Baidi City

"Baidicheng", "Baidi City" or "White Emperor City" is not a real city, but a mini peninsular town with some temples and gates on top of Baidi Hill in Fengjie County, located at the entrance of the Qutang Gorge and 8 km from Fengjie County seat. Climbing over 500 steps, you can reach the top. It is the starting point of Three Gorges and the reason the place is most famous for. Li Po, a great poet in Tang Dynasty had a very famous poem about the city.

White Emperor City was the place where a popular story happened. Liu Bei, the King of Shu Kingdom in Three Kingdoms period, before he was dead, entrusted his state power and his son to Zhuge Liang, his Prime Minister and talented advisor (See Yong'an Palace). Wax statues in the temple describe the moment in 220 AD.

An observation pavilion standing west of the Baidi Temple has 12 pillars on the ground floor and 6 on the upper floor, with upturned eaves and polished beams. It was said that Zhuge Liang once watched the stars and thought of the strategy here.

Also known as City of Poems, in the White Emperor City, there are over 70 poems, carvings, and cultural relics of the Sui, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties. Among them, two steles from Sui, Qing Emperor Kangxi, Bamboo-Leaf Stele and Phoenix Stele are the most outstanding.

The White Emperor City is surrounded by the river on three sides and backed by a mountain. There stands a statue of a Sichuan girl sitting on the back of an ox singing Bamboo Songs, which in fact are popular folk songs among the natives of the Three Gorges. It is said that the White Emperor City was founded by Gongsun Shu in 25 AD during the Eastern Han Dynasty when he saw a white dragon coming out of the well and declared himself the White Emperor. As in Chinese culture, the dragon was often regarded as the symbol of an emperor. Poets, contemporary or ancient, would compose some poems when visiting here.