Foot Bucket Rock and Bride Peak

   There is a rock at the hillside, which looks like an upside-down boot and is called Foot Bucket Rock. Another mountain in front of Foot Bucket Rock is Bride Peak. It is said that the Foot Bucket Rock was used for footbath by the bride before she got married. There is a hole on the Foot Bucket Rock, which is not big or deep. But the water in this hole does not dry up even during the long drought, and this hole looks like a foot.

The Bride Peak stands gracefully, but we cannot clearly see her face, as she is still covered with the red bridal veil. There is a meaningful folk legend about the source of Foot Bucket Rock and Bride Peak that, many years ago, a ministry councilor surnamed Zhou had a daughter called Qiaoer, who was smart and clever since young, and her parents doted on her like a precious pearl. But Qiaoer risked her life to cry and scream against the foot-binding. Her mother was not hardhearted enough and met Qiaoer’s request. Qiaoer became very beautiful and well-known among the villagers for her ingenuity when she grew up. Her parents selected a family matching for Qiaoer’s marriage when she was at the age suitable for marrying. All people were shocked to see Qiaoer’s feet when she took off the shoes, and one of them was the relative of the bridegroom. The woman secretly got out of the house and told the bridegroom, who broke the engagement immediately, so that local people talked and laughed at such a thing. Qiaoer was so sad with her tears dropping into the foot bucket. No one knew how long it passed, and suddenly, the storm burst in all its fury to cover everything so that people could see nothing. When the storm stopped and the sky became sunny again, people only saw a mountain standing there with a huge rock looking like a foot bucket in front of it. That is the story about “Bride Peak” and “Foot Bucket Rock”. In the past, many poems were written to tell the story about the “Bride Peak”. For example, the poem about “Bride Peak” by Yang Shizhi at Qing Dynasty goes: “The Bride Peak looks like a beautiful lady standing in front of twelve mountain peaks, the sight of Wushan Mountain in the sever clouds and rains cannot rival; the wholeheartedness of the lady transformed her into a rock, and the breeze of spring should not blow the aromatic hair of the lady into a mass”.