Yimeng is a name for a piece of country rather than for a peak. It covers the Yishan range in Weifang and the mountains of Linyi to its south, and it is built out of several great ranges, long rolls of hill, and flat alluvial ground lying between them. The principal mountains are Yishan, Mengshan and Menglianggu; the principal rivers are the Yi, the Shu and the Bang. Mengshan, also called East Meng, is a branch of the Taiyi mountain system running from northwest to southeast for 75 kilometres over 1,125 square kilometres. The hills are the hinge of the province: Linyi stands where they give way to the Yishu plain, higher in the north and lower in the south.
From the journal
Where Three Rivers Begin in the Hills
The Yimeng hills are a country rather than a mountain: three great ranges, forest over 80 per cent of the ground, and the sources of three rivers that all end in the sea.
In the same city · Linyi ↗Not one mountain but a stretch of country
One river, two kinds of country
The Yi rises at the north foot of Niujiao Mountain, above the Tianzhuang reservoir in Yiyuan county, though tradition says its true source is Lushan. It runs north past the county town, turns south through Yishui and Yinan, passes the city of Linyi and goes on through Tancheng, and at Wulou village in Pizhou in Jiangsu it enters the Xin Yi river on the way to the Yellow Sea at Yanwei harbour. The course is more than 500 kilometres and the basin covers 11,600 square kilometres. Above Linyi it behaves like a mountain stream: tributaries arrive from the west in an uneven, branch-like pattern, the water runs fast, flood peaks are high, and the level rises and falls quickly. Below the city it is a plain river, wide and shallow, and its floods are held back by embankments.
Eighty per cent forest, and a tune people sing
The cover on these hills is unusually complete: forest reaches 80 per cent of the ground, and the trees are Chinese pine, Japanese black pine, larch, locust and fruit trees standing among them. The mean temperature is 13.1 degrees, there are 212 frost-free days, and 823.8 millimetres of rain fall in a year. The mountains were approved as a national forest park in 1994 and made a provincial scenic area the next year. In 1980 a new mineral was found here and named for the place, Yimengit, its type locality sitting in Mengyin county. What the country eats comes from the same slopes: goats are marinated with dozens of herbs and seasonings before being roasted whole at Mengshan. And what people carry out of the valleys is older than all of it, the local folk tune called Yimeng Xiaodiao.
