The Seven Liao Cypresses

The altar came second. Seven cypresses stand outside the south gate of the Sheji Altar, and local tradition holds them to be survivors of the Liao-dynasty Xinguo Temple that occupied this ground before the Ming laid out the altar in 1420. That would put them past a thousand years. It is a temple-succession story rather than a dated planting, so read the figure as the tradition it is and not as a measurement. The thickest of the seven runs close to six metres round, which the local description puts at four adults with arms outstretched, only just meeting. Another divides into nine major limbs that then divide again, and the comparison people reach for is a thousand-armed Guanyin. The city keeps a file on each tree in the grove and monitors them individually; recent reporting describes all seven as thriving. A few steps away is the thing most visitors photograph: a scholar tree over two hundred years old growing out of a split in one of the cypresses, known locally as the cypress and scholar tree embrace. The ground is Zhongshan Park now, beside the Forbidden City, three yuan to enter. Ming and Qing emperors made their offerings for land and grain here. Our pin marks the park rather than the grove, because no source gives a coordinate for the trees themselves.