Shan Lake

This guide to Shan Lake in Guilin starts with engineers draining the water in the late 1990s expecting mud, and instead finding a stone box that had waited over a thousand years at the bottom of a Tang dynasty moat. It traces what was sealed inside, scrolls said to tie Buddhist teaching to the Chinese zodiac, alongside strings of prayer beads and the buried footings of towers nobody living had ever seen standing. The moat itself dates to the year 621, dug on the orders of the general Li Jing to defend the old south gate of the city.