Beautiful Monday: Mount Wuyi

The western part of Mount Wuyi (武夷山) has currently the world’s largest biodiversity of subtropical forests. There exists the most comprehensive, most typical and largest surface area of subtropical forest ecology, all located in the same latitude.

Where about? Mount Wuyi is located in the north western of Fujian Province (福建省), China. The mountain alone covers an area of 60 kilometers. In 1999, approximately 1000 kilometer square area surrounding the mountain had been declared as UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was said that the area was an ocean before. It was turned into an inland lake basin due to tectonic plate activities some 400 million years ago. After million years of evolving, now we have Mount Wuyi, one of the most outstanding biodiversity conservation zones in China and the world.

What is so beautiful? Besides its high diversity of floras and faunas, Mount Wuyi is also known for its typical sandstone landforms. The ancients used to describe Mount Wuyi as “水有三三胜，峰有六六奇” or “三三秀水清如玉，六六奇峰翠插天”, which means the Nine-Bend River (九曲溪) and 36 peaks revolving around the river. Among the most famous peaks is the Beautiful-Lady Peak (玉女峰). Due to its humid climate and high rainfall as well as relatively pollution free, Mount Wuyi is also well known in producing high quality tea, such as Da Hong Pao Tea or the Large Red Robe tea (大红袍, a kind of Oolong tea and the most famous of the Mount Wuyi teas) and Lapsang souchong (正山小种, a kind of black tea).

Peaks surrounding the Nine-Bend River

The Beautiful-Lady Peak

Pictures are taken from chinahighlights.com

The Beautiful Monday: Mount Wuyi by Life Is Like That, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Malaysia License.