Busan

Mount Fux

The "Records of the Grand Historian • Annals of the Five Emperors" states that the Yellow Emperor once "drove out the barbarous tribes to the north and held a covenant at Mount Fux." The "covenant of symbols" was an ancient and long-standing Chinese ritual involving the unification of symbolic tokens to seal alliances, frequently mentioned in historical texts and supported by unearthed artifacts. These tokens were made from various materials such as bamboo, wood, jade, stone, gold, and copper, among others; Mount Fux was the site where the Yellow Emperor and representatives of various tribal groups held the covenant — the place where they unified their tokens and formed a shared alliance. The Covenant of Mount Fux marked an important milestone in Chinese history, signifying the preliminary establishment of the foundation of the Huaxia people, the precursors of the Han Chinese, and the initial emergence of the Chinese nation. Through this covenant at Mount Fux, the major ancient tribal groups completed their initial integration. The Yellow Emperor also rose from being a tribal leader to the leader of a tribal confederation, becoming the Son of Heaven — the common ruler of all vassal states and the sovereign whom all nations obeyed. He led his people away from a nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle and into an era of settled farming and domestication of livestock.

The early ancestors and their cultures were further integrated, eventually giving rise to the splendid Chinese civilization. The Yellow Emperor thus became the common cultural ancestor of the Chinese nation. Innovations such as sericulture, boats and carts, writing, music theory, medicine, and mathematics all originated during the Yellow Emperor’s era. Therefore, Mount Fux is regarded as the starting point of China’s great unification, the foundational site of the five-thousand-year-old Chinese civilization, and the birthplace of the Chinese nation. However, the exact location of "Mount Fux" remains a topic of heated debate and no consensus has been reached. Over the past two years, an independently funded research team composed of private individuals has conducted on-site investigations of five locations currently highlighted in historical and literary sources as being named "Mount Fux."

Exact location: 30 kilometers from the urban area of Xushui County, Hebei Province