Lao Mountain - Qingdao, Shandong

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Source: SunnyChina.com

The Western Memorial Temple for Guan Yu and Yue Fei in the Sanqing Palace is a must for visitors to Mt. Laoshan, because it was formerly a residence of Pu Songling, a renowned novelist of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Many stories in his novel Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio have Mt. Laoshan as the backdrop. In front of the Sanguan Hall there is a 700-year-old camellia shrub. Among the largest camellias in the world, it is 8.5 meters tall, and its trunk is 1.78 meters around. When blooming in midwinter, its flowers look like a layer of deep-red snow covering its green leaves. There was originally a white peony that reached the hall's eaves. Pu Songling dwelled here during his late years, with the camellia and the peony as his neighbors. The two flowers turned into two pretty women who fell in love with a young literati in his fairy tale Xiangyu.

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