Shunan Bamboo Sea

The Shunan Bamboo Sea Scenic Area is located at the junction of Changning and Jiang'an counties in Yibin City, Sichuan Province, and is the largest concentrated natural bamboo forest scenic area in the world. The Shunan Bamboo Sea is a large area of bamboo scenery, and is known as one of the 'Four Wonders of Southern Sichuan' along with dinosaurs, stone forests, and hanging coffins. The Shunan Bamboo Sea has a long history of bamboo cultivation, with a bamboo culture that has continued for more than 2,000 years from the Eastern Han Dynasty to the present. The relief of the 'Phoenix Snake Bamboo Composite Totem' on the Eastern Han Dynasty painted stone coffin in the suburbs of Nanxi City, Yibin, proves that the local ancestors worshipped the bamboo totem. The rock paintings of fishing gear, lanterns, bamboo hairpins, and bamboo weapons on the 'Seven Holes Eastern Han Cliff Tomb' in Changning show that during the Qin and Han Dynasties, bamboo was widely used in the production and life of the local people in the Bamboo Sea, and the use of bamboo for housing, food, utensils, and culture reflects the strong local characteristics and lifestyle. The Shunan Bamboo Sea Scenic Area is shaped like a 'Z', wide in the east and west, and narrow in the north and south. The entire scenic area is about 13 kilometers long from east to west, about 6 kilometers wide from north to south, with a total area of 120 square kilometers, a vegetation coverage rate of 92.4%, and a negative ion concentration of 30,223 per cubic centimeter. More than 70,000 acres of green bamboo cover 27 steep ridges and more than 500 peaks. There are 15 genera and 58 species of bamboo growing here, in addition to the commonly produced Nan bamboo, water bamboo, and Ci bamboo, there are also rare bamboo species such as purple bamboo, Arhat bamboo, human face bamboo, and mandarin duck bamboo. The Shunan Bamboo Sea Scenic Area is rich in biological resources. Rare animals and plants include clouded leopards, pangolins, otters, macaques, egrets, golden eagles, white-bellied pheasants, big looks, thorny chest frogs (piano frogs), cherry, red beans, nanmu, cypress, gastrodia, sanqi, eucommia, etc. It produces bamboo shoots, bamboo fungus, navel oranges and other characteristic agricultural products. There are 112 species of woody plants and 427 species of bamboo (including: 58 species of township bamboo, 369 species collected from all over the country, which is the world's largest bamboo systematic ecological garden and bamboo gene bank). The Shunan Bamboo Sea Scenic Area combines bamboo scenery, mountains and rivers, lakes, waterfalls, and ancient temples, and also has a cultural landscape of bamboo culture and bamboo ecological leisure and holiday tourism destinations. It is also a film and television base in the southern Sichuan region. The central scenic area of the Shunan Bamboo Sea is divided from west to east into the Seven Color Lake, Sea in the Sea, Fairy Lake, Flower Stream Thirteen Bridges, Welcoming Wind Bay Area, Wanling and other tourist areas, with a total of 108 attractions, of which 52 are main attractions. In 1988, the Shu Bamboo South Sea Scenic Area was rated as a national scenic spot in China; in 2001, it was rated as the first batch of national AAAA tourist attractions in China; in December 2003, the Shu Bamboo South Sea was rated as the 'World Green Globe 21 Certified Scenic Area'; On October 23, 2005, the Shu Bamboo South Sea was rated as one of the 'Ten Most Beautiful Forests in China'; In January 2023, the Shu Bamboo South Sea was approved as a national tourist resort in China.