Hanmo Chunqiu
Tianzhu Peak (Heaven-Pillar Peak), the highest summit of the Wudang Mountains, rises 1,612 meters like a single pillar holding up the sky. Seventy-two peaks surround it as if bowing in salute, forming the remarkable landscape known as “the seventy-two peaks paying homage to the great summit.”
The Golden Hall standing on Tianzhu Peak is the jewel of Wudang’s ancient architecture. It enshrines the holy image of the Perfected Warrior, Supreme Emperor of the Dark Heaven (Zhenwu), together with the Golden Boy and Jade Maiden holding registers and treasures, and warrior generals bearing banners and swords. Its sculptural art reached a level later generations could never equal, and it is a treasure of ancient Chinese bronze casting.
The Golden Hall is a palace-style building cast in bronze in imitation of a timber structure, similar to the Hall of Supreme Harmony in Beijing’s Forbidden City. It stands in the center of a stone platform of about 160 square meters on the summit of Tianzhu Peak. According to the History of the Ming and the Gazetteer of the Wudang Mountains, all the components of the Golden Hall were cast in Beijing, then shipped along the Grand Canal by way of Nanjing and up the Yangtze River to Wudang, where they were assembled with mortise and tenon joints. The Yongle Emperor even issued a special edict for the ships carrying them: “Be careful and cautious, and set out only when the weather is clear and the wind and water are favorable. Keep the ships thoroughly tidy and clean, and do not cook on board.”
The gilded bronze Golden Hall is a double-eaved, hip-roofed structure imitating timber construction, complete in every detail—columns, beams and tie-beams, scaled tiles, eave brackets, window lattices, and door sills. It is three bays wide and three bays deep and 5.54 meters high, with double eaves, stacked ridges, and soaring upturned corners, decorated with vivid auspicious figures such as dragons and phoenixes, heavenly horses, and immortals.
Because of the Golden Hall’s special location and the superb skill of its construction, changes in weather, wind, and cloud frequently produce spectacular sights such as “the sea of clouds surging like a tide,” “flying ants coming to pay homage,” “the Patriarch reflecting light,” “thunder rolling on level ground,” and “thunder-fire refining the hall.” Of these, thunder-fire refining the hall is the most thrilling of all!
Thunder-fire refining the hall
In ancient times the Golden Hall had no lightning protection. Every summer and autumn, in the thunderstorm season, when thunder and lightning raged, lightning darted all around the Golden Hall, and huge fireballs would roll to its left and right, dazzling to the eye, bursting with an earth-shattering roar whenever they struck something. Sometimes a bolt of lightning would split the sky and strike the Golden Hall like a sharp sword; in an instant, ten thousand rays of golden light would shoot from the Golden Summit of Wudang up to the ninth heaven, and from dozens of li away one could see red light blazing into the sky from the peak of Wudang, like a volcano erupting—thrilling, wondrous, and magnificent.
Yet under countless lightning strikes, the Golden Hall has remained calm and unmoved, without the slightest damage. What is strange is that after each strike the Golden Hall is not only unharmed and without a trace, but gleams even more brightly, as new and splendid as the day it was made. Each strike seems like another round in the smelting furnace, just as an old poem says: “Thunder-fire forged the summit of gold.” And so thunder-fire refining the hall became one of the great wonders of the Golden Summit of Wudang.
People say that Zhenwu, fearing both that pilgrims would soil the Golden Hall and that the rare treasures within it would be stolen, sends the Lord of Thunder and the Mother of Lightning every year to wash and refine the Golden Hall: first, to remove the dirt from the hall and keep it clean; and second, to strike terror into anyone plotting mischief and frighten them out of their wits.