China 🇨🇳 🇧🇬 Blugaria
The Stone Dragons of Yunnan
and the Dragons Valley 🐉
of Belogradchik 🇧🇬
The Stone Forest is located in the southwest of China, in Yunnan Province, a region known for its mountains, ethnic diversity and dramatic landscapes. It lies on a high plateau, where the land rises gently and the air feels cooler than in many other parts of the country. The site is about ninety kilometers southeast of Kunming, the capital city of Yunnan Province. Kunming is often called the “City of Eternal Spring” because of its mild climate throughout the year. From the city, the Stone Forest can be reached by road in a few hours, passing through rural villages and farmland.
Administratively, the Stone Forest belongs to Shilin Yi Autonomous County. This area is home to the Sani people, a branch of the Yi ethnic group, whose legends and traditions are closely connected to the stone landscape.
The forest itself spreads across a wide area of hills and valleys, where sharp limestone pillars rise from the ground like a natural city of stone. Surrounded by mountains and open countryside, the Stone Forest feels both remote and deeply rooted in its region, standing as one of Yunnan’s most iconic natural and cultural landmarks.
Stone Giants Across Continents: Dragons, Hydras, and Ancestral Memory in Rock Across Eurasia, stone rises from the earth in forms so deliberate that ancient peoples could scarcely believe they were accidental. From China’s Stone Forest (Shílín) to Bulgaria’s Belogradchik Rocks, landscapes hardened into towering figures became canvases for myth, encoding ancestral knowledge in geology itself.
China’s Stone Forest and the Many-Headed Xiangliu In Yunnan, the Stone Forest’s jagged limestone pillars resemble frozen armies of giants. Chinese mythology gave these formations narrative life through beings like Xiangliu, the nine-headed, serpent-like minister of the water god Gonggong. Xiangliu poisoned lands with floods and chaos, embodying uncontrolled nature—yet also marking sacred boundaries between human order and primordial forces. The Stone Forest thus became more than scenery: it was a mythic archive, a place where stone embodied warning, memory, and cosmological balance. Each “giant” pillar stood as a reminder that the landscape itself was alive, watching, and capable of retaliation if disrespected.
Belogradchik Rocks: Dragons Turned to Stone.
Half a world away, Bulgaria’s Belogradchik formations rise in crimson silhouettes—castles, monks, warriors, and dragons petrified by fate. Local legends speak of dragons defeated or punished, their bodies frozen mid-transformation. These myths often carry moral weight: betrayal, forbidden love, or hubris leads to eternal stone imprisonment. Here, dragons are not merely monsters but liminal guardians, controlling water, fertility, and hidden knowledge—roles strikingly similar to their Chinese counterparts.
They were once alive …
When you walk into the Stone Forest in China, it feels as if you have stepped into an old story that the land itself is telling. Tall stone pillars rise from the ground like enormous figures, silent and unmoving, as though they were once alive. Local people say these are not just rocks. They are giants, warriors, and ancestors who were turned to stone long ago. According to legend, powerful spirits and gods watched over this land. When humans or giants broke the balance of nature, the gods froze time itself. The giants were caught where they stood, their bodies hardening into stone. That is why some rocks look like faces, others like standing men, and some like crowds gathered together. The forest is said to be full of sleeping souls.
People often compare this place to the world of the Titans from Greek mythology. But these are different giants. They are not rulers of the sky or the sea. They belong to the earth. They are part of the mountains, the wind, and the memory of the land. The Stone Forest feels less like a kingdom and more like a graveyard of ancient beings. As the wind moves between the stone pillars, it sounds like whispers. It is easy to imagine that the giants are still there, watching, waiting, frozen in an endless moment. In the Stone Forest, nature and myth become one story, carved in stone and silence.
The Stone Giants
of Yunnan 💪 🇨🇳
The Stone Forest in southwestern China rises from the Yunnan plateau like an ancient congregation frozen in time. Ninety kilometers from Kunming, these limestone pillars reach skyward in silent testimony to forces both geological and mythical. The Sani people, who have dwelled here for generations, speak not of erosion and karst formations but of transformation, punishment and divine intervention. Walk through these stone passages and you sense something beyond natural processes. Each pillar holds a story, each formation a face. These are not merely rocks shaped by rain and wind over millennia. They are warriors caught mid-battle, giants frozen as they stood, ancestors turned to eternal stone by gods who sought to preserve the balance of nature. The Sani legends tell of powerful spirits who, witnessing humanity’s disruption of the natural order, stopped time itself and transmuted flesh to limestone.
The comparison to Greek Titans emerges naturally, yet these giants differ fundamentally. They are not Olympian rulers cast down from celestial thrones. They belong to the earth itself—rooted in mountains, speaking through wind, embedded in the land’s memory. The Stone Forest feels less like a fallen kingdom and more like a sacred graveyard where ancient beings rest in perpetual vigilance.
