The Door of Huaguo Mountain

The door of Huaguo Mountain is guarded by 4 stone carved lions, which represent the features of Huaguo Mountain: in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is the king. Huaguo Mountain is hometown of Sun Wukong. If there were tigers, the money couldn’t live at ease.

You can see clearly on the top of the door is the head portrait of Sun Wukong. He replaced Tang Sanzang in The Journey to the West wrote by Wu Cheng’en to became No.1 hero and was given the name “the Victorious Fighting Buddha” by the Buddha. On the top of the north door is the embossment of the four of Tang Sanzang going to the west tofetch Buddhist sutras from India. Although they knew clearly that demons and difficulties would be endless, they were not afraid of them and just did it.

 The stone monkeys around the square are the usher monkeys of Huaguo Mountain, which were originally 108, meaning 36 Ploughs and 72 Malignant Stars. But they found there was an extra one after completing them. When the construction unit was asked, they said that the spare money in the warehouse couldn’t endure loneliness and slipped into the money group, leading to 109 moneys there.

The back side of the door is inscribed “Purvavideha”, wrote by Shen Peng, the acting chairman of China Calligraphers Association. Do you still remember the description in The Journey to the West? “Purvavideha has a neighbor country named Aolai. The country is close to the sea, in which lies a famous mountain called Huaguo Mountain……” Wu Cheng’en made it clear the geographical location of Huaguo Mountain and the feature of an island in the sea.