Mao Zedong Scaled the North Peak Three Times

Mao Zedong loved great mountains. His poems describe what he saw, felt and thought in Mount Lushan, Liupan Mountain and Jinggang Mountains. The chairman had a special liking for the West Lake in Hangzhou and its surrounding hills. Two of his poems describe his hiking experiences in Wuyun Mountain and North Peak. Today, a stele on the North Peak bears his poem relating his hiking in May, 1955.

Mao’s first visit to the North Peak occurred toward the end of 1953. He reached the Taoguang Temple at the middle of the mountain. On February 15, 1954, he hiked to the North Peak again via Jade Spring. On his way up, he passed the Phoenix Pavilion and the Peach Blossom Ridge. The views he had on his way up also included the Fan Ridge. When he reached the North Peak, the Beauty Peak loomed large nearby. Then he went down the mountain through the stairs in the south side. After he was back to the Liu Villa on the lake, he wrote the eight-line 40-character poem in a classical format. It was entitled “Looking Around at Surrounding Hills”. The names of the places he had passed or seen on that day appeared in the poem. One word was later changed to fit the rhyme requirements of the format. That’s why two versions of the poem exist nowadays.

Wang Fang, the director of the provincial public security administration, was the man in charge of the security work for the safety of Mao in Hangzhou. His memoirs published in 2006 give more details of Mao’s mountain hikes in Hangzhou and help readers understand the poem better.

The temple on the top of the North Peak is Lingshun Zen Temple, erected with other four Buddhist temples in close neighborhood by an Indian Monk in the Eastern Jin Dynasty (316-420). The temple gradually changed into the temple of the god of fortune in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). Emperor Kangxi and Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) wrote inscriptions for the fortune temple. It went to ruins in modern times. In 2005, the temple came back to the administration of the Buddhist Association. Master Monk Yinxu was put in charge of a restoration project. The Lingshun Temple opened to the general public on January 1st, 2006. To celebrate the 3rd anniversary of the temple’s returning to Buddhism, the temple made a batch of folding fans in the traditional style as gifts. One side of the fan presents a detail of a painting made by Li Song, an artist of the Southern Song Dynasty. The other side features Mao’s poem in his handwriting.