Jiuqitai hot spring

Jiuqitai hot spring

Eryuan County, Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province, is a famous hot spring town in western Yunnan. Even the county town has the reputation of "hot water city". There is a hot spring soup pool with "five li and one spring, ten li and one soup" in the county. The most famous one is Jiutai village hot spring. It is said that the water of this hot spring nourishes the skin, so it is favored by women.

History and culture

Jiutai village is less than one kilometer away from the county. The village is surrounded by beautiful ponds, vegetable gardens and lotus ponds. There is a huge hollow stone in the middle of the village, "six Zhang high, three Zhang long, its shape is like a turtle, surrounded by boiling springs, overflowing nine acupoints, so it is named jiuqitai (Xu Xiake's Travels)" On the boulder is the Zhenwu Pavilion, which was first built in the period of Nanzhao state in Tang Dynasty and rebuilt many times afterwards. From the nine caves of the boulder, jiugu hot spring gushes out, filling the ditches, springs, wells and ponds inside and outside the village. The dense air is permeated and lingers for a long time, forming a "Yangchun smoke scene" which is often seen in four seasons and hard to distinguish between true and false. Ponds for people to bathe in, some in the village, some outside the village, mostly set in the open air.

The color of hot spring water is clear. It can be bathed in four seasons. It is a long-standing custom for women of all ethnic groups in Western and Northwest Yunnan to bathe in jiuqitai. He Bangjian, a Jinshi in Ming Dynasty, once wrote a poem about the grand occasion of Jiutai hot spring: "the Tang spring is as blue as Huaqing, so many people come here to take a bath. Chanting songs sometimes gather children's crowns and entertain the fragrant spring by the flowers and willows. "

During the Jiajing period of Ming Dynasty, Yang Sheng'an, the number one scholar in Sichuan Province, who was exiled to Yunnan Province for committing Yan Zhijian, was full of praise for the beautiful scenery of jiuqitai hot spring and pengbi lake, as well as the kindness, enthusiasm and simple folk customs of Bai women. He once wrote such a poem: "a distant dream seems to have been here, and a wanderer is suspicious of returning to his hometown!"

Features of scenic spots

Jiuqitai hot spring is the golden season of hot spring every year around the beginning of summer and the beginning of winter. Women of all nationalities from all over the world, dressed in festive costumes and carrying delicious food, came in droves. Among them are "Dali Jinhua" from the shore of Erhai Lake, Naxi Women from the foot of Yulong Snow Mountain, Tibetan girls from Shangri La in Zhongdian, Yi sisters from Chuxiong in Yi state and guests from all over the country.

During this period of time, every family in the village has to receive people. Women who come here to bathe usually stay for three or five days. They go to the open-air hot spring to bathe two or three times a day. Some people like to put some boards on the ditches, springs and ponds, and sit on them to receive hot gas fumigation. This is the so-called "gas bath", also known as "empty steaming".

After the new bath, the women of all ethnic groups are not as "helpless" as Yang Guifei who came out of Huaqing pool. Instead, they are all radiant and full of spring breeze. They spend more time picnicking by the beautiful pengbi lake and chartering boats to visit the lake. So on the rippling surface of the lake, on the Bank of the Willow Road, the fragrance of hot food and the laughter of women of all ethnic groups are flowing.

Address: jiuqitai village, pengbi lake, ancient Dali City, Eryuan County, Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture

Longitude: 99.958714

Latitude: 26.113602