The mountain takes its name from its three summits, Yujing, Yuxu and Yuhua, which stand like three immortals seated on the ridge, and the highest, Yujing Peak at 1,816.9 metres, is the fifth highest in Jiangxi. It is the main peak of the Huaiyu range and one of the sources of the Xin River. The rock is granite, exposed over about 98 square kilometres in three phases, and the range is described as a typical triangular block mountain, still in a late youth to early maturity stage of development.
From the journal
Granite, and two hundred buildings with no walls
Sanqingshan is a granite massif with three named peaks, and a Daoist settlement that runs along its upper path in the open air.
In the same city · Shangrao ↗Three peaks, and a name from them
A mountain with a long list of designations
Sanqingshan was made a national key scenic area in 1988, a national geopark in 2005, a World Natural Heritage site in 2008, a national AAAAA scenic area in 2011 and a UNESCO Global Geopark in 2012. That list is worth holding in mind when reading about other Jiangxi mountains, because the designations came in a particular order and the World Natural Heritage listing in 2008 is separate from the China Danxia inscription of 2010, which covers a different set of red-rock landscapes to the west. The granite of Sanqingshan is not the Danxia of Longhu or Guifeng.
Two hundred structures along one path
The mountain has been a Daoist place since Ge Hong and Ge Yun came here in the Jin dynasty, and the scale of what was built is startling: from the Buyun Bridge at the trailhead to the Sanqing blessed land at the Tianmen, more than two hundred halls, pavilions, stone inscriptions, stone carvings, mountain gates and bridges were raised, spread across the whole mountain, and their scale is compared with Mount Qingcheng, Wudang and Longhu. It is called an open-air museum of Daoism. What makes the site particular is the material: granite, cut by weather into columns and balls, with the buildings set among the rock rather than terraced out of it.