Chinese scholars' rocks (Chinese: 供石; pinyin: gòngshí), also known as scholar stones or viewing stones, are small shaped or naturally-occurring rocks appreciated by Chinese scholars from the Song dynasty onwards, and quite frequently found in traditional Chinese gardens.
The most highly regarded stones are Lingbi rocks (Chinese: 灵璧; pinyin: língbì) from Lingbi County of Anhui Province, with the finest examples dating from the Ming dynasty and Song dynasty. Taihu rocks are also prized, and are commonly used as garden stones. They influenced the development of Korean stone art and Japanese suiseki aesthetics and styles and were an important part of Confucian art.
Many Asian countries prize the stones as natural artwork. There, members of the upper class buy them for as much as $50,000 apiece or more.
At present, China has four most famous viewing stones: Lingbi stone,Taihu rock, Kun rock and Ying stone,which mainly come from Jiangsu, Anhui and other places. From the view of national viewing stone market, Guangzhou, Liuzhou, Nanjing, Shanghai has become four major distributing center of viewing stones, you can also visit the origin areas for more choices and much low prices.
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