This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
In 1994, the Ancient Building Complex in the Wudang Mountains, one of the Four Sacred Mountains of Taoism in northwestern Hubei Province, was inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List under cultural criteria i, ii and vi.
The complex centers on devotion to Xuantian Shangdi and has long been associated with the legendary hermit Zhang Sanfeng, credited with originating tai chi. It was built chiefly under imperial patronage during the Ming dynasty, and fifty three of its original structures survive today across eight cluster sites spread through the mountains, evidence of the scale the complex once reached under sustained court sponsorship.
UNESCO recognized the site for two things together rather than one, its religious significance to Taoist practice and its architectural achievement, built up over nearly a thousand years of continuous use and construction rather than in a single building campaign.
What the 1994 inscription changed for Taoism's standing was placing one of its Four Sacred Mountains on a list that names sites of outstanding value to humanity as a whole, formal international recognition of a religious landscape that Ming dynasty patronage and centuries of Taoist devotion had already built long before any UNESCO committee existed to name it.