Nanjing Rain Flower Terrace (Yuhuatai), China

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Rain Flower Terrace

The Rain Flower Terrace (Yuhuatai) is located south of the Zhonghua Gate in Nanjing. It is a hillock with beautiful scenery, about 100 meters high and more than 3,000 meters long.

The Rain Flower Terrace is also called the Agate Hillock. It produces lots of colorful agate stones, additionally the top of the hillock is like a platform, so local people like to call it "the Rain Flower Terrace". The name is related with a beautiful legend.

Allegedly, in Nanchao Dynasty the Yunguang Master placed a table to speak scriptures on top of the hill, this moved the God, the heaven fell flowers like rain, these flowers became beautiful and colorful little stones and scattered the whole hillock, so this is how the Rain Flower Terrace got its name.

The Rain Flower Terrace is the highest spot of south of Nanjing. The topography is dangerous. Far from South and North Dynasty of Wei, here was the place that armed forces had to conflict to get. In late year of Ming Dynasty, after the Peace Heaven chose Nanjing as their capital, they once fought with Qing Dynasty here for several years.

In late of Qing Dynasty, the armed forces of the Revolution of 1911 once used the natural topography of the Rain Flower Terrace to beat the soldiers of Qing Dynasty. When two sides were fighting, they also had casualties, so now on top of the hillock there still preserved two tombs of dead soldiers, providing people to show respect.

The topography of the Rain Flower Terrace is high, so it is the best place to climb high and appreciate the scenery of Nanjing, meanwhile it is also the scenic spot people like deeply.

Here the beautiful agate stones like rain flowers are full of the ground, shining and glittery, too beautiful to be absorbed all at once. On east hill of the Rain Flower Terrace, there is a spring stream and an exquisite rockery. The spring water is so clear that you can see the bottom and the taste is sweet.

When the famous literati Luyou was an officer in Song Dynasty, he once drank the tea cooked with spring, after drinking, he praised highly to this spring stream and called it "the second spring in south of the Yangtze River".

So today the quiet and elegant teahouse is built on the Rain Flower Terrace, it can let visitors taste rain flower tea cooked with spring after appreciating the scenic spots.