Longhu Mountain Celestial Master Zhang Daoling

The Celestial Master Zhang Daoling founded Taoism. Zhang Daoling was extremely intelligent since he was a child and could read the Tao Te Ching at the age of seven. When he was a scholar of Taixue, he was well versed in the Five Classics, astronomy, geography, and Heluo prophecies. There were more than a thousand scholars from him. But he often lamented that the books he read could not solve the problem of life and death, so he abandoned Confucianism and studied the way of immortality. When Zhang Daoling was 26 years old, he served as an official of Jiangzhou (now Chongqing), but soon resigned and lived in seclusion in Beimang Mountain, Luoyang (now north of Luoyang, Henan), where he studied Taoism intensively. Emperor Zhang of the Han Dynasty and Emperor He of the Han Dynasty successively recruited him to serve as Taifu, Marquis of Jixian County, etc., But they all resigned. After that, Zhang Daoling began to travel around famous mountains and rivers, visiting Taoism and seeking immortality. First, he traveled south to the Huaihe River and lived in Tongbai Taiping Mountain. Later, he crossed the Yangtze River with his disciples Wang Chang and Zhao Sheng and went south to Yunjin Mountain in Guixi County, Jiangxi. Yunjin Mountain has beautiful mountains, clear waters and quiet scenery. It was the habitat of ancient immortals. Zhang Daoling lived in a cottage on the mountain and built an altar to refine elixirs. Legend has it that three years later, the magical elixir was completed and the dragon and tiger appeared, so the mountain was also called Longhu Mountain.