More than twenty years after my last visit, I returned to the Yangshan Quarry. The awe it inspired was still as vivid as ever. The three great monoliths—the stele base, the stele body, and the stele head—still lie scattered across the valley. Weighing some 30,000 tons in total, their sheer mass is breathtaking, famously declared as “beyond the pull of a hundred thousand camels”.

Yuan Mei’s Ode to the Great Hongwu Stele is catchy and easy to recite, and has been displayed on the wall at the entrance. Tang Yin’s verses on the great Yangshan stele are considerably harder to read, so they have been replaced by his much more famous Song of the Peach Blossom Temple. Both poems, in their own ways, are fine examples of the accessible, vernacular poetry of the Ming literati.

“Unfinished at both ends, hollow in the middle.” Emperor Yongle headed north and never returned, leaving behind this colossal unfinished project. Centuries later, the abandoned stones have become a place for visitors to wander and relax.

The broken stones remain silent; the geomantic spirit of the mountain endures.