Mt.Qiyun ---- One of the four Taoist Mountains in China

Mt.Qiyun is situated in Xiuning County, 15 km west of the downtown of the county, 33 km from Tunxi District. A cable car provides easy access to the mountain top.
Mt.Qiyun also called Mt.White consist of 9 peaks, rising 585 meters above sea level, covering a area of 60 quare kilometers. It is one of the three famous mountains in South Anhui, the other two is Mt.Huangshan and Buddhist Mt.Jiuhua. It's famous for it used to a Mecca for Taoist believes, in fact it's one of the four Taoist Mountains in China, the rest three are Mt.Wudan, Mt.Longhu and Mt.Huming.
Mt.Qiyun has a long history of Taoism, the Taoist religion here began in Tang Dynasty, thrived in middle Ming Dynasty, declined in late Qing Dynasty. So a lot of Taoist elements can be found over this mountain, such as Taoist temples, caves, steles, tablets, inscriptions and so on.

Besides its Taoist activities, it also features its tablets and inscriptions. They are of high calligraphic, religious and historical value. It's a perfect place to enjoy and study Chinese calligraphy art of stone carving, With 305 handwriting carvings on cliff and 232 engravings on steles or tablets, Mt.Qiyun is actually a calligraphy history museum. Among those two are outstanding: Four big Chinese characters "Tian Kai Shen Xiu" above Zhenxian Cave; A huge stele 7.8 meters high and 1.4 meters wide, engraved with a 980-word essay of famous scholar Tangying of Ming Dynasty.

Another feature of the mountain is "Danxia landform" or "Danxia physiognomy", which is characterized by its red cliffed scarp. In Chinese dan means red, xia means the rays of sunup or sunset, and this mountain consists of terra-cotta rocks and purplish-red cliffs, it's typical of Danxia landform. Different from Mt.Huangshan of granite, Mt.Qiyun is a mixture of sandstone and conglomerate rock. Those sandstones and gravel rocks contain abundant iron that was strongly oxidized by the hot humid climate, as a result, laterite rocks are formed. This special landform is known as danxia. In the field of geology, Danxia landform is used as a geological term, this kind of land form was firt discoverd in Mt.Danxia of Guangdong Province, and Mt.Danxia has become the birthplace of the term "Danxia landform"(Danxia dimao).

At the north base of the mountain is Hengjiang River, which is a major branch of Xin'an River, this clean river flow slowly and peaceful, just like a green ribbon flowing eastward. Without doubt it's a good river-rafting tourist resort, a perfect place for relief after mountain climbing.