Weiyu Mountain

Weiyu Mountain

Weiyu Mountain

In the Zhou Dynasty, the Taoist adept Liu Fenglin studied Taoism on Mount Song in Henan. After failing to create the elixir of immortality, he moved

to Juyi Mountain in Huangyan. He lost track of time there and eventually succeeded in refining the elixir. Riding a crane into the heavens, one of its feathers fell at the foot of the mountain. To commemorate Liu Fenglin, the locals renamed Juyi Mountain to Weiyu Mountain. The Dayou Palace was first built during the Liang Dynasty of the Southern Dynasties, with calligraphy by Xiao Ziyun, the National University Libationer, using Liu Fenglin’s honorific title “Dayou Zhenren” as the name of the palace. The Weiyu Mountain Cave behind the Dayou Palace is referred to in Taoist texts as the “Second Grotto-Heaven under Heaven,” also known as the “Dayou Kongming Cave.” Weiyu Mountain is no more than a hundred meters high and only about one kilometer long, but is world-renowned as the site of Liu Fenglin’s Second Grotto-Heaven. A poem by Du Fan, the Right Prime Minister of the Southern Song Dynasty, reads: “Do not marvel that the green mountain is small, / Its winding form has given the cave its fame. / The immortal rode his crane and departed, / Leaving traces in the boundless void.”