Since the 18th century poet Li Po celebrated the sacred beauty of Huang Shan, a mountain of steep ascents, precipitous gulleys and peerless views, the Chinese have considered it one of the wonders of nature. For centuries it was a magnet for hermits and ascetics in pursuit of immortality and today it is one of China’s major pilgrimage sites. A pilgrimage to Huang Shan – the name means Yellow Mountain – has long been a goal of many Asians, not just the Chinese. Ho Chi Minh went there to recuperate for a month during the height of the American war in Vietnam. Even the elderly and increasingly frail , 75-year-old Deng Xiaoping, climbed Huang Shan and indeed following this climb the Chinese authorities opened the mountain to foreign visitors for the first time since the Cultural Revolution.
Over the years Chinese laborers have placed thousands of stone steps on two paths leading to one summit. But the Chinese do not come here for hardship or getting away from it all. Instead, they glory in the majesty of a mountain that suggests a classical Chinese ink wash landscape painting sprung to life. Huang Shan is composed of granite that has been eroded, by the moist clouds that ring it, into 72 peaks of up to 8,694 feet. Many of the peaks appear to have been carved by a mad or playful giant who then scattered them in seemingly improbable combinations. And a number of the peaks, graceful pinnacles or grotesque gargoyles, are surmounted by pine trees that have managed to root in the granite. From one of the bridges across the mountain, there are drops more than 1,000 feet straight down and there is a gap in the rocks that offers a view of green-clad peaks emerging and disappearing in the fog.
The route to the mountain takes the visitor through a countryside of emerald-green rice paddies, tea bushes dug into terraces climbing the hills and villages of old mud-walled houses.
