Mountains are indelibly etched into the cultural identity of China. So much so, in fact, that the film Avatar, rather than provoking timely musings on colonial expansion, instead spawned a series of discussions about which range of Chinese mountains inspired the floating cliffs of its CGI landscape. One lucky mountain in Hunan province is now officially known as the Avatar Hallelujah Mountain (ZhangJiaJie National Forest Park).

Of course, as they're fairly hard to miss, mountains tend to form the nucleus of a global range of cultures and beliefs. In China, The Five Great Mountains were famous pilgrimage destinations for the emperors throughout the ages, and according to certain Chinese myths, were formed from the body of Pángǔ (盘古), the first being and creator of the world. Equally famous are the four sacred Buddhist and four sacred Taoist mountains.

Such peaks do not remain unscaled. Today in China, "mountain-climbing" is an increasingly popular leisure activity that captures a desire to reconnect with the past and to escape the claustrophobia of overcrowded, over-modernised cities.

Mountains and modernisation

You would have thought that mountains, of all places, would enjoy some immunity to the forces of modernisation. Alas, even the most obscure plateau now risks being subjected to the cruel ravages of change. Tibet, the roof of the world, is, in the eyes of many, suffering from radical modernisation. The recently inaugurated Qinghai-Tibet railway has massively increased the quantities of waste-litter in previously untouched mountainous regions as tourism makes its presence felt.

Other regions have also been affected, albeit in different ways. In Fumin County in 2007, Party officials memorably ordered an entire mountain-face painted green in a bizarre attempt to render it more environmentally 'friendly'. This incident, as absurd as it may be, signals a growing desire to control and modernise, or rather, 'administrate' the environment; even mountains, it seems, are no longer immune to the same protracted, Kafkaesque bureaucracy problems that are prevalent in other facets of Chinese society. Recently, Tianmen Mountain in Zhangjiajie had a see-through glass floor installed so that adventurous climbers could gaze into the depths of a ravine whilst enjoying their climb. As charming an idea as this may be, sceptical observers might note how this aligns the mountain with ultra-modern tourist sites such as the bottle-opener in Shanghai, where the skyscraper floor is similarly transparent.

Tourism and mountain-climbing

Mountain-climbing, as well as simply visiting mountains, is a pastime that in the last decade has captured the public imagination. It is this process that has bolstered numbers of climbers. In 2007, for example, over 15 million tourists visited Huangshan. It is no coincidence that, as the popularity of mountain-climbing as a hobby increases, so does the proportion of Chinese people living in built-up urban areas void of any natural features (only last year exceeding rural citizens for the first time).

Mountains clearly signify an important escape from such concrete jungles, as well as a way of connecting with an often forgotten spiritual past. There is a tentative analogy to be made between the emperors of old who laboriously endured mountainous journeys and modern-day city-dwellers embarking on pilgrimages of their own, seeking open spaces, clean air and spectacular views.

Nanjing, a city famous for having a mountain (the Purple Mountain 紫金山) close to its centre, is jam-packed with members of walking clubs, each of whom find in the mountain a place of refuge from the pressures on their busy lives. Indeed, a trip to a nearby mountain has become an almost go-to social event for groups of young people, especially university students. The climb in popularity has everything to do with the ever-more sprawling extent of Chinese cities, many of which have swallowed up exquisite landscapes in their relentless expansion.

A source of national pride

China is a country blessed with an incredible number of mountains – 65% of its landmass, to be precise. It comes as no surprise that mountains are a key source of national pride. Widespread insistence that the world's tallest two mountains – Everest and K2 – are both located in China (which is partially true as their peaks are more accurately in Nepal and Pakistan respectively) has much to do with this national pride. This nationalism extends to Taiwan – a massive number of Taiwanese tourists (340,000 last year) make the 'pilgrimage' to Huangshan. Such places seem to be able to conjure an ancient China shared by both the mainland and Taiwan.

As a greater proportion of Chinese live in cities each year, the trend of visiting and climbing mountains is likely to increase. Yet whilst this movement is likely a reaction against urban modernisation, the overall motion of modernisation is itself being extended to a number of previously timeless mountainscapes, especially in Western Tibet and Xinjiang.

One of the best of all Chinese proverbs informs the reader that 'those who remove a mountain begin by carrying away small stones' (or rather more succinctly, 愚公移山). The proverb's meaning is optimistic: where there's a will, there's a way. In the context of modern-day China, though, the proverb could well mean something quite different: modernisation, that most stubborn of forces, could quite literally whittle down a few mountains if left unchecked (at this rate, anything seems possible). As it is, many see Chinese mountains as untouchable remnants of the past, remaining unchanged since the most distant historical reaches of an ancient civilization. The urban fascination with mountain-climbing indicates, more than anything, a population increasingly at odds with urbanisation, and increasingly nostalgic for a China that lies ever further beyond the city limits.

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Keywords: great mountains China nature and culture China mountain climbing China Taoist mountains in China