Lushan: Mountain of Mist and Poets

Lushan rises straight out of the Yangtze plain near Jiujiang, where the great river meets Poyang Lake — its forested ridges so often wrapped in cloud that “not knowing the true face of Lushan” became a Chinese byword for missing what is right in front of you. China’s first UNESCO World Cultural Landscape, it is at once a natural spectacle and the most written-about mountain in Chinese culture.

廬山自九江附近的長江平原拔地而起，正當長江與鄱陽湖交匯之處——林嶺常年雲霧繚繞，「不識廬山真面目」遂成中文裡「當局者迷」的典故。作為中國第一處世界文化景觀遺產，它既是自然奇觀，也是中國文化中被書寫最多的名山。

A mountain made of poems

For more than a millennium, poets and painters climbed Lushan and left it changed. Some 1,500 literary figures — from Tao Yuanming and Li Bai to Su Shi and Zhu Xi — are said to have written here, leaving over 4,000 poems and around 900 cliff and stone inscriptions. Li Bai likened its waterfall to the Milky Way falling from the sky; Tao Yuanming set his Peach Blossom Spring against these slopes; and Gu Kaizhi’s Lushan Panorama is counted among the first independent landscape paintings in Chinese art. To walk Lushan is to walk through an anthology — viewpoints come with their verses attached.

逾千年間，詩人畫家登臨廬山，也為它留下印記。相傳先後有約一千五百位文人在此揮毫——自陶淵明、李白，至蘇軾、朱熹——留下四千餘首詩作與約九百處摩崖石刻。李白以瀑布喻銀河落天；陶淵明以這片山坡作《桃花源記》的底色；顧愷之的《廬山圖》更被視為中國最早的獨立山水畫之一。遊廬山如讀選集——每處景致都附著詩行。

I cannot know the true face of Lushan — only because I am within these very mountains.

不識廬山真面目，只緣身在此山中。

— Su Shi, “Written on the Wall of Xilin Temple” · 蘇軾《題西林壁》

A town on the summit

Unlike almost any other Chinese sacred mountain, Lushan has a proper town on top. Guling (牯嶺) is a settlement of stone cottages, tree-lined lanes and small cafés, built as a summer retreat just over a century ago and still lived in year-round. Stay a night and the mountain changes character after the last buses leave — quiet lanes, lit windows, and a dawn that often breaks above a sea of cloud.

幾乎不同於任何一座中國名山，廬山頂上有一座真正的市鎮。牯嶺由石屋、林蔭小道與小咖啡館組成，百餘年前作為避暑地而建，至今常年有人居住。留宿一晚，待末班車散去，山的性情便隨之一變——街巷清靜、窗火點點，破曉時常常雲海初湧。

Waterfalls, cloud seas & cliffs

From Guling the mountain’s set-pieces fan out — the Three-Tier Spring, which drops 155 metres in three great leaps (locals say you cannot claim to have been a guest of Lushan without seeing it); the cliff-edge walk through Brocade Valley; the Five Old Men Peaks, where Li Bai once lived in seclusion; and a string of east-facing platforms, Hanpokou chief among them, that wait for sunrise and the mountain’s famous sea of cloud. With some 192 foggy days a year, the odds are with you.

由牯嶺出發，山中勝景次第鋪展：三疊泉三折直落一百五十五米（當地人說「不到三疊泉，不算廬山客」）；錦繡谷的崖邊步道；李白曾隱居的五老峰；以及一連串朝東的觀景台——以含鄱口為首——靜候日出與那著名的雲海。一年約有一百九十二個霧日，機會站在你這邊。

Its torrent plunges three thousand feet in a single sheet — as if the Silver River were tumbling out of the ninth heaven.

飛流直下三千尺，疑是銀河落九天。

— Li Bai, “Gazing at the Lushan Waterfall” · 李白《望廬山瀑布》

A retreat for every season

Lushan’s climate is its other great gift. The annual average is just 11.4°C; summer hovers around 22.6°C even as the Poyang basin below bakes past 39°C — which long ago made the mountain one of China’s four great historical summer retreats. Each season has its signature: spring blossom, green-shaded summers by the lakes, brocade-red autumns, and winters when a cold front sheathes every branch in glittering rime.

廬山的氣候是它另一份厚禮。年均氣溫僅11.4°C；當山下鄱陽湖盆地酷熱逾39°C時，山上盛夏仍徘徊在22.6°C左右——這早已使廬山位列中國四大避暑勝地之一。四季各有其貌：春有繁花，夏有湖畔綠蔭，秋有錦繡紅葉，冬則冷鋒過境、萬枝裹滿晶瑩霧凇。

Where China came to think

Lushan was a place of learning as much as scenery. On the southern slope below the Five Old Men Peaks sits the White Deer Cave Academy (白鹿洞書院), founded in 940 CE and revived in 1179 by the great Neo-Confucian philosopher Zhu Xi. His Articles of Learning for the academy became a template for Chinese higher education — copied by academies across the country and carried to Japan, Korea and beyond, making it the foremost of China’s “Four Great Academies.” Ming and Qing halls still stand among the trees, gathered around the stone grotto and the white-deer figure that gave the place its name.

廬山既是風景，也是學問之地。在五老峰南麓，坐落著白鹿洞書院——始建於公元940年，南宋大儒朱熹於1179年重興。他為書院訂立的《白鹿洞書院揭示》成為中國高等教育的範本，為各地書院效法，並遠播日本、朝鮮——書院由此躋身「四大書院」之首。明清殿宇至今靜立林間，環抱著那方石洞與賦予此地其名的白鹿石像。

At the mountain’s foot stands Donglin Temple (東林寺), founded in 386 CE by the monk Huiyuan, who gathered a “White Lotus Society” of monks and lay scholars here and so began the Pure Land school of Buddhism — the start of Buddhism’s localisation in China. Nearby, the Guanyin Bridge, a single stone arch completed in 1015 using a rabbet-and-mortise technique, still holds a milestone place in the history of Chinese engineering.

山腳下立著東林寺——公元386年由高僧慧遠創建，他在此聚僧俗結「白蓮社」，開淨土宗之先河，標誌著佛教在中國本土化的開端。不遠處的觀音橋，是一座建於1015年、以榫卯石構而成的單孔石拱橋，至今仍是中國橋梁史上的里程碑。

Six religions on one mountain

Few places anywhere hold what Lushan does: a mountain where six faiths have lived side by side. Buddhist temples, Taoist abbeys, Confucian academies, Christian churches, Catholic missions and Islamic prayer halls have all been established on its slopes — at its height between the 4th and 13th centuries the mountain held as many as 500 temples and shrines.

世間罕有廬山這般景象：一座六教共存的名山。佛寺、道觀、儒家書院、基督教堂、天主教堂與清真禮拜堂，皆曾立於此山——在四至十三世紀的鼎盛期，山中多達五百座寺院庵觀。

From 1895 into the mid-20th century, visitors from more than twenty countries raised over 600 villas on Lushan in every architectural style, turning Guling into an international hill station.

自1895年至20世紀中葉，來自二十多個國家的訪客在廬山建起六百餘棟各式別墅，使牯嶺成為一座國際避暑山鎮。

Plan your visit

Lushan sits an easy drive from Jiujiang and the Yangtze, and pairs naturally with the Donglin Giant Buddha at its foot and with Jingdezhen to its east.

廬山距九江與長江車程不遠，與山腳的東林大佛、以及東側的景德鎮天然成線。