Baotu Spring Park

National 5A Tourist Attraction; The First Of Jinan’S Seventy Two Named Springs · Jinan, Shandong

The first of the seventy-two named springs of Jinan, a city built on water that rises through limestone from the Mount Tai massif to the south. Baotu means leaping and surging, and that is what it does: three vents in a stone-walled pool push water upward hard enough to lift the surface into visible domes, running clear at about eighteen degrees all year, so the pool steams on winter mornings. The spring has been celebrated for a thousand years - the Song poet Li Qingzhao was born in the city and has a memorial hall in the park, the Qianlong emperor declared it the finest spring under heaven and left a stele saying so, and Jinan's entire reputation rests on it. The park around the pool is a classical garden of willows, stone bridges, teahouses and smaller springs, with carp in the channels and old men playing chess. Groundwater extraction stopped the springs flowing for long stretches in the 1990s and early 2000s; the city now restricts pumping to keep them alive, and the water level is published daily.

1 Baotuquan South Road, Lixia District, Jinan, Jinan, Shandong, China

Daily 7:00-19:00 in peak season (10 April to 9 October) and 7:00-18:00 in low season, with longer Spring Festival hours; no advance booking is required.

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