Whether in popular legends, historical documents and ancient poems, there are many expressions about the "eye of the sea", but they refer to different contents. For thousands of years, people have been both curious and puzzled about this mysterious phenomenon.
What do people mean by the "eye of the sea"?
Whether the sea eye really exists
Liu Chongyuan of the Five Dynasties recorded such an interesting story in jin Hua Zi Miscellaneous Compilation: there was a slightly raised mound in front of the middle gate of Beihai County, and the local officials ordered people to bulldoze it. In the course of construction, countless pieces of iron coins, of unknown age and as large as five baht coins, were found. Digging further down, he found a stone on which was written: "This is the eye of the sea. Therefore, money was cast to suppress it." People fear that the ground will cause disaster, they will dig up the coins buried in the landfill, as before.
There is a place called Beixinqiao in The city of Beijing. According to legend, there is a well leading straight to the sea, and there lives a dragon in the well. Zhu Di, the Yongle Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, wanted to build the city of Beijing, but Lao Long made waves and often flooded. So Zhu Di sent Yao Guangxiao to subdue Lao Long and locked him in the "Sea Eye" with a large chain. Then he built a bridge over the well to cover the "sea Eye". Lao Long asked Yao guangxiao when he would come out. Yao guangxiao replied, "When the bridge gets old." But who knows, Yao Guangxiao even named the bridge "Beixin Bridge", so the bridge will never get old, and the old dragon will never come out to harm the world.
The ancient well in front of Yingtian Pagoda and Qingliang Temple in Shaoxing
Of course, this is only a myth made up by people, and it is not to be believed at all; However, the idea of the "sea eye" is not only popular in mystifying myths, but also appears in many ancient poems and texts. Du Fu, a famous poet in the Tang Dynasty, said: "See the sea eye between the stones, and the water house entangles the sky." Wang Anshi, a famous litterateur in the Northern Song Dynasty, also wrote: "The hillside stone has a thousand years of embellish, and the sea eye spring never dries." In this way, "sea eye" should be a real spring.
Springs leading to the sea
The Chinese Dictionary explains the term "sea eye" as: "Spring eye, the outlet of spring water. The ancients thought that well spring water, undercurrent in the ground, through the river and sea, so called." Some of them are unfathomable, some never dry, some can hear the sound of waves, and some "eyes of the sea" live in fish.
Shen Kuo, a famous scientist in the Northern Song Dynasty, recorded such a strange thing in his Dream Stream Bitan: There was a well on a big rock in Yingtian Temple (later destroyed by fire in Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province). The mouth of the well was only a few inches in size, but no one knew its depth. There was a fish in the well that looked like an eel (a long snake-like fish). But there were scales on its body, and its ears were very large. There were traces of weapon cuts on its tail. According to legend, the scars on the fish were cut with a sword by Huang Chao, leader of the peasant uprising in the late Tang Dynasty. As long as the eels travel, there will be floods, droughts and pestilence in Yue Prefecture. Local people often use this phenomenon to predict disasters. Lin Jingxi, a famous patriotic poet of the Southern Song Dynasty, also mentioned the well in a poem, saying, "The cloud root hides the eye of the sea. The poet describes the well and the eels in it as "sea eyes" and spirits respectively. To this day, the ancient well in front of Qingliang Temple on Tashan mountain in Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province, still exists, but there is no water in it.
In ancient people's eyes, the existence of a fish in a well is really a strange thing. When there is no scientific explanation, they take it for granted that it is connected with the sea, and call it the "eye of the sea", and hold it in awe, and give it bizarre legends. As time goes by, the "eye of the sea" becomes more mysterious. The origin of such springs is very simple, but they are not connected to the sea as people think. In carbonate areas, where there are many underground caves, it is not surprising that small fish can grow in underground rivers formed by underground water flow and even connected with surface rivers. For example, there is a spring in the yugu cave of Yesanpo Scenic area in Hebei Province, which spits out fish every grain rain season, up to a thousand pounds at most.
