The Tide Riders stand at the crest of the waves, holding the red flag without getting it wet — Watching the Tide at Haining Salt Officer
Lushan's misty rain and Zhejiang's tide, the regret of not seeing them is endless. Once seen, they remain the same, Lushan's misty rain and Zhejiang's tide.
The Qiantang River Tide Viewing Scenic Area is located in Yanguan Town, Haining City, Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province. It is a tourist attraction with both natural scenery and historical and cultural heritage. Here, the magnificent Haining tide and the charm of the ancient town of Yanguan are the highlights. Below is a detailed introduction:
• Natural Scenery:
• Tide Scenery: The Qiantang River tide is one of the world's natural wonders, with a spectacular and powerful tide. After the tide surges and creates a huge echo, it calmly rushes away. The tide has various forms, including linear tide, intersecting tide, returning tide, soaring tide, and double tide. Among them, the linear tide is the most suitable for tourists to watch. The tide head comes from afar, rushing forward like a group of white swans in a line, with thousands of heads moving, flapping their wings, forming a three to four-meter-high water wall standing on the river surface, pouring waves, spraying pearls, and splashing jade, as if thousands of horses are galloping.
• Tide Viewing Spots: The Yanguan Scenic Area has multiple tide viewing spots, each with its own characteristics. In Yanguan, you can watch the "linear tide" and the "cloud-rolling snow tide," with tide heights generally between 3 to 5 meters, reaching up to 8 meters at the highest, and a maximum speed of 9.6 meters per second. Eight kilometers east of Yanguan in Babao, you can watch the "head-on tide, soaring tide, and snow-spraying tide"; eleven kilometers west of Yanguan in Laoyancang, you can enjoy the returning tide, also known as the reverse tide. These three areas' tides appear from east to west. If you drive and race with the tide, you can watch the three beautiful scenes in sequence.
• Historical Culture:
• Historical Origins: Tide watching began in the Han and Wei dynasties (1st to 6th centuries AD) and flourished in the Tang and Song dynasties (7th to 13th centuries AD). It has been a local custom for over 2000 years. In ancient times, the best place to watch the tide in Hangzhou was the Phoenix Mountain and Jianggan area. Due to geographical changes, since the Ming dynasty, Yanguan Town in Haining, 45 kilometers northeast of Hangzhou, has become the best place to watch the tide, hence the name "Haining Tide Watching."
• Cultural Heritage: The Haining tide custom, centered on the Haining tide watching custom, especially the lunar August 18th tide watching festival, includes folk literature, traditional music, traditional dance, traditional commercial customs, traditional crafts, related dialects and sayings, folk beliefs, folk activities, traditional knowledge and practices influenced by the Haining tide, and other contents. It has a specific spatial and temporal cultural scope. For thousands of years, countless famous people and tourists have been fascinated by it. Famous poets and writers like Bai Juyi, Li Bai, and Su Dongpo have left over a thousand poems about the tide after witnessing the spectacle. Emperor Qianlong of the Qing dynasty visited Yanguan four times to watch the Haining tide and wrote more than ten poems. Great figures like Sun Yat-sen and Mao Zedong also came to Haining to watch the tide and left poems and writings. These rich "tide culture" materials form a unique historical textbook.
The scenic area can be roughly divided into the ancient town of Yanguan and the Tide Viewing Park. If you just stroll around the ancient town without entering the courtyards, you don't need to buy a ticket. If you want to see the tide in the Tide Viewing Park, you can buy a separate park ticket or a combined ticket for the scenic area. The opening hours are from 08:00 to 16:30 (all day); the last entry time is 16:30 (Monday to Sunday from January 1st to December 31st), for reference only, please refer to the actual opening situation. For transportation, take bus 307 peak, Haining 317 route a line, Haining 317 route b line, Haining 332 route to Xuande Road Station (near the visitor center), or take Hai 106 route interval, Haining 109 route, Haining 216 route to Yanguan Station (near the Tide Viewing Park).
After 4:30 PM, the scenic area is free of charge. Here, you can find Chairman Mao's poems about the tide and the story of Emperor Qianlong watching the tide four times. His calligraphy on Baishi Terrace, imperial stele, and the trees he planted all record historical details. Here, not only is there tide culture, but also a gathering of historical celebrities like Wang Guowei, Xu Zhimo, Jin Yong, and others.
This is also the place where the story of the fourth-grade textbook "Watching the Tide" took place. Many parents and children come here to take photos and commemorate.
The Ao Tower, poetry steles, Baishi Terrace, ancient trees planted by Emperor Qianlong, and the Zhenjiang Iron Ox all silently tell the exciting stories and past events that happened here.
This is also the place where Mr. Xu Zhimo invited famous people like Hu Shi to watch the tide.
Today, after a heavy rain, the sky is clear, and the sea and sky are the same color. On the left, it is still cloudy, while on the right, a piece of blue sky tears open a big gap in the clouds, showing its azure blue.
The sky is magnificent, and the long river flows endlessly. It is said that the tide viewing time varies every day, so we did not see the river tide. But imagining that scene, the tide surging like thousands of troops and horses, we can't help but think of the story of Lu Zhishen listening to the tide in "Water Margin" and the Song dynasty poet Pan Lang's verse: "The Tide Riders stand at the crest of the waves, holding the red flag without getting it wet"...
— Li, August 22, 2024, Supplementary Note, Jiachen Year, July 19