The Legend of Ashima
Among all the stone formations in the forest, one stands above the others in cultural significance: the Ashima Stone. According to legend, the forest is the birthplace of Ashima, a beautiful girl of the Yi people. Her name means „as precious and bright as gold” in the Yi language, and her story has been passed down through generations, first transcribed in 1813 by ethnographer Wang Wei from a Sani elder.
Once upon a time, a girl was born in a poor Yi family. The parents hoped the girl would be as beautiful as flowers and as shiny as gold. Ashima grew to become exactly that—a young woman of extraordinary beauty and strength of spirit. She fell in love with Ahei, a poor but honest sheepherder, and they planned to marry. But the son of a powerful landlord, Azhi, heard of Ashima’s beauty and wanted her for himself.
When Ahei had to leave the village to work in the field, Azhi kidnapped Ashima and forced her to marry him. Ashima refused, declaring her love for Ahei alone. Azhi beat her and threw her into a dungeon, but she never wavered.
When Ahei heard of the kidnapping, he rode home without delay. Azhi proposed a song contest with Ahei. The contest lasted for three days and three nights. Ahei won the contest, and Azhi had to open the door for him. Ashima was free, and the lovers began their journey home together. But Azhi’s fury knew no bounds. While she was coming back home, Ashima drowned because of a river flood caused by Azhi.
The evil landlord had conjured a flash flood to prevent her escape. As the waters receded, Ashima’s body transformed into stone—a pillar that stands in the Minor Stone Forest to this day, appearing to wear traditional Yi garb and headgear, with a basket on her back, gazing into the distance.
The locals say that if you call Ashima’s name in the Stone Forest, she will answer you through the echo that rebounds from the limestone walls. Her spirit took residence in the rock, forever near her family and the villagers she loved. Ahei would come to the stone and speak to her, and he always heard the echo of her response. In this way, they remained together forever—she in stone, he in devotion.
The legend of Ashima represents more than a tragic love story. It embodies the Sani people’s pursuit of freedom, their resistance against oppressive power, and their belief that true love and righteousness will ultimately triumph. Ashima is a beautiful and brave Yi girl who relentlessly fights against the power forces to pursue freedom and at last turns into a stone. She became a symbol for all Yi women, and her story—told in an epic poem hundreds of years old—was even adapted into China’s first color film in 1964. In the Stone Forest, Ashima stands eternal, neither fully defeated nor fully victorious, but transformed into something beyond mortality. She is the land’s memory made visible, a reminder that some spirits cannot be broken, only changed in form.
The Giant 💪
DRAGONS of 
Belogradchik 🐉
In 2023, Daniel Roșca led our team on an extraordinary journey that would expand the horizons of the Titans narrative from the Jiu Valley to the regional crossroads of Old Europe. We traveled west from Romania into Bulgaria, following ancient routes that have connected cultures for millennia, until we reached Belogradchik—a place where stone formations rival those of Yunnan in their mythic power. The Belogradchik Rocks rise near the Serbian border like sentinels guarding secrets of bygone empires. These red sandstone pillars, shaped by wind and time, form a natural fortress that human hands merely enhanced. Here, among formations that locals call „dragons,” we discovered another manifestation of the stone giant phenomenon.
The Belogradchik Fortress itself tells a story of continuous habitation and strategic importance. Romans built the first fortifications in the 1st-3rd centuries AD, recognizing the defensive potential of these natural stone towers. Medieval Bulgarian rulers, particularly Ivan Sratsimir in the 14th century, expanded the complex. The Ottomans reconstructed it in the 19th century with help from French and Italian engineers, creating three fortress yards, massive walls, and an intricate system of defenses that integrated seamlessly with the rock formations.
Just as the Stone Forest in Yunnan represents frozen giants and warriors, the Belogradchik formations embody dragons and ancient guardians. During the Russian-Turkish Liberation War of 1877-1878, these stones witnessed the siege that ended Ottoman control. Romanian troops fought alongside Russian forces in this campaign, creating a historical link between our lands and these dragon stones.
The expedition revealed striking parallels: both sites feature limestone pillars rising like petrified beings, both carry legends of transformation and divine punishment, both serve as natural fortresses enhanced by human engineering. Where Chinese mythology speaks of frozen giants, Bulgarian folklore tells of sleeping dragons. The convergence is not coincidental—it reflects humanity’s universal tendency to see consciousness in stone, to read stories in geological formations. Our team documented this convergence, photographing the red dragons of Belogradchik against the setting sun, recording local legends and mapping the fortress complex. We were expanding the narrative beyond the Jiu Valley’s industrial titans to encompass a regional mythology that stretches across borders, linking Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia in a shared cultural heritage.
