Ten kilometres or so from the waterworks at Dujiangyan the Sichuan basin runs out of flat ground and starts climbing into the mountains that eventually become Tibet. The first ridge you meet is Qingchengshan (青城山), and it has a single word attached to it that Chinese travellers have been repeating for centuries: quiet. Not dramatic, not vast, not vertiginous. Quiet — a mountain of wet green, dripping bamboo, mossy handrails and old wooden halls in the trees.
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Open Table of contents
Why This Mountain Matters
In the middle of the second century a man named Zhang Ling came here, built a thatched hut and began teaching. What he taught became the Way of the Celestial Masters, the first organised form of Taoism, and Qingchengshan became its ancestral mountain. He is said to have died here. For eighteen centuries since, Celestial Masters from across the country have come to pay respects at the source.
That’s the historical claim, and it’s a big one. What makes it more than a plaque on a wall is that the mountain never stopped functioning. Dozens of temples survive on the slopes, most of them working, holding a substantial collection of relics, inscriptions and works by modern artists who came up here to paint and stayed. Priests live in them. Incense burns. The lineage on the mountain today belongs to a branch of the Complete Perfection school, which arrived in the seventeenth century and set about replanting the forest the temples sit in — which is why the woods here feel curated rather than wild.
The name has two competing explanations. One reads the ring of peaks as a green wall — verdure closing in on all sides, shaped like a city rampart. The other says the mountain was originally called Clear City after a mythical celestial residence, and became Green City through a scribe’s slip in an imperial decree resolving a territorial argument between the local Buddhists and Taoists. The Tang emperor ruled in favour of the Taoists, and the misspelling stuck.
Practically speaking, Qingchengshan is two mountains sharing a name. The front slope is the historical one: temples, calligraphy, pilgrimage, a reservoir and a cable car. The rear is a set of forested valleys with waterfalls, caves and family guesthouses, developed later and visited mostly by people from Chengdu who come to walk, breathe and eat. They require separate days and separate entrances, and skipping one means missing half the point.
The Front Mountain
The classic circuit starts at the main gate and works upwards past a first temple, across a small reservoir by boat, then up by cable car, and comes back down on foot along a different line. Doing it in that order is deliberate, and it’s the single most useful piece of routing advice for the mountain: the ascent path is busier and the scenery ordinary, while the descent route is where the good stuff is. Ride up, walk down.
Jianfu Palace sits at the foot of the slope below the first peak and is the first thing you reach. It dates to the eighth century in origin, though what stands has been rebuilt repeatedly and now amounts to three halls and two courtyards. The thing to look at is a couplet on the interior columns running to several hundred characters, which locals rate as the finest single object on the mountain.
Yuecheng Lake is a small reservoir held between two ridges, with a ferry crossing it. The hill beside it is associated with a legendary recluse from the Min mountains, and the five-minute crossing breaks up the climb pleasantly.
Shangqing Palace stands on a shoulder a few hundred metres below the top. The buildings are late imperial; inside are a statue of Laozi and the five thousand characters of the Daodejing carved into wood panels, along with a couple of pools and wells attached to legends. This is the temple where visitors light incense, and if you want to see the mountain doing what it has always done, this is the place to stand still for twenty minutes.
Laojun Pavilion crowns the highest peak. The site originally held a small pavilion named for the idea that a shout from the summit is answered by every surrounding hill. It was rebuilt as a multi-storey tower in the late twentieth century, and it has been through reconstruction since the earthquake — expect scaffolding to be part of the experience at intervals, and check that it’s open before making the final push. The walk up and back from Shangqing takes an hour or so.
Tianshi Cave is the mountain’s spiritual centre, the site associated with Zhang Ling himself. The halls are late imperial and the workmanship is the best on the mountain: bold in scale, fine in carving, with genuinely old trees in the courtyards. Behind the main Three Purities hall are a shrine to the Yellow Emperor and the cave itself.
Chaoyang Cave and Zushi Hall sit on the descent route between the summit and the lower slopes, worth the detour for solitude more than for architecture. Further down, Tianran Tuhua — natural picture — is a ten-sided double-eaved pavilion on a ridge between two peaks, built in the late nineteenth century and named for exactly what happens when you stand in it: cliffs above, dense green below, the whole thing framed like a hanging scroll. It is the best single view on the front mountain and it comes near the end of the descent, which is another argument for going down rather than up.
Between these are stretches of stone path under bamboo, small bridges, and pavilions so thoroughly covered in moss that the stonework is invisible. In light rain — which is the mountain’s default weather — the air is cold in the lungs and smells of wet earth.
The Rear Mountain
The rear valleys are where the mountain stops being a monument and becomes a place people spend a weekend. The local formula is unambitious and correct: bring two or three friends, walk up a valley, breathe, sleep in a guesthouse, eat farmhouse cooking.
The main circuit runs up through a village settlement past a series of water features and caves, over a bridge, and eventually reaches the top station of the rear cable car. Along it are Wulonggou, an eight-kilometre gorge named for five dragons said to be hiding in it; Sanchaowuquan, where a stream drops through three successive pools with a total fall of some forty metres, the lower half of the cascade breaking into airborne beads that throw rainbows in sunlight; a water-curtain cave fed by twin springs; and a scatter of small lakes with names about jade and reflections.
Baiyun Cave is the highest point on the rear route, and the approach is the reward — a path threading between cliffs and old timber and thick bamboo, with birdsong and running water the whole way. A Tang poet left a line about watching waterfalls in midsummer among the white clouds of Qingcheng, which is still an accurate description of the walk.
There’s also a crystal cave a short distance from the rear temple, a limestone-and-conglomerate system on three levels with a river running through it. Small, unusual in composition, worth an hour.
