Mural Hill

Mural Hill is located at the west bank of the Li River at a distance about 60 km from Guilin. It faces the banks of River Li and is a big stone cliff which is blazoned with white, black, grey, yellow and green colors. The face of the cliff resembles with the natural mural having image of what it appears to be having nine horses in different poses from a distance.

 

There is a legend that there was a time when nine horses have been raised in the heaven and attended by Sun Wukong, who was also famous as the Monkey King. However, this king was not happy with his job and was often backing to the mountain of Huaguoshan and had left the heavenly horses unattended. One of the occasions when they were not being able to attended to , nine of them have escaped to this world wandering in the verdurous mountains where they enjoyed blooming flowers and fresh clean water and never returned back. At that time, they were forced to hide in the cave to escape from one god of the heaven which was sent for looking them and to make them return to the heaven when they were found. These horses were unfortunately discovered by the god taking bath Li River at the dawn and in hurry to escape and ran to the cliff side where their images had turned into the stones as the punishment for not getting back to heaven.

The gestures o the horses are different from one another. One image of horse is running wild while others are standing still, browsing, neighing and drinking water. It is not also possible to recognize all the images of these all nine horses. Most of the people are able to recognize three or four images only. It is also believed that if a person can identify all the nine horses then he will be a number one scholar. It needs rich imagination and keen eyesight for identifying these horses.

 

Mural hill is also popular for the scholars, painters, poets and travelers. The famous scholar Ruan Yuan had visited this hill five times in the Qing Dynasty. Enlai has also visited this palace and able to recognize all the horses.