"Penglai Mountain is in the sea, and the city of adults is in the sea." This sentence recorded in the "Classic of Mountains and Seas and the North Classic of Hai Nei" made the name "Penglai" appear in the world's cognition for the first time.
Penglai, abbot, Yingzhou, legend is that the three immortal mountains on the sea where the gods live, find the immortals on the immortal mountain, learn the immortal method to get the immortal medicine, you can live forever.
Among these three immortal mountains, especially the name of Penglai is the most prosperous.
After Qin Shi Huang unified the Six Kingdoms, in order to make his Great Qin Empire continue for ten thousand years, he asked for capable people and strangers who knew the direction of Penglai, hoping to get immortal medicine and live forever.
A fangshi named Xu Fu met with Qin Shi Huang and said that he could find Penglai Xian Island and seek elixir for Qin Shi Huang. Qin Shi Huang was overjoyed, so he sent Xu Fu to take three thousand boys, girls and boys to the sea to find medicine. But Xu Fu disappeared after going to sea and was never heard from.
Of course, this Penglai is only a myth and legend, but in Yantai City, Shandong Province, there is really a city called "Penglai", and its name is also closely related to another great emperor, that is, Emperor Wu of Han.
During the reign of Emperor Wudi of Han, the country was rich and the people were strong, and fan states came to the dynasty, creating a brilliant golden age, and after reaching the peak that the emperor of the world could reach, Emperor Wudi of Han began to set his sights on the higher and more mysterious upper world - the Immortal Realm.
As everyone knows, Qin Shi Huang frantically worshiped immortals and longed for immortality, and Emperor Wudi of Han was not bad at all, and he had reached the level of obsession with the Dao Sheng immortals.
According to historical records, in the Han Dynasty, because of the frequent fantasy scenes of mirages in the Bohai Bay area near Yantai, people who did not understand the principle of mirages at that time mistakenly thought that it was the place where the gods lived, so the alchemists at that time generally believed that Penglai Immortal Mountain was in the Bohai Sea.
In order to find Penglai Immortal Mountain, Emperor Wu of Han ordered people to build many large ships, and set up a special team to cross the sea to seek immortals, and they would go to sea every year. During the time of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, both the number of ships going to sea, the number of troops going out to sea to find immortals, and the number and time span of going to sea far exceeded all previous periods.
According to the "Book of Han", "Records of History" and other historical records, the activities of going to sea to search for immortals during the han wudi period have been going on for 23 years, consuming a lot of manpower, material and financial resources, even countless ships and personnel missing at sea, but there has been no sign of half a point of immortal mountain.
Emperor Wu of Han was not satisfied, and he not only made many inquiries about the returning personnel, but also conducted a detailed investigation of the whereabouts of the missing ships and the locations where they had arrived, trying to further search for the Immortal Mountain in places where the ships had not yet arrived.
Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty even personally went out to sea to search for the Immortal Mountains many times, and there were as many as eight times in the historical record alone. In the 5th year of Yuan Ding, after the ministers' persuasion was fruitless, Emperor Wu of Han set out from Dengzhou and realized his sea journey for the first time.
When Emperor Wu of Han arrived in Dengzhou for the fifth time, looking at the rough sea and thinking about the supreme wonderland on Penglai Immortal Mountain, the yearning in his heart was really unbearable, so he first built a small city on the seashore, named "Penglai", to ease his yearning for Penglai Immortal Mountain.
Since then, Penglai has begun to appear in history as a specific and true place name.
Today, Penglai is a county-level city with an area of 1,000 square kilometers and a population of more than 400,000, as well as a national historical and cultural city and the best leisure tourism city in China. Penglai Pavilion, which was founded in the Northern Song Dynasty and is known as the "Wonderland on Earth", has also become one of the four famous buildings in China along with the Yellow Crane Tower, Yueyang Tower and Tengwang Pavilion.
For two thousand years, countless legends associated with the name "Penglai" have intersected and merged in this place of Penglai to form a unique "Penglai culture", allowing people to enjoy the beautiful scenery while also reading a different history.