Tai’an, the old town at the mouth of the rear valleys, is the base most rear-mountain visitors use. It sat on the road west out of the Chengdu plain towards the Jinchuan region, and functioned for centuries as a transfer point for goods moving between plain and mountains. Carved wooden upper storeys line the lanes. It has been comprehensively restored and is busy on holidays, but the setting — a compact grey-and-timber town wedged into a green valley — carries it.
Practicalities: Getting There and Around
By rail. The commuter line from Chengdu to Dujiangyan has a station named for the mountain, with departures from early morning to late evening and a journey of well under an hour. Buy at the station; this is the easiest way in from the city, and also the easiest hop between the mountain and Dujiangyan.
By bus. Several Chengdu terminals run services towards Dujiangyan through the day, beginning early, and there’s a direct coach from the car park outside a well-known temple museum in the south of the city. From Dujiangyan, local buses continue to both the front gate and, with one change, the rear mountain.
From the airport. Airport coaches run to Dujiangyan, from where local buses complete the trip. Alternatively take a city bus to Chengdu’s north railway station and pick up the commuter train.
By car. Two signed expressway routes lead west out of Chengdu towards the mountain. Driving is mainly worth it if you plan to range further afield afterwards, since the rail link is quick and cheap.
Locally. A bus route links the front gate, the rail station, the town of Dujiangyan and its coach terminal, which covers most of what visitors need. For the rear mountain, get to the rail station bus stop and change onto the direct rear-mountain service. Taxis in Dujiangyan are metered and easy to find. On the mountain itself, cable cars operate on both the front and rear slopes, and the small ferry crosses the front reservoir. See /tags/itinerary for how this slots into a wider Sichuan route.
Where to Stay
Two clear options, and they suit different trips.
The rear mountain is what locals choose. Family guesthouses cluster around Tai’an and the surrounding hamlets, most of them a few hundred metres from the scenic area entrance, many with old-looking exteriors and thoroughly modern rooms inside. Staying here means eating farmhouse food at the family’s own table and starting your walk at the trailhead. It’s also the right base if you’re doing the two-day front-then-rear-then-Dujiangyan sequence.
The front mountain has conventional hotels near the gate, including some large and comfortable ones, plus a scatter of options at the foot of the slope within a short ride of the rail station. Choose this if you want a proper hotel or an early start on the temples.
There is plenty of capacity in both areas, so finding a bed is rarely a problem. Holidays and the peak of summer are the exceptions — book ahead for those, and for the spring festival period.
Eating
Sichuan cooking here comes in its rural register rather than the fiery restaurant version, and a surprising number of people come up the mountain specifically to eat.
Chicken stewed with ginkgo nuts is the dish of the mountain, a clear-tasting, unheavy stew that belongs to the local tradition of food as tonic. It’s on almost every farmhouse menu and it’s the one to order first.
Cured pork is the other essential — Sichuan smoke-cured meat, with different cuts treated differently: belly, ribs, trotters, sometimes the head. Sliced thin and stir fried with something green, it’s salt and smoke and fat in the right proportions.
Beyond those two, rear-mountain guesthouses serve wild mountain greens and game, changing with the season, and the plain vegetables are often the best thing on the table. Down at the bottom, the roads around the mountain are lined with chicken specialists — the local birds have a reputation and the competition is fierce. There are also small, unglamorous places in the surrounding towns doing home-style Sichuan food — blood curd, tofu pudding, cold dressed chicken, steamed aubergine, dressed fish-mint — that outperform anything inside the scenic gates.
Frozen cake, a steamed rice-flour sponge in corn or black rice versions, is the local sweet snack: pale, springy, faintly sour, oily without being greasy. More Sichuan eating at /tags/food.
Four local products get bundled together as the mountain’s specialities: a kiwi fruit wine made with spring water, a tribute-grade tea, Taoist pickles, and the ginkgo chicken. The pickles travel well.
Seasons
Spring is the walking season, with a climbing festival running from March to May and the forest at its most aggressively green. Be warned that spring here has the widest daily temperature swing of the year — a warm afternoon can turn into a cold, windy night, so carry a layer.
Summer is the reason many people come. At altitude the mountain runs cool while Chengdu sits in humid heat, and July and August are the peak months for locals escaping the city. Expect rain; this stretch of the basin edge is one of the wettest in the province.
Autumn brings the clearest air and the most comfortable walking, with a Taoist culture festival in September that includes ritual music, martial arts demonstrations and tea ceremony.
Winter is damp, cool and empty. The temples are at their most atmospheric with almost nobody in them, but expect grey skies and dripping trees.
Honest Advice
The two-day plan is the right one and needs no improvement: front mountain and temples on day one, sleep on the rear mountain, walk a rear valley in the morning, then Dujiangyan. Reverse it if you’d rather end on the mountain. One day means the front slope only, which is a real trip but a partial one.
Ride the cable car up and walk down. This is not laziness — the descent route is better scenery and you’ll have the legs to appreciate it.
Don’t try to see every temple. There are dozens, most are variations on a theme, and the mountain’s quality is atmospheric rather than itemised. Four or five plus the walking between them is a full and satisfying day. Equally, don’t overinvest in the rear-mountain caves; the valleys themselves are the attraction.
Wear loose clothing and trainers, travel light, and bring rain protection in any season. Stay on the marked routes, which exist partly for conservation and partly because the terrain drops away sharply off them. Earthquake damage is still visible in places, with cracked stelae and halls under repair, so some individual sites may be closed when you arrive.
Finally: allow the place its actual quality. Qingchengshan does not produce the kind of view people photograph and post. It produces a couple of hours of walking under wet bamboo with old buildings appearing out of the trees, and a lungful of cold clean air, and the sense of a religious tradition still going about its business. Come expecting quiet and it delivers exactly what it promises. More on the region at /tags/southwest-china.