Mount Heming (Crane-Call Mountain)鹤鸣山
- Type
- Daoist Sacred Mountains
- Location
- China · Sichuan · Dayi, Chengdu · Heming township, Dayi County, about 70 kilometers from Chengdu
- Coordinates
- 30.66, 103.43 Map ↗
- School
- Way of the Celestial Masters (Tianshi Dao), Way of the Five Pecks of Rice (Wudoumi Dao), Zhengyi (Orthodox Unity) Daoism
- First built
- Eastern Han, first year of Han'an under Emperor Shun (142) · Here Zhang Daoling received the Zhengyi mengwei zhi dao from the Supreme Venerable Sovereign and founded the Way of the Five Pecks of Rice — the birthplace of organized Daoism
- Heritage status
- Sichuan Provincial Cultural Heritage Site
Overview
Mount Heming is the birthplace of organized Daoism. According to the Records of the Three Kingdoms, the Book of the Later Han, and Daoist scriptures, in the first year of Han'an (142) under Emperor Shun of the Eastern Han, Zhang Daoling studied the Dao at Mount Heming (also written Mount Huming) in Shu Commandery, claiming that the Supreme Venerable Sovereign (Laojun) had descended to bestow on him the Zhengyi mengwei zhi dao (正一盟威之道, the Way of Orthodox Unity and the Covenant of Awesome Power). He composed Daoist scriptures, established the Twenty-four Parishes, and founded the Way of the Five Pecks of Rice (also called the Way of the Celestial Masters), whose followers contributed five pecks of rice as tribute. Mount Heming has since been regarded as one of the "ancestral courts" of Daoism; successive dynasties built the Tianshi Hall, the Shangqing Palace, and the Taiqing Palace there, and in the Ming dynasty Zhang Sanfeng once cultivated the Dao on the mountain. The site was destroyed by warfare at the end of the Ming and beginning of the Qing; some halls still stood during the Republican era, and reconstruction proceeded from the 1980s onward, culminating in the completion of the "Sacred City of the Source of the Dao" in the 2000s. The mountain today preserves the Yingxian Pavilion, the Tianshi Hall, the Sansheng Palace, the Taiqing Palace, and Zhang Sanfeng's Study, among other structures, with Han-dynasty cliff tombs and Three Kingdoms-era cliff inscriptions nearby. It is now a Sichuan provincial cultural heritage site.
Highlights
- Tianshi Hall
- Sacred City of the Source of the Dao
- Yingxian Pavilion
- Zhang Sanfeng Relics
- Commemoration of the Founding of the Faith in the First Year of Han'an