Mount Tiecha – Tiecha Shan

Mount Tiecha – Tiecha Shan

Mount Tiecha lies in the Man Minority Autonomous Region,120 kilometers east of Benxi City, Liaoning Province. It is part of branch ranges of Changbai Mount. Layers upon layers of steep hills and peaks rise in emerald verdure. Winding vanes and brooks bring active eternal vitality to the fairy land. Thus comes the poem, “Seemingly all beauty and spiritual influence has been endowed to the fairy land, who can deny that it is a relationship of fate that brings us to the heavenly mountain area.”

Mount Tiecha has a very long history, and in the ancient book The Romance of Immortal Title Conferring(1567-1619) has the records in detail. In 1630, Guo Shouzhen, the No.8 generation disciple of Taoism Longmen school, came and took residence in the mount summit caves and began his Taoist practice there. In the later days, under his leadership, his disciples built a variety of temples and houses in large number. Nuerhachi, the founder of Qigong Dynasty, once settled in one cave to rest, in his way to conquer the outside world.

Mount Tiecha is an ancestral place for the development of Taoism in northeastern China. Many legendary stories now circulate among average people in the mountain area. The Long Eyebrow Li Immortal is a famous one. He went to Mount Tiecha from Sandong Province and settled down here beginning practice many years. Eating nothing and drinking no water when facing stone wall in the Babao Cave, he continued to practice as a hermit, complexion changing and eyebrow becoming longer and longer.

Taoist priest Guo was also famous for his supernatural abilities after many years of practice in the summit cave.