A grassland at two thousand metres, and the resort built around it

Fairy Mountain stands on the north bank of the Wu River in the Wuling range, 180 kilometres from the central urban area of Chongqing, and its elevation is 2,033 metres. What that height produces is not a peak but a plateau: 330,000 mu of forest and 100,000 mu of natural grassland, open enough to walk across. The park divides itself into five scenic points: the great grassland, Pusatuo, the Tongtian pagoda, the Fairy Pool and the Fairy Stone. It is a national forest park and a national 5A tourist area, and it shares that rating with the Three Natural Bridges and Furong Cave.

In October 2015 the park was named among the first batch of national-level tourist resorts, a designation that describes a place to stay rather than a place to look at. In July 2016 the quality inspection administration listed it as a national model zone for brand creation. The infrastructure followed the designation: Chongqing Xiannüshan Airport, class 4C with a runway 2,800 metres long and 45 metres wide, opened on 18 December 2020 at Xiannüshan, built mainly for tourism and for emergency relief work. The district's own economy has moved the same way, after the government gave up the bauxite along the Wu River.

The figures are given in mu, the unit Chinese land records still use, and they are counted separately: 330,000 mu of forest and 100,000 mu of natural grassland. The separation is a management statement as much as a survey. A forest park is protected for its trees, a resort is run for the people who come to it, and this park carries both designations at once, with a 5A tourist rating and a place on the first national list of tourist resorts. That is why its five scenic points read less as five separate sites than as stations on one plateau, each a place where the two briefs are made to meet.