Mount Qingcheng, Sichuan: A Birthplace of Chinese Taoism

Chiyang Daoren, Eastern Taoism

Mount Qingcheng in Sichuan Province is a World Cultural Heritage site and a World Natural Heritage site (as part of the Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuaries), a Major Historical and Cultural Site Protected at the National Level, a National Key Scenic Area of China, a national 5A tourist attraction, a holy site of Quanzhen Taoism worldwide, one of the Four Sacred Mountains of Taoism in China, and one of the birthplaces of Chinese Taoism. The Taoist Institute of Grain Avoidance and Nurturing Life is located at the Yuanming Palace on Mount Qingcheng.

The whole mountain is green with trees, evergreen through the four seasons, and its peaks surround it like the walls of a city—hence the name “Qingcheng,” the Green City. A thousand steps of red stairs and winding paths lead into seclusion; within and around the scenic area, the Tianshi Cave and the Yuanming Palace are distinguished by their quiet seclusion, which is one of Mount Qingcheng's great characteristics.

Mount Qingcheng lies southwest of Dujiangyan, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, 68 kilometers west of downtown Chengdu and 10 kilometers southwest of the Dujiangyan irrigation system. The scenic area covers 200 square kilometers, and its highest peak, Laojun Pavilion, rises 1,260 meters. Surrounded by peaks, with rolling hills, lush forests, and a secluded green setting, Mount Qingcheng enjoys the name “Qingcheng, the most secluded under heaven,” and is as renowned as the perilous Jianmen Pass, the graceful Mount Emei, and the majestic Kuimen Gorge.

Mount Qingcheng has a long history. It is one of the birthplaces of Chinese Taoism and the fifth of the Ten Great Grotto-Heavens of Taoism. It has many famous sites and relics, with ancient buildings each of distinctive character. Since ancient times it has been a place where scholars and poets came to explore its secluded beauty; poems, paintings, lyrics, and rhapsodies by famous people past and present can be seen everywhere, along with beautiful scenery and wondrous legends.

The temples and monasteries of the mountain center on the Tianshi Cave, with the Jianfu Palace, the Shangqing Palace, the Hall of the Patriarch, the Yuanming Palace, the Yuqing Palace, the Chaoyang Cave, the Taoist Institute of Grain Avoidance and Nurturing Life, and others. It is a place where Taoists live in seclusion and cultivate themselves, and since ancient times it has been called “grotto-heavens and blessed lands” and “the capital of the immortals.”

Mount Qingcheng has had many names in history, including Mount Tiancang, Mount Wen, Mount Tiangu, Mount Du, Mount Zhangren, Mount Chicheng, Qingchengdu, and Mount Tianguo. Its ancient name was Mount Tiancang. Legend says that the Yellow Emperor Xuanyuan traveled to all of the Five Peaks and enfeoffed Mount Qingcheng as “Elder of the Five Peaks,” so it was also called Mount Zhangren (Mount of the Elder). In the eighteenth year of the Kaiyuan era of the Tang (730), it was renamed with its present name, Mount Qingcheng.

There are two explanations of the name Mount Qingcheng. One is that the mountain is green with trees, evergreen all year round, and its peaks surround it like the walls of a city—hence “Qingcheng,” the Green City. The other is that it was originally called “Mount Qingcheng” written with qing meaning “clear,” because ancient myths speak of the “Clear Capital and Purple Tenuity” as the dwelling of the Heavenly Emperor—hence “Qingcheng,” the Clear City. In the Tang, Buddhism grew rapidly, and Buddhists and Taoists fought over territory on the mountain. The dispute went all the way to the emperor. Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, a believer in Taoism, personally issued an edict ruling that “the temples return to the Taoists, and the monasteries go outside the mountain.” But the edict wrote “Qingcheng” with the qing meaning “green” instead of “clear,” and so it came to be called Mount Qingcheng, the Green City. This is no mere legend: the full text of the Tang edict still survives on a stele on the mountain as evidence.

Mount Qingcheng, backed by the thousand-li Min River and overlooking the Chengdu Plain, is a spur of the Qionglai Mountains in Sichuan Province; its main peak, Laoxiao Summit, rises 1,260 meters (a figure measured in 2007). Ancient accounts speak of Mount Qingcheng's “thirty-six peaks,” “eight great caves,” “seventy-two small caves,” and “one hundred and eight scenic spots.” The mountain has 36 peaks, which surround it like the walls of a city.

