Laoshan Mountain lies in the east of Qingdao City, along the Huanghai Sea. It covers over 400 square kilometers, and is 1,130 meters above sea level. Among all the famous Chinese mountains it is the only one that shoots up directly from the seaside. The coastline around Laoshan Mountain extends 87 kilometers. The coastline is dotted with 18 islands, forming a marvelous view. Walking along the stone board path up to the mountain, one will find blue sea at one side while pine and stones on the other side.
Laoshan Mountain is famous for its Taoist experience. Some emperors of the Qin Dynasty (221-206BC) and the Han Dynasty (206BC-220AD) used to visit Laoshan Mountain to look for immortals, and Tang (618-907) Emperor Minghuang also sent people to get medicine for him. Many poets and writers from different dynasties also paid visits to Laoshan Mountain. Taoism started to be missionized in the Western Han Dynasty (206BC-8AD) and became very popular ever since. There used to be nine palaces, eight Taoist temples and 72 small temples at most and over 1,000 Taoists on the Mountain. However, most of these temples and palaces were destroyed, and the Taiqing Palace is the largest one as well as the one with longest history among those left today.
It is said Pu Songling (1640-1715), a writer in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), used to live in the Sangong Palace. Several stories in his famous workLiaozhai Zhi Yi(Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio) take Laoshan Mountain as a background. There is a camellia tree of about 700 years old in front of the Sangong Palace, and the tree is 8,5 meters high and has a perimeter of 1.78 meters wide. In the palace there used to be a white peony as high as the roof. Pu is said to write the camellia and peony into his excellent love story ofXiang Yu(the name of a girl in the story), in which the camellia and the peony turn into two beautiful girls that fall in love with a young scholar.
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