The Hydra Connection – Xiangliu and the
Gateway to Momârlans Ancestral Territory
The mythological bridge between East and West finds its most striking expression in the figure of the Hydra. In Chinese mythology, this being appears as Xiangliu (相柳)—a nine-headed serpent-monster associated with floods, chaos and land-shaping destruction.
This primordial water force embodies the raw power of rivers that carve valleys and mountains that channel storms. In the Carpathians, specifically in Cheile Băniței—the narrow gorge that serves as the gateway to the ancestral land of the Momârlans—the Hydra legend takes Romanian form. Here, where sheer cliffs create shadows and echoes of forgotten times, dwells a creature of fire and stone. Born from rock and burning breath, this massive being guards eggs of incandescent stone, large as wagon wheels and wrapped in dried scales and ash.
The elders say these eggs carry the seeds of ancient fire. If one were to crack open, the released flames could consume entire forests and melt mountains. On full moon nights, when wind carries song through the gorge walls, the eggs tremble—a sign that old, untamed power waits to be reborn. The Romanian Hydra never sleeps with all five heads at once. One always watches while the others dream. And their dream remains constant: to escape once more to the thermal springs of Cerna, where it has always regained its powers. This detail connects the myth to geological reality—the Cerna Valley is known for its thermal waters, evidence of volcanic activity deep beneath the Carpathians.
Both the Chinese Xiangliu and the Romanian Hydra represent humanity’s attempt to comprehend and mythologize natural forces—flooding rivers, volcanic heat, the violent geological processes that shape mountains and carve gorges. They are cultural algorithms, pattern-recognition systems encoded in story form, allowing ancient peoples to transmit knowledge about landscape dangers and sacred places across generations.
🇨🇳 🇷🇴 🇧🇬
Erika Mus and 💪 🐉
The Vikings Travel Agency
Bridging Traditions Through Travel Understanding these deep mythological connections requires guides who see beyond tourist itineraries to the living stories embedded in landscape. Erika Mus, Romanian owner of The Vikings travel agency, embodies this synthesis of ancient wisdom and modern exploration. Erika approaches travel as cultural archaeology, leading expeditions that uncover the mythic substrata beneath contemporary geography. Her work connects Romanian heritage with international networks, creating journeys that trace legendary routes—from the Stone Forest of Yunnan to the Dragon Valley of Belogradchik, from the thermal springs of Cerna to the peaks of Parâng where the Momârlan ancestors are said to dwell.
The Vikings agency name itself carries symbolic weight, invoking the seafaring explorers who connected distant lands through trade and cultural exchange. Similarly, Erika’s expeditions create living bridges between mythologies. Her clients don’t merely visit sites; they engage with the stories those sites embody, participating in a revival of ancestral memory. She understands that the giants of China and the Titans of Romania speak the same language—the language of landscape mythology, where natural formations become teachers, where stone remembers and where human culture finds its deepest roots in the earth itself. Through carefully curated experiences, travelers encounter not just rocks and ruins but the living presence of myth.
Convergence: from local
legend to universal archetype.
The Stone Forest of Yunnan and the Dragon Valley of Belogradchik, separated by 8,000 kilometers and numerous cultural boundaries, reveal humanity’s shared imagination. These sites demonstrate that distant civilizations, developing independently, created remarkably similar symbolic frameworks for understanding their relationship with the natural world. The parallelism extends to function and symbolism.
The expeditions led by Daniel Roșca and the cultural work facilitated by Erika Mus represent modern expressions of ancient mythological thinking. By physically traversing the distance between these stone giants and dragon valleys, by documenting their similarities and exploring their local expressions, these contemporary travelers engage in the same meaning-making process that generated the original myths.
The Xiangliu-Hydra connection completes the circle. These multi-headed serpent beings, associated with water and transformation in both Chinese and Romanian tradition, embody the most primordial forces—the floods that destroy and fertilize, the volcanic heat that erupts and creates, the cycles of dissolution and renewal that operate at geological timescales. From the Jiu Valley’s industrial titans through the regional networks of Old Europe to the limestone forests of distant Yunnan, we trace a single thread: humanity’s need to see consciousness in landscape, to encode survival wisdom in myth, to create stories that anchor communities to place. These are not relics of primitive thinking but sophisticated cultural technologies, pattern-recognition systems that preserve essential knowledge across millennia.
The stone giants watch still, in China and in Bulgaria, in Serbia and throughout the Carpathians. The dragons sleep but never all at once. And the myths they embody continue to shape how we understand landscape, memory and our place in the ancient continuum between earth and sky. In the near future, the valleys of Yunnan and Belogradchik will emerge as strategic giant fortresses in our second P2E MVP.
© Erika Mus ™ VIKINGS & The
Story of Places 🐉 Belogradchik 🐉