By Huang Zhiling (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-02-21 09:28

Walking in the groves is an invigorating experience. Jing Aiping

Yibin in Sichuan province is a city of many unique features. For ordinary Chinese, it is synonymous with Wuliangye, a famous liquor that has been produced for more than 600 years. Besides Wuliangye, there are another 1,000 distilleries in the city, making it China's largest liquor producer.

For geographers, it is the first city to be found in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River.

For archaeologists, the 200 hanging coffins of the ancient Bo people scattered in caves in Gongxian county are a continuing mystery. It remains unclear why or who placed the coffins in the 26- to 200-m-tall cliffs. Yibin was inhabited by the Bo people in large numbers before the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC). Archaeologists believe that there are more hanging coffins in Yibin than anywhere else in the world.

For nature-lovers and tourists, the city is best known for its 120-sq-km bamboo forests, commonly known as the Bamboo Sea.

Hailed as one of the country's 10 most beautiful forests, the Bamboo Sea, where the average temperature is 15 C in winter, is an ideal tourism destination at this time of the year when many parts of the country are covered with snow and ice.

My recent journey to the Bamboo Sea which covers Changning and Jiang'an, two counties under Yibin's jurisdiction, started from Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan in Southwest China.

The forest is composed of more than 500 bamboo-covered hills in addition to lakes, streams and waterfalls.

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