Twelve Views of Bayu


Twelve Views of Bayu are popular scenic views in and around the city of Chongqing, China. Ba and Yu are old names of Chongqing in imperial time. Influenced by Eight Views of Xiaoxiang in Hunan Province, people in Chongqing listed their own most beloved views during the reign of Tianshun Emperor of Ming Dynasty. Scenic views in the list changed throughout the history. Some scenic views appeared in earlier lists no longer exist in modern days due to the change of physical geography, landscapes and land-uses.

Original Eight Views

The first version of the list contains eight popular scenic views, the same number of views in the Xiaoxiang list. In the second year of Tianshun Emperor's reign, people carved the list on to the bronze bell in Chongyin Temple, a former buddhism temple located at current Chongqing No. 25 Middle School's campus. The eight views on the original list are:
Chongqing is a major city with diverse landscapes and culture. The original eight views were not able to present all popular scenic views in Chongqing. Therefore, the number of views in the list was later expanded from eight to twelve. The traditional twelve views of Chongqing was proposed in 1760 by Wang Erjian, a county-level governor of Chongqing during the reign of Qianlong Emperor in Qing Dynasty. In the new list, three of former eight views were removed due to various reasons, and several other views in and around Chongqing were added. The twelve views in Wang's list are:
In April 1989, Chongqing Evening News newspaper, Chongqing TV and Chongqing Department of Parks and Gardens launched an activity that encouraged Chongqing residents to propose a new version of twelve views. This activity lasted for one year. In 1990, the new list of twelve views of Chongqing was released by the Evening newspaper:
In 2006, Chongqing Evening News newspaper launched another activity to propose the current version of twelve views. This time, the Evening newspaper released two separate lists. One for natural scenes only, and another for human landscapes.

Natural scenes