Ginkgo Planted by Li Bai

　　At the Qingnihe Primary School in Baishuijiang Town, Lueyang County, two ancient thousand-year-old ginkgo trees—one male and one female—still thrive today, growing 8 meters apart from each other and reaching an enormous size. The male tree stands 28 meters tall, with a trunk circumference of 8.3 meters and a crown spread of 283 square meters. A thick cliff mulberry tree grows parasitically on its trunk, giving the whole tree a majestic and vibrant appearance. The female tree is 20 meters tall, with a trunk circumference of 3.2 meters and a crown spread of 154 square meters. Lush and graceful, it yields over 150 kilograms of fruit every year. Research suggests that these two ginkgo trees are over 1,300 years old and are said to have been planted personally by Li Bai.

　　Local legend has it that when Li Bai was young and traveling with his father into Shu (modern-day Sichuan), after crossing the Qingni Mountain, he rested at a temple at the foot of the mountain—then called Pipa Temple, also known as Jishan Temple. Seeing Li Bai’s extraordinary talent, the abbot asked him, on the morning of their departure, to plant two ginkgo trees as a memento. Over 1,300 years later, those trees have grown into towering ancient giants. Pipa Temple (Jishan Temple) was gradually demolished to make way for a school and no longer exists. Its original site is now home to the Qingnihe Primary School. Another version of the story says that the young and intelligent Li Bai, moved by the treacherous and winding paths of the Shu roads—where travelers often lost their way—decided, with his father’s help, to plant two white fruit trees (ginkgo trees) every twenty li starting from Chengzhou (modern-day Cheng County, Gansu Province) all the way to Qingni River in Xingzhou (modern-day Lueyang County). The two thousand-year-old ginkgo trees in the Qingnihe Primary School are said to be the very ones Li Bai planted back then. Even today, along the stretch from Cheng County to Qingni River in Lueyang County, pairs of ancient ginkgo trees can still be spotted here and there every few li, forming a famous ecological landscape in Lueyang County.