Mount Qingcheng Front Mountain 青城前山

About Mount Qingcheng Front Mountain

Qingcheng Shan is a branch of the Qionglai range, backed by the Min river and looking out over the Chengdu plain, 68 kilometres from the Chengdu urban area and 10 kilometres from the Dujiangyan irrigation works; its scenic area covers 200 square kilometres. Its peaks stand round it like a city wall, and the provincial government's account gives that as the origin of the name. The Dujiangyan gazetteer records the mountain as a birthplace of Chinese Daoism, later one of the religion's four famous mountains and the fifth of its ten grotto-heavens, running from 726 metres at its lowest point to 2,434 metres at its highest, and traditionally reckoned to hold 36 peaks, 8 large caves, 72 small caves and 108 scenes.

More than ten Daoist temples stand on the mountain, among them Jianfu Gong, Shangqing Gong, Yuanming Gong, Yuqing Gong, Chaoyang Dong, Laojun Ge and Zushi Dian. The provincial account describes the buildings as fitted to the natural form of the mountain and rising in rank as the ground rises: Jianfu Gong opens the sequence, the highest buildings are Laojun Ge and Shangqing Gong near the summit, and the sequence closes at Yuanming Gong. In the early Qing the Daoist Chen Qingjue founded the Danta Bidong school here, and over the past century abbots including Peng Chunxian, Yi Xinying and Fu Yuantian led the community in writing, in cataloguing relics, in repairing the temples and in protecting the surroundings. The whole Qingcheng Shan historic building group is registered as one of Dujiangyan City's eight national key cultural relics protection units, with Jianfu Gong and the mountain's cliff inscriptions listed separately at provincial level. None of these sources divides Qingcheng Shan into a front and a back mountain, so the account above is of the mountain as a whole.

What to look for

• Jianfu Gong, which opens the architectural sequence and is listed as a provincial-level protected site in its own right.
• Shangqing Gong and Laojun Ge, the highest buildings in that sequence, near the summit.
• The Qingcheng Shan cliff inscriptions, registered as a provincial-level protected site.
• The way the temples are fitted to the mountain's own shape, rising in rank as the ground rises and closing at Yuanming Gong.

Location & getting there

Getting to Mount Qingcheng Front Mountain

Check weather, trail access and the last return service. A mountain or forest area is not one entrance, and a map’s central pin may be far from the trailhead.

• Search for 青城前山 with 成都市 and 都江堰市.