Wuxiang Mountain

Overview

Wuxiang Mountain lies in Honglan Subdistrict, Lishui District. The Master Plan for the Wuxiang Mountain National Forest Park, Nanjing (2023–2035), issued by the Jiangsu Provincial Forestry Bureau, gives Wuxiang Mountain as 209.8 m and gives Qiuhu Mountain, also within the park, as 279.8 m.

The park's planned area is 2071.71 ha, between 118°59′33″ and 119°05′07″ east and between 31°33′32″ and 31°36′58″ north. It takes in more than twenty peaks, among them Wuxiang, Shuangjian, Ma'an, Qiuhu, Baihu and Fenghuang mountains, and waters including Wuxiang Temple, Wangjiadian, Xiangshan, Qiuhu and Maojiashan reservoirs.

The mountain belongs to the Shijiu Lake basin. The forest park plan records that Wuxiang Temple, Xiangshan, Qiuhu Mountain and Taohuaba Reservoir within the park belong to the Shijiu Lake system while Wangjiadian Reservoir belongs to the Qinhuai system; the park's divide is V-shaped, with northern water leaving by the Yigan and Lishui rivers for the Qinhuai and southern water by the Xinqiao or Tianshengqiao river for Shijiu Lake.

Formation and change

The forest park plan records that the park is made up of Qiuhu, Chenliu, Fenghuang, Shuangjian, Laohu, Maojia, Wuhuang, Wuxiang and Ping'an mountains and others, that it is geologically faulted with marked differential uplift of blocks cut off by fault belts and widespread volcanic rock, and that late in the Mesozoic Yanshan movement the north-western limb of the Ligao anticline subsided, producing landforms dominated by low hills. The park's soils are mainly yellow-brown earth, over 1789.1 ha, with 74.7 ha of paddy soil.

In October 1992 a Wuxiang Mountain forest park was established with the approval of the municipal agriculture and forestry bureau; in July 2001 it was approved as a provincial forest park; and in January 2015 it became a national forest park with the approval of the National Forestry and Grassland Administration, document Lin Chang Xu Zhun [2015] No. 32. The 1992 and 2001 dates come from the chronology on the scenic area's own website; this site repeats them and marks them as such, pending corroboration from a government source.

Landscape and visiting

Wuxiang Temple on the mountain is one of the four hundred and eighty temples of the Southern Dynasties; the Wuxiang Mountain cliff inscriptions, at three sites named Fengquan, Danding and Wuzunming, are protected municipal cultural sites within the Wuxiang Mountain scenic area, Honglan Subdistrict. Tao An's Ming-period Record of a Visit to Longming Mountain describes Longming Mountain, which the author says is Wuxiang Mountain; Zhou Bangyan wrote his lyric Man Ting Fang: A Summer Day on Wuxiang Mountain while serving as magistrate of Lishui under the Northern Song.

That record also notes the site of Han Xizai's reading hall and the cypresses he planted, still standing. It is the earliest documentary link this library holds between Wuxiang Mountain and Han Xizai:

即无想山也

Translated: it is Wuxiang Mountain.

The text is in the public domain and is reproduced as written. This is a documentary clue, not a conclusion about the place: Tao An was a literatus, and his statement that Longming Mountain is Wuxiang Mountain is his own judgement; neither the year the reading hall was built nor the time Han Xizai read there is recorded in any source held here. Nor may the name history of the mountain be rewritten on the strength of a single travel essay.

In January 2015 the National Forestry and Grassland Administration approved the Wuxiang Mountain National Forest Park, document Lin Chang Xu Zhun [2015] No. 32, which is what the designation National Forest Park (2015) rests on. In 2017 the scenic area was approved as a Jiangsu Provincial Ecotourism Demonstration Area. In 2020 it was rated a national AAA tourist attraction by the Nanjing tourist resource planning and development quality assessment committee, document Ning Lü Zi Wei [2020] No. 4; the scenic grade in this entry rests on that.

According to the district government website, the Wuxiang Mountain scenic area lies in the new district south of the town, with a total area of about 3 sq km, of which 2.5 sq km is core area, at a mean elevation of 100 m and with 95.6 per cent forest cover. The chronology on the scenic area's own website records that work towards a national 4A rating began at the end of 2019 and passed provincial landscape quality review; as of the Nanjing Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism's list of August 2026, Wuxiang Mountain is still AAA, and this site does not write that it has been upgraded to 4A.

No first-tier source has been found for walking or cycling routes, tickets or opening times at Wuxiang Mountain, so no figures are given; readers who need visiting information should go to the official notices of the scenic area and the district culture and tourism department.

Open questions

• The national forest park's area is given in three ways: a planned area of 2071.71 ha in the provincial forestry bureau's plan; a registered unit area of 1984.3474 ha in the provincial natural resources department's 2025 notice of confirmed registration; and about 3 sq km, 2.5 sq km of it core, in the scenic area's own reckoning on the district government website. They cover different things, a planned area, a registered unit and a scenic area, and this site sets them side by side without converting one into another.
• One section of the forest park plan gives Wuxiang Mountain as 209.8 m and also gives a Ping Mountain with a 209.8 m main peak. This site repeats the text as it stands and does not decide whether these are two names for one mountain or one of them is wrong, pending a second source.
• The provincial ecotourism designation is written two ways: the district government website has Jiangsu Provincial Ecotourism Demonstration Area and the scenic area's own website has Jiangsu Provincial-Level Ecotourism Demonstration Area; this site follows the district government website.
• The two dates for the forest park, established in 1992 and approved as a provincial forest park in 2001, have been found only on the scenic area's own website, a third-tier source, and have not been corroborated by a government source.
• The name Qiuhu Mountain appears in that form in the forest park plan and in the municipal list of protected cultural sites, and with a different first character elsewhere in the plan; this site follows the municipal heritage list and uses Qiuhu throughout.