Liangshan County, about 80 kilometres north of Jining, preserves the location associated with the 108 outlaws of Shi Nai'an's fourteenth-century novel Water Margin. The Liangshan Scenic Area has developed a substantial cultural park around the mountain and former marsh landscape, with reconstructed outlaw encampment buildings, performances of scenes from the novel, and the natural landscape that inspired it.
The development is unapologetically themed — this is China's answer to literary tourism — but the underlying landscape of Liangshan Mountain rising above the former flood plain has genuine character, and the novel itself is worth reading before visiting. The story of 108 outlaws organizing a just resistance against corrupt officials from their lakeside stronghold is one of the great picaresque narratives in world literature. Bus from Jining takes about 2 hours.