Ancient Town Tengchong

By LI ZHUOXI & WU MEILING

IN China's relentlessly beautiful southwest there is a place that stands out for its unbelievable perfection: Tengchong. An American writer called it a "living landscape painting." Seeing it, I felt the same way.

    In ancient times, merchants who journeyed along the winding legendary southern Silk Road made Tengchong their last stopover. Historians described it simply as the "last town on the Chinese border," for beyond it were the foreign lands of Myanmar, India and Afghanistan.

The old town and Wenxing Tower in the foreground.

Volcano, a View from the Inside out

    Once in Tengchong it's easy to explore nearby Mount Xiaokong, a dormant volcano. Peering into its mouth, I could make out the graffiti left by tourists. The inside of the volcano, with new comments, names or images scratched into its walls every day, had become a kind of progressive work of pop art. Among all the renderings, one caught my eye that must have been the effort of a group of tourists soon after the disastrous earthquake hit Sichuan in 2008: "Come on Sichuan – You never quit!" Tracing these marks with my finger I made my way into the mouth and slowly descended some 60 meters to the bottom, entering a space another 60 meters or so in diameter. Looking up, I realized the mouth was also quite big, about 200 meters across. Tengchong has nearly 100 such volcanic cones. They open up like variform windows of the earth that let us peep into the universe.

    In the heart of this crater, luxuriant vegetation had sprung up. The picture of normal: gentle breezes, an azure sky and snow-white clouds making a backdrop for the trilling of birds in the clear air. Was this the place where Mother Nature once violently released her rage? I wondered, placing small stones into the pattern of a heart, for good luck.

A Bounty of Hot Springs

    Local people call the area "hot sea" regarding it as a blessing from nature. With the seething, underground heat of volcanoes often come hot springs. In this case, about 80 founts of escaping water, many scalding to the touch. They gushed upwards noisily while their steam rose quietly to envelope the place. This water bubbles and churns at up to 96.6 ºC, making it unnecessary to light a stove to cook, locals boast. While I strolled the area, some peddlers sold eggs boiled in the water, bound in straw by the half dozen. Close by, other peddlers were promoting their flour buns steamed in pots that use straw hats as covers. As a bread lover, I couldn't resist one.

    The Hot Sea area has many outlandish sinter formations shaped by the natural force of springs that have roared, non-stop, for as long as anyone can remember.