Wild three slope fish valley cave spring
Ancient well salt production process displayed in Chengdu Museum
Abandoned salt Wells
There is a stalagmite Street in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, named after two huge boulders shaped like bamboo shoots, one more than 4 meters high and the other more than 5 meters high. According to legend, in ancient times, when it rained in summer, it often collapsed into a pit, where water was stored. Some people used ropes to throw stones into the pit to measure the depth, but they could not find the bottom. After three or five days, the water suddenly disappeared. What is more strange is that after heavy rain, the two boulders will appear next to many small beads, the size of chestnuts, the color of green and yellow, can be strung with string. Local people believe that this is the location of the "eye of the Sea", and the two boulders are used to keep the "eye of the sea". If they are moved, there will be floods.
Du Fu refuted the legend by writing a poem named "Stalagmite Journey" after a field investigation. In his opinion, such expressions as "stalagmite", "sea eye" and "pearl jade after rain" were vague, erroneous and inadequate. This place may have been the burial place of nobles long ago, and the two huge stones are only the markers of the burial place. Lu You, a poet in the Southern Song Dynasty, disagreed with this view. He wrote in Notes of Lao Xue 'an: Chengdu these two pieces of stone, like don't like stalagmites, but by a lot of stone base, the so-called "sea eye" is not false, beads, such as those that appear after the rain is really someone picked up, sichuan has a lot of salt well, like a big pit and some small can only hold a bamboo tube, it is really "sea eye".
So, according to Lu You, the "eye of the sea" in Chengdu is actually the salt well. In 2011, Li Jiangwei, a scholar from Sichuan University, speculated that the "sea eye" in the legendary Stalagmite Street in Chengdu might be an abandoned salt well, and that the small beads that appeared after rain might just be magnesium chloride crystals formed after evaporation and cooling of salt brine in the salt well that exuded from the ground due to rising water level. Chengdu plain is rich in resources and has a long history of mining well salt. As early as the end of the Qin Dynasty, Li Bing, then governor of Shu Prefecture, found spring water containing salt bubbling from underground, so he dug salt Wells. Since then, tens of thousands of salt Wells have been found all over Sichuan.
Riptide eddies and ocean blue holes
"People say this is the gate of the sea, the eye of the sea is boundless terrible view. Heaven and earth occasionally stay pillar, jiangshan has this barrier raging. As strong as the enemy field stand, dangerous like lonely minister difficult in the last days. Climb the peak tomorrow to make pole, my heart wide view of the universe." Fangde Xie, the famous poet in the Southern Song Dynasty, is the chivalrous poem In seven words: Small Lonely Mountain. The poem depicts a hill of perilous terrain. The mountain is located in the north of Pengze County in Jiangxi Province and southeast of Susong County in Anhui Province in the Yangtze River, about 63 meters above sea level, surrounded by water on three sides, one side is connected with the river bank, when the river flows through here, whirling and rolling like boiling water, the scene is very spectacular. Fang-de Xie praised the Small Gu Mountain as the gate checkpoint in the sea. From this, he thinks of the terrifying "sea Eye". The "sea eye" in his eyes is actually the boundless torrent vortex, just like there is a door under it leading to the sea.
The unfathomable depth of the whirlpool, like a bottomless black hole leading to the unknown world, is daunting, so it is likened to the "eye of the sea". In fact, in the vast expanse of the ocean, there is a bigger and more spectacular phenomenon than the whirlpool of a river. About 70km off the coast of Belize in north-eastern Central America, a vast expanse of dark blue water is a perfect circle. When viewed from a high altitude, it looks like the eye of the sea staring at the sky. Some people vividly call it "the eye of the sea". In fact, the Eye of the Sea is nothing more than a cave called the Great Blue Hole. It is surrounded by a ring of coral reefs, about 300 meters in diameter and 124 meters deep. Originally a submerged limestone cavern covered with strange stalactites, the cave became what it is today about 65,000 years ago when it was submerged by the sea. Today, it is one of the most famous diving sites in the world and has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site as part of Belize's Great Barrier Reef Reserve.
Yongle Longdong sansha
China also discovered an ocean blue hole in the Xisha Islands, with a proven depth of 300.89 meters, which is the deepest known blue hole in the world. The cave was named "Sansha Yongle Longdong" in 2016. Local fishermen regard it as the "eye of the South China Sea" and make up many legends to add endless interest and mystery to it.
In conclusion, there is no real "sea eyes" in the world. Those so-called "sea eyes" are just ordinary geological phenomena shrouded in mystery in people's imagination, or exaggerated by poets, thus having a strong romantic color.
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