Mt. Songshan



Located in Dengfeng City, Henan Province, Mt Songshan is the central one of the Five Sacred
Mountains in China. It has 36 peaks and stretches 60 kilometers, the highest peak is 1494 meters
above sea level. It consists of two groups of peak-the Taishi Mountain and the Shaoshi Mountain.
The former is magnificent and vast, while the letter is steep and elegant.

The most attractive spots includes Zhongyue Temple (the Central Sacred Mount), which was first
built in the Qin Dynasty (221-206 B.C.), it has 11 gates leading to the final Imperial Library. In the
temple, there are 300 ancient cypresses, and more than 100 metal-cast statues and stone tablets;
the Shaolin Monastery, built during the Northern Wei Dynasty (386-534), and has long been renown
worldwide for kongfu, or Chinese martial arts. There are 230 brick pagodas, the largest of its kind in

China, erected during the Tang, Song, An, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties; the ancient observatory;
the Songshan Academy of Classical Learning and so on.

There are some other temples in the mountain, such as the Fawang Temple and the Huishan Temple, the oldest temples extant in China; two
earliest and well-preserved astronomical observatories extant in China; etc.

The Central Mountain has rich forest resources, some of which are rare ancient trees with odd figures and literary quotations, such as the General
Cypress in the Songyang Academy, the Fifth-rank Chinese Scholar tree in the Shaolin Temple, the Han (206BC-220AD) Maidenhair Tree in
Fawang Temple, the Cypress Forest in the Zhongyue Temple, and the Bodhi tree in the Yongtai Temple, etc. The forest resources of Songshan
Mountain are praised as rare treasure for their large quantity, antiquity, abundant literary quotation and vivid shapes.  

Songshan Mountain abounds in stele carvings, totaling more than 2,000 pieces, left by famous
calligraphers like Yan Zhenqing, Su Dongpo, Huang Tingjian and Mi You, etc.