Lushan National Park

Time for my first review! I didn’t start writing my own reviews because a lot has been told about most of the WHSs by fellow WH lovers, and there’s really not much to add. Great job, guys! However, judging from the only reviews on Lushan by Els and Stanislaw, I suspect that most people might have missed the highlights of this site, and feel obliged to share my experience with it. Hopefully it will give you an alternative perspective of this great mountain that has become an integral part of Chinese culture over 2,000 years of history.

First, some background information. The name of Lushan was first used in Shiji (Records of the Grand Historian) around 94 BC, to describe the shape of the mountain as dwelling of the immortals. Since then, countless literary works have depicted and praised this mountain, and many architecture and inscriptions have been added to it. If there was tourism in ancient China, Lushan would have been a top 5 destination. Lushan served briefly as the summer capital of Republic of China in the 1930s and witnessed several important conferences of the Chinese Communist Party in the second half of the 20th century.

Before we start, I need to point out that tourism in Lushan is rather poorly administered and causes quite some confusion even for Chinese visitors. If you arrive by train, you should get off at the station of Jiujiang instead of the station of Lushan (a typical complexity caused by …

Visited June 2017. Lushan National Park is located in the northern part of Jiangxi province and can be easily reached from the city of Jiujiang; there are many buses and minibuses from the long-distance bus station, at least one every hour till 6 pm. (Jiujiang is also a good starting point for the trip to Poyang Lake/Nature Reserve, on Chinese tentative list, already deferred at the beginning of ’80, and re-submitted in 1996.) The entry fee for the park is 180Y – you have to pay it while still in the bus, at the main gate to the park. The bust stop is located in Gulingzhen village, where there are also many places where you can spend a night or two (we slept in one of these old villas and recommend choosing a villa instead of hotels), shops and restaurants. By the bus station you’ll see a huge tourist information centre with a very big UNSESCO sign above the entrance and… no one speaking English, French or any other language but Chinese.

The park is pretty big and if want to get as more as possible from it, you’ll at least two days. But if you just want to thick it on your list, one day is enough to see the most important places/monuments, but be ready for a long and sometimes very steep walking. You can hire a taxi but remember that here everything is more expensive than anywhere else in the area or take one of two tourist …

(Mount) Lushan can be accessed by a 22 kilometer long curved road from Jiujiang. Lushan is an eclectic site, and not having found much information about it in my guidebook or on the internet, I started by buying a map at the local bookstore. It had many places marked on it but I could find only a couple of the sites named in the WH nomination.

As I have seen enough of sacred mountains (and their cable cars and turtle rocks) over the past weeks, I decided to focus on Lushan’s villas. These were built here from 1895 onwards by Europeans and Americans, turning Guling (the little town on Mount Lushan) into an internationally known summer resort.

The Meilu villa is the one closest to the bus station. It was constructed in 1903 by a Lord Reynolds and later used by Chang Kai-shek. You can get inside. Further down the road, there are many other fine villas, like the Williams house and notably the group built by American missionaries. Walking around in this area does feel like you’re not in China anymore (the traffic in and around town is pleasantly low too).

On the other side of the valley there are more natural or traditional Chinese sights. What to think of the Three Ancient Trees? The three (one gingko and two cryptomeria) were reportedly planted in the 3th-5th century and stand now 39 meters tall.

A subject only slightly touched at the ICOMOS evaluation of this …