Mian Mountain: Cliffs, Cables and the Path Up

Mount Mian rises in the town of Mianshan, in Jiexiu, Jinzhong, in central Shanxi. It is a branch of the Taihang Mountains lying south of the Fen River, and its ridge runs unbroken for more than 160 kilometres, with the highest peak at 2,440 metres. The name is said to come from the shape of that long ridge, which was likened to a piece of cotton, though in ancient Chinese the word then meant silk floss and only later came to mean cotton. The official scenic area opened in 2000 and covers 75 square kilometres, with about 400 attractions gathered into 14 areas. It is a mountain of temples as much as of rock, and it has been an important Taoist site since the Spring and Autumn period of the Zhou.

The climb is the reason people come. A road now reaches halfway up the mountain, and from there the paths to the main areas are linked by buses, but the older way is on foot: a valley path heavy with vines and old trees, shading the medieval stone carvings along it, and above the tree line a plank road fixed to the cliff, so narrow that it is less than the width of a person, hanging high above the valley floor with the cloud sometimes gathered below it. Elsewhere a long stair of stone steps climbs to a ridge of cypresses, among them a Qin cypress counted among the largest trees in China and a mother-and-son cypress said to stand for the story told below. The mountain rewards walking, and the cliff path is the place where the rock comes closest to the walker.

At the top of the path the mountain becomes a story, and it is told as a story. The usual account places the retreat of Jie Zhitui, and of his mother, in a forest fire on these slopes in the seventh century BC, begun by Duke Wen of Jin; from that came the Cold Food Festival, which under the Northern Wei was restricted in 496 to the area around Mount Mian, spread under the Sui, and was turned into the Tomb Sweeping Festival under the Tang and Song. What the walker finds at the end of the path is a Taoist complex and a set of cliffs, and the sense that the two belong together. The mountain has also been repaired: since 1995 the chairman of the Sanjia Coal and Chemical Company has put 600 million RMB into repairing the mountain and its temples.