Fanjingshan
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How it came to be
Fanjingshan rises in the Wuling Mountains of Guizhou Province in south-west China, from 500 m to 2,570 m above sea level. It is an island of metamorphic rock in a sea of karst, and many of its plants and animals descend from species of the Tertiary period, 65 to 2 million years ago. Its isolation has produced many endemic species, among them the Fanjingshan fir (Abies fanjingshanensis) and the Guizhou snub-nosed monkey (Rhinopithecus brelichi). It also holds the largest and most continuous primeval beech forest in the subtropics.
The name is short for Fantian Jingtu, Brahma's Pure Land, and in Chinese Buddhism the mountain is revered as the holy ground of Maitreya. Buddhism had reached the area by the Tang dynasty at the latest, and temples were built after Hou Hongren opened the Zangke Road in 639, making the mountains easier to cross. The Bozhou rebellion of the late 16th century badly damaged the temples, but the Wanli Emperor had the monk Miaoxuan rebuild the Golden Peak and the Cheng'en Temple, and Buddhism on the mountain flourished most under the Ming and Qing.
Many temples were destroyed in the turmoil that ended the Qing dynasty and again during the Cultural Revolution, and rebuilding has gone on since the 1980s. The mountain became a national nature reserve in 1978 and a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1986, and it was inscribed as a natural World Heritage site in 2018.
Data: Wikidata (CC0). Photos: Wikimedia Commons, under each photo’s licence. This is an early version and may contain errors. We measure usage anonymously to improve the app (PostHog, EU).