We paid our obligatory visit to Mount Qingcheng on our second day in Dujiangyan.
Granted, this is Dujiangyan's most popular tourist destination and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is the birthplace of Taoism after all, and I wasn't sure why I didn't come with higher expectations. Perhaps I was still apprehensive about religious enclaves in China after running into fake monks at Wutaishan a few years back.
At one point Mount Qingcheng wasn't even on our 18-Day itinerary of Sichuan despite its international fame -- the unheralded villages of Danba Canyon and the Eastern Tibetan Plateau sounded much more interesting. But our time at Mount Siguniang was cut short due to seasonal unavailability of horses and, now with a spare day in Dujiangyan, a visit to Mount Qingcheng seemed almost predestined.
Still I wasn't convinced that Mount Qingcheng alone would be worthy of a full day, and after quickly consulting the Chinese side of the Internet, we decided to combine our hike with a visit of a nearby historic town known as Jiezi. We would ascend Mount Qingcheng in the morning, hike down in the early afternoon before taking the bus to Jiezi. The last bus from Jiezi back to Dujiangyan was supposed to be 19:00, making possible a long and productive day-trip.
Getting here in off-season wasn't straightforward as Bus 101 no longer served Dujiangyan's long distance bus station. We had to take Bus 102 to Qingchengshan Train Station and wait for a quick shuttle to Mount Qingcheng's front gate. There was also a different bus to the backside of Mount Qingcheng, but we decided to stick with the front side that has made Mount Qingcheng famous for centuries.
Two years ago we hiked a different Taoist mountain at Sanqingshan, also of UNESCO World Heritage fame, and came back with memories of some of the most impressive mountain vistas. But we knew Mount Qingcheng was different with more Taoist shrines, less natural scenery, and five times the tourists thanks to highspeed rail. Whether we would enjoy it just as much, we would have to find out.
At 1260m Mount Qingcheng wasn't exceptionally tall, nor were its hiking trails particularly precipitous as far as Chinese mountains go. According to Chinese hikers the elevation gain should be about 700m in a 2 to 3 hour climb, quite reasonable for a leisurely full day's hike.
Except we didn't have the luxury of a full day. There existed other options, one of which came with the embarassment of being photographed while hoisted up by skinny porters ...
... the other option was a highspeed Austrian cable car that beamed us up three quarters of the way in 5 minutes. It's a small price to pay to save 2 hours of time, especially when the uphill and downhill routes followed mostly the same trail. We would take the cable car up, climb our way to the peak then hike back down to the front gate.
Despite its long and illustrious history as a renowned spiritual mecca, Mount Qingcheng has surprisingly few historical buildings surviving from its Qing Dynasty heydays. As photogenic as the incense-filled shrines may seem to the uninitiated, most of the existing shrines and temples are modern reconstructions from the past 30 years or so.
The Cultural Revolution took a heavy toll on the historic artifacts, as did the menace of devastating earthquakes over the centuries, the latest being the 2008 Great Sichuan Earthquake that claimed 70,000 lives. The epicentre was merely 40km to the north, and many shrines were observed sporting dedicatory plaques to donors for their contributions to restoration efforts.
Years had passed and the faithfuls have returned in droves, happily forking out ridiculous money (the cheapest was RMB 100 for a small package of incense and candles!) for all their fate-altering needs. Services ranged from your typical fortune-telling out of a bamboo-shaker to full-blown geomancing consultations. I wondered if these Taoists shrines had their own ATM machines for potentially large cash withdrawals, much like some Buddhist temples we saw at Wutaishan.
After acclimatizing to the Tibetan Plateau over the past week and adopting the habit to hold back our pace when climbing, the stairs at Mount Qingcheng became surprisingly effortless. It was only yesterday morning when we started the day at a town 3200m above sea level, and this towering peak of 1260m was only a foothill in comparison.
The reward of reaching the peak was a sweeping panorama over the flood plains of Dujiangyan and Chengdu. True to Mount Qingcheng's literal translation of Green City Mountain, its subtropical hills remained lush green even in mid November with some brilliant autumn colours showing through.
Only two weeks ago the gingko trees in Chengdu were still green and verdant; here they're carpeting the mountain trails with a lovely sheet of yellow. It's easy to see why metropolitan dwellers of Chengdu have long enjoyed and refered to Mount Qingcheng as their beloved backyard.
The downhill path winded through deep, shaded forests and passed through the courtyards of a multitude of minor shrines. Some sections of the trail were suspended on top of cantilever beams driven horizontally into the bedrock, though not at the enormous scale and precariousness of Huangshan.
Taoists were supposedly masters of living in harmony with nature, and planted along our downhill path were several of these organic-looking pavilions. We returned to the entrance gate shortly before 14:00, taking roughly four hours including stoppages for snacks and photos. While a half day was quite sufficient as expected, it would have taken us the full day had we hiked up instead of taking the cable car.
Our final verdict of Mount Qingcheng? It's probably unfair making comparisons to the magnificent Sanqingshan, a spectacle of nature in itself before it ever became a Taoist retreat. Mount Qingcheng was more of a typical Chinese mountain progressively overtaken by Taoist shrines, and now by busloads of international tourists. It's a pleasant hike, but to be completely blunt our modest expectations didn't change after visiting.
We had to be thankful that there's a second half to this day-trip. A quick 20 minute ride on Bus 102 would take us directly to the historic town of Jiezi, where we would spend the rest of our afternoon on a less strenuous stroll.
Day-Trip to Taoist Enclave of Mount Qingcheng
Reviewed by Laura
Published :
Rating : 4.5
Published :
Rating : 4.5
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