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Show Tai Shan, Sacred Mountain of the East 717 ert Grosvenor Gift of an Emperor in 1572, a Stone Wall Encloses Tai Shan's Holy Granite Pinnacle This jagged outcropping is the Jade Emperor's Summit, once known as Father-in-Law Peak. Chinese say the rocks "fell from Heaven." Visitors in 1937 were Dr. Gilbert Grosvenor, Editor of the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE, and Mrs. Grosvenor. Though it was late spring, they had heavy coats, and a Chinese wore a quilt, for at Tai Shan's top they stand at 5,069 feet. Jade Emperor are the rocks of the true crest of the mountain, carefully herded within an octagonal railing (opposite). People call them "the rocks which fell from Heaven," but they are not meteoric. Pilgrims climb them and stand with triumphant "see me" grins. From the parapet of the temple there are sweeping views in all directions. To lodge for a night in the cool, often cold, clean guest room, with windows overlooking the world, to commune with brilliant stars, almost to enter the palace of Wen Chang, god of literature, in Ursa Major-that indeed is to be so divorced from all ordinary life as to enter for the time a true oriental heaven. The Isles of the Blest To the east, beyond range after range of mountains, lie the Isles of the Blest, where the sun rises. Who shall say I have not seen them, there in the dazzle of the first rays of light, where gold-edged cloud and mountain meet? Old and kindly priests are the spiritual offspring of long-haired anchorites, "who on honeydew have fed," winning the secrets of immortality by nearness to Nature. For one night at least, Tai Shan has written my name on the good side of the ledger. The late afternoon sun floods the southern plain with a glow of yellow, reminding one that the imperial color was the emblem of Earth. On the verge of a precipice which is now called Cliff of the Love of Life, but once was "Suicide Cliff," I was all atingle with the beauty spread out before me. Yet here, as the earlier name suggests, fatal decisions were carried out, until the law took its stand on the value of human life and put up a high wall along the brink, lettering it with an "It |
