Golden Whip Rock and Lobster Flower
Legend says that when Qin Shi Huang built the Great Wall, countless common people died of exhaustion and hunger. A peasant woman named Meng Jiangnu traveled ten thousand miles to find her husband, only to learn his bones had been built into the wall. She beat the wall and wailed: "In the first month, the first month proper, wolves and vicious dogs came through the door..." Then with a thunderous rumble...
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The Golden Whip Rock and the Lobster Flower
Legend has it that when Qin Shi Huang built the Great Wall, countless common people died of exhaustion and starvation.
A peasant woman named Meng Jiangnü traveled ten thousand li to find her husband at the Great Wall, only to learn that his bones had been built into the wall. She beat upon the wall and wept: "In the first month of the year, the first month so bright, jackals and vicious dogs came through the door; they seized my loved one at the door, the Qin king wants to build a ten-thousand-li wall..." Then with a thunderous crash, the Great Wall collapsed from her weeping. That sound startled the Lobster Princess, who was playing by the seaside, and she disguised herself as a common woman and came to the mortal world to see what was happening. She saw all of Shenzhou shrouded in gloomy winds, bones strewn across the fields—it turned out a tyrant had appeared in the mortal world and wanted to build a ten-thousand-li Great Wall. She saw thousands upon thousands of laborers bent like oxen pulling stones, their worn shoulders dripping blood, and she was moved to great compassion. She quickly tore off a handful of her hair and distributed it to the laborers, telling them to use the strands to pull the stones. The laborers tried it, and strangely enough, the heaviest stone blocks were as easy to pull as a child pulling a wooden cart! When Qin Shi Huang learned of this, he thought: if one strand of hair can pull a stone block, then gathered together, couldn't they drive mountains? If he drove all those useless great mountains into the sea and filled it up, wouldn't the territory of his Great Qin Empire be unmatched in all the world? So he ordered the hair strands confiscated and woven into a golden "Mountain-Driving Whip." That night, he climbed Mount Emei and cracked the whip—"crack, crack"—and half of Mount Emei instantly ran off like a startled beast! He rested by day and drove mountains by night, on and on, until he reached the banks of the Li River in Wuling Commandery. Just then, a messenger rushed in with urgent news: "Your Majesty! Disaster! The South Sea has risen to the sky, and the Yangtze River is flooding backward for eight thousand li!"
It turned out that the Dragon King, learning that Qin Shi Huang intended to seize his sea territory, flew into a rage and ordered the waters to rise and flood Shenzhou. The Lobster Princess was terrified and secretly slipped out of the sea to save the common people.
When Qin Shi Huang received the report, he laughed and said: "What is there to fear? With the divine whip in my hand, I'll drive a hundred thousand great mountains into the sea and leave your dragon sons and grandsons with no place to be buried! Drive—" Before the words left his mouth, a messenger reported again: "A Princess Longxia requests an audience with Your Majesty!" A woman came floating gracefully before Qin Shi Huang. His eyes bulged as big as ox eggs. He saw before him: a melon-seed face, willow-leaf eyebrows, a cherry mouth, a water-snake waist, moving like a willow swaying in the wind, skin the color of rouge—truly a thousand charms and ten thousand graces. The woman said: "I am originally a maiden attendant of the great immortal Chi Songzi of Tianmen Mountain. I heard that Your Majesty is driving mountains to fill the sea and has offended the Dragon King. I fear you may not be able to withstand the dragon gods of the four seas, so I have come specially to assist you." Qin Shi Huang quickly said: "Princess Longxia, since you are willing to help, why not become my wife and together we shall strive for supremacy?" The Lobster Girl said: "If Your Majesty does not disdain me, Longxia is willing to be your maidservant and serve you." As soon as Qin Shi Huang heard this, he grabbed the Lobster Girl and flung her onto the bed. The Lobster Girl said in a sweet, coy voice: "Today is our wedding night, a joy for a hundred years. Your humble servant is willing to accompany Your Majesty in merry play. You drink one cup of wine, and I shall dance one dance for you. Whoever loses shall be punished." Qin Shi Huang laughed heartily: "Excellent! Let's compete then!" With that, he tilted his head back and downed a cup.
You see, one was a peerless hero who had swept across the six states, able to drink a thousand cups without getting drunk; the other was a green-wave fairy who could overturn rivers and seas, able to dance ten thousand dances without tiring. But in the end, Qin Shi Huang still got dead drunk, collapsing like a boar, snoring like a bellows. The Lobster Girl seized the opportunity to take the key from Qin Shi Huang's waist, open the treasure chest, and take out the Mountain-Driving Whip. She then pulled the golden hairpin from her head, blew on it, and turned it into a fake hair whip, which she placed in the treasure chest. Then she quietly opened the rear tent, preparing to slip away. As the saying goes: the mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind. The Lobster Girl's sudden entry into the tent had bewitched Qin Shi Huang's seven souls and six spirits, and this strange affair had long been noticed by the cunning and treacherous Prime Minister Li Si. To guard against mishaps, he had strung a rope around the woods outside the tent and hung some horse bells on it. As soon as the Lobster Girl ran out, she tripped the horse bells. Qin Shi Huang woke with a start, saw the Lobster Girl was gone, and shouted for people to search. In an instant, the mountain valley was filled with shouts and neighing horses, and pine-torch fires reddened half the sky.
Seeing she could not break through the encirclement, the Lobster Girl grabbed a torch and set fire to the hair whip. Hundreds of guards rushed up and bound her. By then it was almost dawn, and Qin Shi Huang suddenly remembered he had delayed the great matter of driving mountains. He hastily opened the treasure chest and swung the whip. He swung left—no wind arose; he swung right—the mountains did not move. Anxious, he thought: why won't the mountains obey today? He lashed the remaining half of Mount Emei three thousand eight hundred times, splitting it into three thousand eight hundred jagged stone peaks, but still could not drive them. The Lobster Girl sneered: "Tyrant, your whip is a fake." Only then did Qin Shi Huang realize he had been tricked. He forced her to hand over the real whip, and the Lobster Princess laughed loudly and pointed to a pile of black ash on the ground. Qin Shi Huang was so furious he vomited several mouthfuls of black blood. He seized his sword and cut off the woman's head, and still not satisfied, he hacked wildly, chopping the body into a mass of flesh and mud, then flung it with all his might into the valley. He also threw the fake whip among the chaotic mountains before leaving in a huff. That golden hairpin, being after all an immortal's object, in the blink of an eye turned into a hundred-zhang stone peak, sharp-edged and angular. The morning light struck it at an angle, as if gilded with a layer of gold dust—this is the "Golden Whip Rock" that has been passed down through the ages. And those three thousand eight hundred jagged stone peaks are the sandstone peak forest of Zhangjiajie. The following year, by the streams and in the valleys below Golden Whip Rock, a strange flower grew: its bud like a lobster's head, its stamens like a lobster's mouth, its petals like a lobster's body, its filaments like a lobster's tail. The Tujia people of Zhangjiajie said: "This flower was transformed from the flesh of the Lobster Princess. It is called the 'Lobster Flower.'"