Jinfo: the bamboo sea and the golden Buddhas

Jinfo is a syncline: a fold of rock whose centre has been hollowed, so that the mountain presents a flat top ringed by cliffs up to 300 metres. The platform is Permian limestone at about 2,000 metres; the middle slopes between 1,000 and 1,500 metres are Silurian shale and sandstone; the base is Cambrian and Ordovician limestone and dolomite. Gorges cut the lower ground between 800 and 1,200 metres, and the mid-mountain platform begins above 1,200. The main peak, Fengchuiling, reaches 2,251 metres and keeps snow for four months, the highest ground in the Dalou range. Three masses make the mountain: Jinfo, Qingba and Bozhi.

The mountain is a plant place before it is a scenic one. It holds 4,768 seed plants, may keep some of the few wild populations of ginkgo, and shelters Francois' langur, an animal confined to karst country. Bamboo is the crop that most people meet: the square bamboo shoot of Nanchuan is a geographical indication product, cut in the hills and sold fresh, dried and pickled, and Nanzhu Mountain is another of the district's bamboo hills. A bamboo shoot is a crop with a calendar measured in days, and the roads that carry it down are the roads that carry visitors up. Forest and market are one system.

The mountain's name is not a relic kept in a hall. On a clear evening in late summer or autumn, the setting sun catches the layered cliffs and turns them the colour of gilded Buddhas, and the mountain has been called Golden Buddha Mountain ever since. That is a strange and rather good reason for a sacred name: the temple is the rock face, and the congregation is anyone on the platform at the right hour. The mountain is a World Heritage site by another route, tentative in 2001 and added to the South China Karst listing in 2014, and its top records 8.2 degrees and 1,434.5 millimetres of rain.