Mount Qingcheng (青城山, Qīngchéng Shān) is a scenic mountain in Dujiangyan, Sichuan, China and one of the main natural scenic sights in China you can visit as a full-day trip from Cheng Du city. The mountain is one of the many mountains in the area and has an elevation of 1,260m with 36 peaks. Mount Qingcheng is home to Dujiangyan Giant Panda center as well as one the most important Taoism (Daoism) sites in China, with several Taoist temples situated on the mountain. You may even recognise the mountain from movies such as Kungfu panda. In Taoist mythology, the mountain too was the site of the Yellow Emperor’s studies with Ning Fengzhi.
Getting to Mount Qing Cheng
Getting there requires usually involves a 1 hour high speed railway trip (150 yuan) from Cheng Du to Qing Cheng station and transferring to bus service 101 (costing 2 Yuan per person). The bus runs every 30 – 50mins from the high speed rail station to the attraction carpark with the last bus at 6.30pm. The mountain’s iconic “triple A” entrance gates signals your entrance to the mountain grounds. A 2.2km walk uphill from the mountain bus stop brings you to the Mountain main entrance.
There are two sides of Mount Qing Cheng- the front or rear mountain. Each with their own offerings. The front mountain offers more cultural and religious offerings, with mostly pavilions, temples and monasteries, while the rear has more natural features, such as caves and waterfalls. You can easily tour all the temples on the front mountain under 3 hours with assistance from a direct ride up the Buyun cable way (costing 60 yuan/person for a return) by Yuecheng lake, offering nice reflection views of the mountains in the background.
The rear mountain side (Hou san) has their own cable cars with two separate uphill cable car routes, first with the Jinli cableway. This cable car takes you from the Tai-en town base to the mountain mid-point and Baiyun cableway to the upper regions of the rear mountain. A short climb through the white cloud temple will bring you to Ying hua summit mount at the top, the highest point of the rear mountain. Climbing up the mountain by foot will take about 4.5 hours as you are good for an entire day there.
Much of the climbing are done through steps and minor trails, with lots of stair climbing involved. The mountain is not breezy in spring and you are fine with a light jacket as all the physical climbing will keep you warm without overheating.
The passageways to points of interests are well labelled with signs. You can summit Mount Qing Cheng at the Laojun Pavilion through the TeDong hua hall at the top. A goddess or mercy sits in a pagoda at the top of this mountain summit. Mount Qingcheng is not a tall mountain, and people will be less prone to altitude sickness give it’s shorter statue. If the day is not too misty, you can see the vegetation covered slopes of the Mount Qing Cheng, with breathtaking misty scenic views like those seen in the movies and in Chinese paintings.
Laojun Pavilion View from the summit.
The attraction’s main cable car station operates till 5pm or till when the queue lines are headed back down are cleared. Most of the attractions and stores will start to pack up/close from 4pm onwards. As people actually live on the mountain, there is no actual closing time for the park, just that there will be no path lighting and no means to get down by cable car after 5pm, so make sure you allocate enough time for your journey both up and down. In all, Mount Qing Cheng is one of the must-see sights when you are in the area the views itself is definitely worth the trip there.
