Cliffs, Coffins, and a Landform Older Than Any of It

Long before Zhang Daoling's arrival, the cliffs above the Xin River at Longhu were used by peoples of the Bronze Age Yue culture for a burial practice unique to parts of southern China and Southeast Asia: wooden coffins wedged into crevices or suspended from pegs driven into the rock face, tens of meters above the ground, a method that has left several dozen coffins still visible on the cliffs today and whose original purpose and technique remain incompletely understood. The mountain's red sandstone formations, carved by long weathering into the dramatic pillars, cliffs and gorges characteristic of Danxia landform, a distinctively Chinese category of red bed geology, were inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List in 2010 as one of six component sites making up China Danxia, a natural rather than a cultural listing, alongside the region's continuing religious use.

Today Mount Longhu functions simultaneously as an active Taoist religious site, drawing pilgrims to its temples and to Tianshi Mansion, and as a scenic and geological tourist destination, the two functions layered on the same cliffs that first drew Zhang Daoling to withdraw there. The Shangqing Palace, the largest of the mountain's Taoist temple complexes and long associated with the Heavenly Master lineage's administration, has been rebuilt more than once after fire across its history and remains a working center of Zhengyi ritual practice, its resident clergy continuing the ordination and liturgical functions the Zhang lineage once held as a hereditary right across the mountain as a whole.