Goddess Peak and Goddess Stream 神女峰与神女溪

About Goddess Peak and Goddess Stream

Twelve peaks are named in the area: Denglong, Shengquan, Chaoyun, Goddess, Songluan, Jixian, Jingtan, Qiyun, Shangsheng, Feifeng, Cuiping and Juhe, rising over deep valleys of karst terrain, with narrow, swift-running streams including Hengshi, Xiangjia, Dajie and the Baolong River. Goddess Peak itself, also known as Wangxia, Meiren, Xiannv or Shennv Tianxia Peak, is a single rock rising amid green peaks and cloud, said to resemble a standing woman; local legend holds that the Wushan goddess Yao Ji lives there. Historical writers including Qu Yuan, Song Yu, Li Bai, Liu Yuxi, Yuan Zhen, Su Shi, Huang Tingjian and Lu You, along with Emperor Yuan of Liang and the last ruler of Chen, wrote of Wushan or used it as a literary allusion, leaving some 6,000 poems between them.

Goddess Stream, also called Meinv Stream, lies on the south bank of the Yangtze opposite Goddess Peak and runs 15 kilometres, 10 of them through untouched wilderness gorge; deep within it stands the Great Man Peak of the Jingtan Peak scenic area, echoed by Maogong Mountain at Sandouping in Yichang. The area also holds 6,700 hectares of contiguous red-leaf forest across some 200 species, mainly smoke tree, Chinese tallow, maple and tung, with about 70 per cent of the mountainsides turning red by deep autumn; the forest was the setting for the 1980s film Until the Mountain Turns Red with Leaves. At Goddess Sky Road stands a camera- and sailboat-shaped viewing platform called the Three Gorges Scenic Eye, 21 metres high in three floors, with an art-exhibition floor, a large-format pinhole-camera display floor and a tea-and-photography floor. By 2026 the area, by then also styled Wuxia-Shennv and 15 kilometres from the county town, offered sightseeing boats, an aerial cableway, sightseeing vehicles and the Goddess sky-ladder, and had passed a national AAAAA-grade scenic-area landscape-quality review since 2020, though no entry for it appears among the Chongqing scenic areas on the Ministry of Culture and Tourism's AAAAA listing current to 11 March 2025.

What to look for

• Goddess Peak itself, also called Wangxia, Meiren, Xiannv or Shennv Tianxia Peak, the single standing rock at the centre of the Wushan goddess legend.
• Goddess Stream, 15 kilometres long with 10 kilometres of untouched wilderness gorge, opposite the peak on the Yangtze's south bank.
• The Three Gorges Scenic Eye, the camera- and sailboat-shaped viewing platform at Goddess Sky Road.
• The contiguous red-leaf forest of some 200 species, the setting for the 1980s film Until the Mountain Turns Red with Leaves.
• Denglong Peak, whose summit the chronicles office likens to a raised dragon's head and whose contour to an undulating dragon's body; Shengquan Peak, which the same account says takes its name from the ever-flowing clear spring below it; Chaoyun Peak, named there for the coloured cloud that circles it at sunrise; and Qiyun Peak, named for the cloud and mist that rise from the mountainside, which the account calls a good place to watch the sea of cloud.

Location & getting there

Getting to Goddess Peak and Goddess Stream

Confirm the visitor entrance and which boat or walking routes operate on your date. Rainfall, water levels and weather can change access.

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