.

The Hanging Stele Well is located at the intersection of Liurong Road and Fuquan Street in Yuexiu District, Guangzhou. It is one of the Nine Famous Wells of Guangzhou and dates back to the Song Dynasty. It earned its name because there used to be a stone stele covered in talismanic inscriptions leaning out from the well wall. The well has a mouth diameter of 0.35 meters, a body diameter of about 2 meters, and a depth of approximately 7 meters. The well is built with red sandstone. Inside the well, there is a stone resembling a stele, with its upper half embedded in the well wall and the lower half hanging diagonally in the water, slightly below the surface. It is reddish in color, with visible mineral speckles but no inscriptions.

According to Ruan Yuan’s Guangdong General Gazetteer: “The Hanging Stele Well is located next to Huatai Street by Liurong Temple in the city. The well’s mouth is very small, but the interior is quite large. There is a stone stele lying horizontally on the water, four to five feet long, with half of it embedded in the soil of the well wall. It looks as if it is hanging inside the well, hence the name. The water tastes sweet and delicious, and local residents draw water from here.” Such a clear spring is a pity that it was not recorded in Huang Jian’s Guangzhou Water Records.

The Continued Compilation of One Hundred Poems on Nanhai states: “The county records say that there is an ancient stele hanging in the well like a perched waterfowl, from which the well gets its name. Upon closer inspection, it turns out to be the foundation stone of the Huatai Pagoda. Its color is bright red—it is actually Dongguan danstone, not material for a stele. However, the well is close to Liurong Temple. Based on the records of the temple’s stele, this is indeed one of the wells from the Song Dynasty.” It also says: “According to the records of the Liurong Temple stele, the pagoda from the Tang Dynasty had already been destroyed. In the early years of the Song and Yuan dynasties, Lin Xiu of Nanhai proposed to rebuild it but could not find the original site. Every time a pagoda was constructed, it would collapse. He dreamed that a deity told him the original foundation should have nine wells arranged in a ring, spaced no more than forty or fifty zhang apart from east to west, to release the earth’s energy so the pagoda could be successfully built. Lin searched one li outside the Chaotian Gate of the county town and indeed found nine ancient wells. Digging at the original site, he unearthed a precious sword and an ancient tripod, after which the pagoda was finally completed. Now, based on the inscription, one can find a pair of ancient wells near the Huatai Pagoda. To the south of the pagoda is the Iron Bureau. The so-called Hanging Stele Well may be one of them.” Therefore, the Hanging Stele Well is undoubtedly a Song Dynasty well. Today, it has been included in the Historical Architecture section of the Guangzhou Cultural Relics Record.

Further Reading:

· Eighth Batch of Protected Cultural Heritage Sites in Guangzhou