The main vegetation types of the Mount Qingcheng scenic area are subtropical evergreen broadleaf forest, mixed evergreen and deciduous broadleaf forest, and warm coniferous forest. Based on sample-plot survey data from Mount Qingcheng, the plant species recorded on field survey routes, and the Mount Qingcheng plants listed in the Checklist of Plants of Dujiangyan, China, there are an estimated 346 plant species, and the flora shows a clear transition from subtropical to temperate characteristics.

Mount Qingcheng is one of the birthplaces of Chinese Taoism and a famous Taoist mountain. In the second year of the Han'an era of Emperor Shun of the Eastern Han (143 CE), the founder of Taoism, the “Celestial Master” Zhang Ling, came to Mount Qingcheng. Choosing it for its deep seclusion and verdant beauty, he built a thatched hut and taught the Tao, and Mount Qingcheng thus became the birthplace of Taoism, listed in Taoism as the “Fifth Grotto-Heaven.” The Taoist temples and monasteries of the mountain center on the Tianshi Cave and include the Jianfu Palace, the Shangqing Palace, the Tianshi Cave, the Hall of the Patriarch, the Yuanming Palace, the Laojun Pavilion, the Yuqing Palace, and the Chaoyang Cave; dozens of Taoist temples survive intact to this day. Its Taoist Institute of Grain Avoidance and Nurturing Life is housed in the Yuanming Palace, where people practice grain avoidance (bigu) and nurturing life all year round, so the Yuanming Palace is known as a holy site of health cultivation.

Zhang Daoling, originally named Zhang Ling, settled in Sichuan and studied the Tao on Mount Heming. On the basis of the Scripture of Great Peace (Taiping Jing) he composed Taoist books, which he said had been dictated to him by Lord Lao the Most High (Taishang Laojun). Drawing on the indigenous religious beliefs of the ethnic minorities of the Ba-Shu region, he revered Laozi as the founder of the teaching and took the Tao Te Ching as its scripture, founding the “Way of the Five Pecks of Rice,” also called the “Way of the Celestial Masters.” Later generations revered him as the “Celestial Master,” and his Taoist name was Zhang Daoling. Legend says that in his later years the Celestial Master Zhang Daoling manifested the Tao on Mount Qingcheng and passed away there, ascending as a feathered immortal. From then on, Mount Qingcheng became the ancestral mountain of the Way of the Celestial Masters, and Celestial Masters from all over the country through the ages came to Mount Qingcheng to pay homage at the ancestral court.

Through the founding and development of Zhang Ling and the successive Celestial Masters among his descendants, the Way of the Celestial Masters gradually spread throughout the country. After the Jin dynasty, Taoism flourished more and more on the mountain; at its height there were more than 70 Taoist temples and 108 scenic sites. In the Jin and Sui periods, the Northern and Southern Ways of the Celestial Masters arose, along with regional sects. What was transmitted on Mount Qingcheng belonged to the Zhengyi sect of the Southern Way of the Celestial Masters.

At the end of the Tang, the famous Taoist priest Du Guangting came to Mount Qingcheng, and the tradition of the Celestial Masters became joined with the Shangqing Way. The Shangqing Way held that by cultivating and attaining the Tao one could ascend to the “Heaven of Highest Clarity,” higher than the “Realm of Grand Clarity” that was the ideal of the old Way of the Celestial Masters. Du Guangting later served as an official under Wang Jian, emperor of the Former Shu, rising to Grand Master for Splendid Happiness and Vice Minister of Revenue in the Department of State Affairs, and was enfeoffed as Supreme Pillar of State and Duke of Cai. In his later years he lived on Mount Qingcheng for nearly thirty years, writing books and developing his teachings, with a great influence on the development of Taoism.

In the Ming dynasty, the Taoism transmitted on Mount Qingcheng belonged to the Longmen lineage of the Quanzhen school. Unlike the old Way of the Celestial Masters of the Zhengyi school, Quanzhen Taoism holds that those cultivating the Tao should leave home, take a teacher, and live and practice in a temple, neither marrying nor eating meat or strong-smelling foods, and it created a system of practices for nurturing the body and cultivating stillness.

With Taoist priests living on the mountain, the upkeep of the temples and the tending of the forests naturally received more attention. At the end of the Ming, war was incessant and the Taoist priests fled and scattered. Only in the eighth year of the Kangxi era of the Qing did Chen Qingjue, a Quanzhen Longmen Taoist priest from the Wudang Mountains, come to Mount Qingcheng to take charge of religious affairs, and the situation changed once again. Today the Taoism transmitted on Mount Qingcheng belongs to the Longmen lineage of the Quanzhen school.