Little Orphan Island, Yangtze China by William Saunders, 1870s

Little Orphan is a rock hill in the middle of the

Yangtze River The Yangtze or Yangzi ( or ; ) is the longest list of rivers of Asia, river in Asia, the list of rivers by length, third-longest in the world, and the longest in the world to flow entirely within one country. It rises at Jari Hill in th ...

, located on

Susong Susong County () is a county in the southwest of Anhui Province, situated on the northwest (left) bank of the Yangtze, bordering the provinces of Hubei to the west and Jiangxi to the south. It is located in the southwest of the jurisdiction of the ...

Anqing Anqing (, also Nganking, formerly Hwaining, now the name of Huaining County) is a prefecture-level city in the southwest of Anhui province, People's Republic of China. Its population was 4,165,284 as of the 2020 census, with 804,493 living in the ...

, Anhui province in

East China East China () is a geographical and a loosely defined cultural region that covers the eastern coastal area of China. A concept abolished in 1978, for economical purposes the region was defined from 1949 to 1961 by the Chinese Central Governme ...

. It is a landmark that frequently written and photographed by many Western travelers along the Yangtze in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. It formed during the

quaternary glaciation The Quaternary glaciation, also known as the Pleistocene glaciation, is an alternating series of glacial and interglacial periods during the Quaternary period that began 2.58 Ma (million years ago) and is ongoing. Although geologists describe ...

. The hill is 78 meters above sea level. During the dry season, it would connect with the north bank of the Yangtze and become a peninsula. There is a Buddhist monastery (also a

Mazu Mazu or Matsu is a Chinese sea goddess also known by several other names and titles. She is the deified form of the legendary figure Lin Mo or Lin Moniang, a Fujianese shamaness whose life span is traditionally dated from 960 to 987. Re ...

temple) on the mountainside and a pavilion on the top of the hill. Its name suggests that it stands alone in the river. "Little" makes it different from "Great Orphan" in

Poyang Lake Poyang Lake (, Gan: Po-yong U), located in Jiujiang, is the largest freshwater lake in China. The lake is fed by the Gan, Xin, and Xiu rivers, which connect to the Yangtze through a channel. The area of Poyang Lake fluctuates dramatically be ...

. It is classified as an AAA-rated tourist attraction by China National Tourism Administration, attracting tens of thousands tourists and pilgrims every year. Little Orphan has been a frequent subject in the Chinese classic literature, and one travels depicting Little Orphan written by

Lu You Lu You (; 1125–1210) was a Chinese historian and poet of the Southern Song Dynasty (南宋). Career Early life and marriage Lu You was born on a boat floating in the Wei River early on a rainy morning, November 13, 1125. At the time of his b ...

is selected for the textbook of high school. It appears on the 2016 Chinese film '' Crosscurrent''.

References

External links

*
Official website
{{in lang, zh

AAA-rated tourist attractions Landforms of Anhui