莲花山旅游区

This guide to 莲花山旅游区 in Guangzhou opens with a question: why would people spend two thousand years cutting a mountain into rubble, then simply start climbing it for fun. It follows the quarry back to the Han dynasty ruler of the breakaway Nanyue kingdom, whose stone went into his own tomb and into Guangzhou's city walls and temples, before officials shut the whole trade down for good in the seventeen sixties. You'll hear how sheer cut cliffs and a chasm locals call Swallow Rock came out of that abandoned worksite. Listen for the birds nesting in the crevices the quarrymen's hammers left behind.