4-Day Wudang Mountain: Walking, Taiji and the Summit

Morning - the train west
The high-speed line runs north-west out of Wuhan across the Jianghan plain and into the hills, and Shiyan East is about two hours out. Your guide travels with you, handles the tickets, and has the scenic-area admission pre-booked: Wudangshan runs timed entry and the mountain shuttle is compulsory, because private vehicles are not allowed past the gate.

Afternoon - Zixiao Palace
The Yongle emperor, who reigned from 1402 to 1424, had Wudangshan built as a single project: hundreds of thousands of labourers, nine palaces, nine monasteries, and 33 building groups in all, laid out along a sacred geography that runs from the foot of the mountain to the Golden Summit on the highest peak. The UNESCO inscription covers the ancient building complex, and what makes it exceptional is not any single hall but the way the whole thing is fitted to the terrain - terraces cut into slopes, axes aligned on peaks, and not one courtyard on a flat site.

Zixiao Palace, the Purple Clouds, is the largest surviving complex and the one you see first. Its main hall sits on a three-tier terrace of stone, dated to 1413, with a double-eave roof and the bracket work of the early Ming left unpainted except for the coloured draught that has been restored. Inside is a Ming bronze statue of Zhenwu, the Dark Warrior, the deity the mountain is dedicated to. Around the courtyards are the subsidiary halls, the stele pavilions with Yongle's own inscriptions, and the Taoist clergy, who still maintain the place as a working temple.

The Wudang Museum
At the foot of the mountain, the museum holds what the archaeologists and the conservators have taken off the buildings: roof tiles with reign marks, bronze, and the documentation of the 2003 fire that destroyed the main hall of Yuzhen Palace and the restoration that followed. Forty-five minutes, and worth it before you go up rather than after.

Evening
Dinner at the foot of the mountain. Your guide briefs the group on the morning: if you want the Golden Summit at first light, the shuttle starts before dawn and the cable car opens around seven.

Meals
Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
At the foot of Wudangshan, or on the mountain if booked in advance.

Early start
The mountain opens early and the shuttle runs from the gate through a series of valleys to the separate sites. Going up first is the usual order, because the summit cloud usually burns off by mid-morning and returns after two. Your guide takes the Qiongtai cable car with you - about 1,500 metres of line, twenty minutes - and walks the last stretch to the top.

The Golden Summit
At 1,612 metres, the peak carries a walled enclosure and, inside it, a hall cast in bronze and gilded, assembled in Beijing in 1416 and carried up the mountain in pieces. It is small - about five metres across - and it has stood there through six centuries of lightning, which is why the ridge is fitted with conductors and why the guides have a story about the fire that used to be lit every sixty years. The hall holds a bronze Zhenwu and the original lamps. The enclosure is reached by a narrow stair through a gate in the wall, and the queue in high season is the one thing to budget for: an hour is normal in July and October.

Nanyan Palace
Nanyan, the South Cliff, is the other reason to come. The palace is set into a recess in the cliff on the south face, with halls built out over the drop on timber supports and stone brackets, and a terrace that projects into the air above the valley. The most photographed object on the mountain is here: the Dragon Head Incense Burner, a two-metre stone dragon carved in the Yuan and cantilevered off the edge of the cliff, on which pilgrims used to walk out to set incense, and which is now fenced. The carving, the brackets under the halls and the way the whole complex is keyed into the rock are the finest surviving examples of Ming construction on a cliff anywhere in China.

Lunch
On the mountain. The food is simple - noodles, rice, mountain vegetables, and the local mushrooms - and the guide orders a plain table. Vegetarian food is easy here, since the temples run their own kitchens, and Wudang's Taoist vegetarian cooking is worth asking for.

Afternoon
Down by shuttle to Taizipo, the Prince's Slope, where the Nine-Bend Wall and the hall complex of 1412 sit on a slope with the brackets doing most of the visual work. If the group has the legs, the old stone path from Nanyan down to the valley floor is a real pilgrim route with shrines along it.

Evening
Dinner at the foot of the mountain.

Meals
Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
At the foot of Wudangshan.

Morning - the old path
There are two ways up: the modern stair from Qiongtai, which is short and brutal, and the old pilgrim route from Nanyan, which is about 4.5 kilometres with roughly 600 metres of climb, mostly on stone steps laid in the Ming. The old route is the one to take. It leaves from behind Nanyan and climbs through the forest past small shrines, a couple of ruined hermitages, and the Thunder God's Cave, and it puts you on the summit ridge at the back of the enclosure rather than at the cable-car exit, which is a better way to arrive.

Budget three hours up at a steady pace with stops, longer if the group photographs. The gradient is honest: it is a stair, and it is relentless, and the people who suffer are the ones who start too fast. Your guide sets the pace, carries water, and can split the group - walkers up, shuttle and cable car for anyone who would rather not - and reunite at the top.

At the summit
The gilded bronze hall of 1416, assembled in Beijing and carried up in sections, stands inside the walled enclosure at 1,612 metres. Your guide will have told you the descent plan before you start: cable car down from Qiongtai, or the long stair down the other side to the valley.

Lunch
Carried or bought on the mountain. The guide brings water and something to eat for the walk; there are stalls at the top.

Afternoon
Down, and into the valley for the halls at Zixiao if the legs allow, or back to the foot of the mountain for a bath and dinner. This is a genuinely tiring day and the following day should be a travelling one.

Meals
Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
At the foot of Wudangshan.

Morning - the taiji session
Wudang is the home of the internal martial arts as they are practised now, and the attribution goes back to Zhang Sanfeng, a figure of the Song or the Yuan who is credited with founding the Wudang school. The history is disputed and your guide will say so; what is not disputed is that the mountain has supported a continuous community of practitioners for centuries, and that the schools at the foot of it teach a real curriculum. Your session runs about ninety minutes with an English-speaking instructor, on the forms rather than the fighting application: stance, weight transfer, and the first section of a bare-hand form, done slowly enough that someone who has never done it can follow. Wear flat shoes and clothes you can move in.

Lunch
At the foot of the mountain, a Taoist vegetarian table if the group wants it - the temple kitchens here cook without meat, without alliums and without strong spice, and the result is better than it sounds.

Afternoon - Taizipo and the way out
Taizipo, the Prince's Slope, is named for a legend about the young Zhenwu being pushed to give up his cultivation and the slope being the place it happened. The buildings are 1412: a hall, a scripture pavilion, and the famous Nine-Bend Wall, a zig-zag retaining wall climbing the slope whose purpose is structural but whose effect is to force you to slow down and approach the hall at an angle. The bracketing under the eaves is the thing to look at. From there the shuttle takes you down to the gate and your vehicle takes you to Shiyan East for the evening train.

Evening
Back in Wuhan by about nine. Dinner is on the train or late in Wuhan, depending on the departure.

Meals
Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
Wuhan.