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This small mountain, in a south-central area of Anhui province, is one of the
better of China"s more well-known natural wonders. It is considered as one of the four
Buddhist mountains, along with
Putuoshan,
E"meishan and Wutaishan,
and is an easily navigable area of many peaks and winding paths. Visitors who choose this
as their Anhui mountain, although missing out on the gnarled pines and the sharply rising
dangers of the Huangshan peaks,
will find an area of quiet beauty and pious Buddhist culture that in China is hard to
beat. Originally this now totally Buddhist dominated area was populated by a few Taoists,
who built various temples and houses on the sights of their modern day counterparts. This
was all to change with the arrival of a wandering Korean Buddhist called Kim Kiao
Kak (Jin Qiaojue), who arrived on the mountain in 720 AD. Kim was
alleged to be the reincarnation of the Boddhisattva Dizang, and came here
preaching the Buddhist message and founding various temples, mostly in honour of the
guardian of the earth, Ksitigarbha. After his death in 794 AD, the mountain grew in prominence, so that by the mid to late
Tang (618-907 AD) there were hundreds of monasteries and thousands of monks in residence.
It was during these golden days that the poet Li Bai, sitting on the
mountain"s most famous peak, the Heavenly
Terrace, penned the areas name. He called it Nine Flower Mountain (Jiuhuashan),
after the prominent peaks that he could see around him, jutting through the clouds like
newly sprouting buds. There are actually 99 peaks enclosed in the Jiuhuashan area. Nowadays things are a little smaller around this bit of Anhui. The total
number of temples & monasteries has dropped to around 60, lost either through neglect,
or the ravages of Red Guard cleansing during the Cultural
Revolution (1967-77). The mountain is also becoming a more popular destination on
the tourist route, meaning increasing numbers of stalls, renovations, people, modern
buildings, cable cars, and rubbish, especially during the peak seasons around festival time.
Things in the future are set to get worse. For the moment, however, the area remains a great area to spend a few days.
Unlike many of the Buddhist destinations in China, there still seems to be a good sense of
religious dedication here. There are still around 6,800 Buddhist sculptures, a good
selection of calligraphic works, mainly from the Ming (1368-1644 AD) and Qing (1644-1911
AD) Dynasties, and a variety of original Buddhist texts including Wu Xia"s Huayang Sutras, some imperial ordered Qing Dynasty sutras and
some ancient Sanskrit sutras. There
are also two nicely mummified corpses, one of Wu Xia and the other of Kim Kiao Kak, both
covered in a layer of gold leaf. |
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