Mount Taishan

Mount Taishan is the most famous sacred mountain of China, with exceptional historic, cultural, aesthetic and scientific value.

Settled by humans as early as the Neolithic (a Dawenkou site is nearby), the mountain has been worshiped continuously throughout the last three millennia and is considered one of the most beautiful scenic spots in China and was an important cradle of oriental East Asian culture since the earliest times.

The mountain was an important object of the cult worship of mountains even before 219 BCE, when the Qin Emperor, Huang Di, paid tribute to the mountain in the Fengshan sacrifices to inform the gods of his success in unifying all of China.

Mount Taishan bears unique testimony to the lost civilizations of imperial China, most particularly in relation to their religions, arts and letters.

For 2,000 years it was one of the principal places of worship where the emperor paid homage to Heaven and Earth in the Fengshan sacrifices, conducted by the Son of Heaven himself.

Since the time of the Han Dynasty, it has been one of the five mountains symbolizing the Celestial Kingdom, in accordance with the Doctrine of the Five Elements, a fundamental premise in Chinese thought.

Mount Taishan is a natural museum of history and art.

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Along its axis there are 1,800 stone sculptures including famous ones such as the Carved Road from the Qin dynasty, the Buddhist Diamond Sutra in Sutra Stone Valley, the Wordless Stone Tablet and the Scripture of Mount Taishan History carved on Tangmo Cliff.

Tiankuang Hall in the Daimiao Temple which is also on Mount Taishan is one of the three great halls of China (the other two are the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City, Beijing, and Dacheng Hall in Qufu.

Mount Taishan is a mountain of outstanding value from the point of view of aesthetics, science, history and culture.

Chinese people tend to describe a situation as being as stable as Mount Taishan or a matter as being as weighty as Mount Taishan, giving clear evidence of such an impression.

Mount Tai is a mountain of historical and cultural significance located north of the city of Tai’an, in Shandong Province.

Its tallest peak is Jade Emperor Peak.

Mount Taishan rises abruptly from the vast plain of central Shandong and is naturally endowed with many scenic sites.

Geologically, it is a tilted fault-block mountain, higher to the south than north, and is the oldest and most important example of the paleo-metamorphic system representative of the Cambrian Period in eastern China.

Referred to as the Taishan Complex, it comprises magnetized, metamorphic, sedimentary rock and an intrusive mass of various origins that were formed in the Archean Era 170-200 million years ago.

Subsequently, in the Proterozoic Era, the Taishan region began to rise, becoming part of the continent by the end of the era.

Uplift continued until the middle of the Cenozoic Era.

From the Taishan Temple to the Azure Clouds Temple there are numerous stone tablets and inscriptions and ancient buildings on the way.

Visitors derive much pleasure from climbing Mount Taishan.