Jianyang City, Fujian Province, has a hilly land, rolling and mountainous. In the bosom of this mountain range, there is a thousand-year-old camphor tree, 36 meters high, with a chest circumference of 10At 5 meters and with a canopy of 900 square meters, it is not only stunning for its ancient age, but also for the strange secrets it contains.
This ancient camphor tree can hide a clay Buddha statue more than 60 centimeters high intimately in its own body, which can be called China's unique "tree hugging Buddha" landscape.
Kaoting Village, Jianyang City, is the residence of this thousand-year-old camphor tree. The village is like a fairyland, with babbling water and a pleasant environment. The most famous is actually this magical thousand-year-old camphor tree, and on the side of this tree, there is a clay Buddha statue, which the locals affectionately call "the general".
This bizarre "tree hugging Buddha" landscape has attracted countless tourists to come here and has become a major tourist attraction in the place. Zhu Xi, a famous physicist in the Southern Song Dynasty of China, was also a prominent figure in this land. Legend has it that Zhu Xi spent his old age lecturing in Kaoting Village, making this place his place to settle.
And the legend of the tree hugging the Buddha adds to the mystery of this land. According to legend, after Zhu Xi's death, in order to commemorate this great thinker, his descendants specially placed the clay Buddha statue of "General Ye" in the crack of the trunk of the thousand-year-old camphor tree for future generations to worship.
This thousand-year-old camphor tree is tall and straight, with lush branches. However, the most amazing thing is that at a height of 1 meter above the ground in the trunk of the tree, there is a hole the size of a palm. This cave is not a wormhole, nor is it a tree hole, but a space where the Buddha statue of the "General Lord" is hidden. This unique landscape makes you marvel at the wonder of nature.
There are still different versions of the legend of the origin of the clay Buddha statue of the "General" and how it was put into the hole of the thousand-year-old camphor tree.
The most widely circulated version is: after Zhu Xi's death, his descendants specially chose the thousand-year-old camphor tree as a commemorative place in order to commemorate their ancestors, and placed the clay Buddha statue of the "General Master" in the crack of the trunk of the camphor tree.
However, with the passage of time, this camphor tree continues to grow, and the cracks of the past gradually close, so the "general" has become the wonder of the tree hugging Buddha that everyone sees today.
What is even more amazing is that there is a small camphor tree growing next to the thousand-year-old camphor tree, which has roots and crowns, like a mother and child.
This small camphor tree is also nearly 300 years old, about 20 meters high, and has a chest circumference of 368 meters. The two trees complement each other and become "mother and child camphor", and are listed as one of the 46 ancient and famous trees in the country.