The City of Springs

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Imagine there is an old town, a fell asleep big tower, and the narrow ancient stone road, a generous old stone walls, a stream flowing around the city, reflecting the mountain shadow, squatting some little girls on shore. If there is really such a dreamland in your imagination, I can tell you that it is the very Jinan. Assuming you can not imagine – and most of people won’t imagine – then just go to Jinan to have a look. Jinan is known as “City of Springs”. Clean and sweet spring water gush from the urban underground, merging into rivers and lakes. When in the water season, spring-intensive areas always show a beautiful scenery as “Every family has spring water, every household has a willow tree”.

People can sit and sip tea in the boats, cruise along the moat. Looking ahead, there are willows and beautiful scenery on the two sides of the river, and clean spring water on the foot. We enjoy the scenery all the way to the Black Tiger Springs, Springs Plaza, Baotu Spring, Five Dragon Pool, until the New Area of Daming Lake.

Since it is the city of spring, let’s talk about it from the spring. There are “72 Famous Springs” in Jinan and the Baotu Spring ranks first. “Baotu” means “jumping and leaping” in Chinese.

The Baotu Spring (sometimes can be translated as “Jet Spring” or “Spurting Spring”) is a culturally significant artesian karst spring located in the city of Jinan. It is mentioned in the Spring and Autumn Annals, one of the Five Classics of Chinese literature and was declared the “Number One Spring under the Heaven” by the Qing Dynasty Emperor Qian Long. Unfortunately, we did not see such spectacular scenes that day, Baotu Spring spring was not too much those days, only ten centimeters height or so.

Baotu Spring pond water crystal clear, the fish here can be considered to be very lucky to live in so clear spring water.

Dukang Spring, visitors rushed to fill a bottle of spring here, and some people even bent over to drink, spectacular scenes.

In the hot summer, this boy was drinking spring water from the mouth of the spring.

Look at this scene: crowd of people in the front of Fu Spring, they were carrying varying sizes of buckets to fetch spring water. If you have tasted the cool and sweet springs in Jinan, you will be able to understand why people in Jinan only use the spring water to make tea.

The Black Tiger Spring is a culturally significant artesian karst spring located in the city of Jinan. The spring is ranked as the second most significant among the 72 named springs in Jinan (after the Baotu Spring). The water of spring stems from moderately-deep circulation.

Directly tether a rope to the kettle to fetch water, and then carry back from a distant in such a hot day, from which you can see how important the springs is to Jinan people.

People enjoyed the cool spring water beside the Baishi Spring.

Here is a newly opened spring bathhouse, hot scene.

Sit in boat and cruise around the moat. Jinan’s moat is not only the only one formed by the convergence of spring, which is actually an old guardian of the memory of Jinan. The moat is around the city, linking the Baotu Spring, Black Tiger Spring, and Five Dragon Pool Springs three famous spring together.

This bridge is called Zhengyi Bridge.

The two was whispering at the shore, and most of people are aware of the springs in Jinan.

The Daming Lake Park was renovated and extended to connect all portions of the park for unified access. Since the expansion, the Daming Lake Park covers a total of 103.4 hectares, 29.4 hectares of which were added in the expansion.

Furong（Hibiscus mutabilis）Street，a famous and typical shopping and cultural street in Jinan. It was named after the Furong Spring in the street.

Walking in the Furong Street, you should walk quietly and slowly, not to disturb the old stories…

You will love the old people who have stories but just smile to you when you pass this old street.

The city is surrounded by springs, and maybe you will fall asleep when rest on a stone.

Wangfu Pond Street, perhaps it was too hot, there appeared to be very quiet here (left), Qifeng Bridge Street (right).

Qifeng Bridge Street is not too long and not too wide, and there are cottages on both sides, on the south is the Wangfu Pond Street. Although easily accessible, it is also a rare quiet place in the busy city, this elderly walked leisurely in the street.