World Mixed Cultural and Natural Heritage: Mount Wuyi (4)

Mount Wuyi is also a renowned historic and cultural mountain. Ancient people once said, “Confucius of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, Zhu Xi of the Southern Song Dynasty, Mount Taishan in the north, and Mount Wuyi in the South.” Mount Wuyi’s cultural landscapes and its historical deposits accumulated in the past 4,000 years are both rich and distinctive. The mountain was a multi-cultural area where the ancient Min nationality culture, Min Yue nationality culture, idealist philosophy culture, tea culture, and religious culture mixed together. Zhu Xi, the idealist philosopher of the Southern Song Dynasty once lived there for over 40 years. He established schools, gave lectures, wrote books and established theories there and made it the cultural center of China’s southeastern regions. Zhu’s idealist philosophy once played a dominant role for many centuries in many East Asian and Southeast Asian countries, and affected a large part of the world in the philosophical and political realms.

Mount Wuyi currently still has many temples that are related to Zhu’s idealist philosophy, and visitors can also see the relics of the academies established in the 11th century. The current practical evidence includes the Cold Spring Study Room established by Zhu, the “General Liu’s Memorial Tablet” composed and written by Zhu, the inscriptions written by Zhu, and other idealist philosophers from different dynasties, and Zhu’s tomb. In Taoism, the mountain was also called the “16th Heaven.” In the past dynasties, scholars and writers wrote over 2,000 complimentary articles and engraved over 400 stone statues and cliff inscriptions. People have worked and lived on Mount Wuyi for over 4,000 years and the unique regional “ancient Min nationality culture” gradually formed over its long history.