Landscape · Fixed as a set by the Han dynasty, and unchanged since
One for each direction and one for the centre: Taishan in the east (Shandong), Huashan in the west (Shaanxi), Hengshan in the south (Hunan), a different Hengshan in the north (Shanxi), and Songshan at the centre (Henan). These are Daoist rather than Buddhist, and they are political as much as religious — Taishan is the one emperors climbed to perform the feng and shan sacrifices announcing that heaven approved of their rule. Taishan's stone stairway has around seven thousand steps and is lined with two thousand years of inscriptions carved straight into the rock by people who made the same climb. Huashan is the other famous one, for the opposite reason: a plank walkway bolted to a vertical cliff that has become one of the most photographed frights on the internet.
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