Mount Jiuhua

Jiuhua is the seat of Ksitigarbha, and it has a different atmosphere from the other three Chinese Buddhist mountains for a reason that is doctrinal.

The vow

Ksitigarbha, Dizang in Chinese, vowed not to attain buddhahood until the hells are empty. He is the bodhisattva who goes where the dead are, including to the worst of the destinations, and does not leave.

The consequence is that Jiuhua is a mountain of mourning. Families come to make offerings for dead relatives, to transfer merit to them and to seek their release from unfavourable rebirths.

The tone on the mountain is closer to a cemetery than to a tourist attraction, and visitors expecting the festival atmosphere of Emei or Putuo find something quite different.

Jin Qiaojue

The founding event is dated to 719, when a Korean monk of the kingdom of Silla, said to have been of royal blood and known in Chinese as Jin Qiaojue, arrived and settled on the mountain to meditate.

He is said to have lived there seventy-five years and died at ninety-nine. When his body was found not to have decayed, the community took this as evidence that he had been an incarnation of Ksitigarbha, and enshrined the remains.

Mummies

That episode began a practice that has continued on the mountain: the bodies of eminent monks judged to be incorrupt are preserved, lacquered, gilded and enshrined for veneration.

Several such whole-body relics are on the mountain, some of them modern. They are not embalmed in the Egyptian sense; the tradition holds that the preservation is a consequence of the monk's attainment, and monks who are candidates are placed in sealed jars after death and examined after a period of years.

Scale

Ninety-nine peaks, a number matching the age at which Jin Qiaojue is said to have died, the highest at one thousand three hundred and forty-two metres. A hundred-metre Ksitigarbha statue stands below.

At its Ming and Qing height the mountain carried some three hundred and sixty temples and several thousand monks and nuns. It reopened to visitors in 1979 after the Cultural Revolution.

Pilgrimage from Korea, Japan and Southeast Asia is heavy, and the Korean connection through Jin Qiaojue is actively maintained.

A correction worth making

Jiuhua is very often described as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is not. It holds a UNESCO Global Geopark designation, which is a different programme with different criteria, and the confusion is widespread enough to be worth stating plainly.

Some of the monks associated with Jiuhua's tradition of holiness are still physically present on the mountain, preserved rather than buried.

Self-mummification and preservation

Jiuhua is known for the practice, documented at several of its temples, of preserving the bodies of eminent monks after death, in some cases following ascetic practices before dying intended to aid natural preservation, and in others through post-mortem treatment. These preserved remains, sometimes lacquered and gilded, are displayed seated in shrine halls and venerated by pilgrims as flesh-body bodhisattvas, treated as a continuing physical presence of the monk's spiritual attainment rather than as relics of a departed teacher in the ordinary sense.

A Korean prince becomes a mountain deity

The mountain's association with Ksitigarbha, the bodhisattva who vows to empty the hells before accepting enlightenment himself, traces largely to the story of a Korean prince, Kim Qiaojue, who is said to have practised austerities at Jiuhua for decades before his death in the eighth century and was subsequently venerated as an earthly manifestation of Ksitigarbha, his own preserved body reportedly becoming one of the mountain's early examples of the practice.

A mountain oriented toward death and merit

Because Ksitigarbha is specifically associated with aiding the dead and beings in hell realms, Jiuhua's temples and rituals lean heavily toward funerary merit-making, distinguishing its devotional character from the wisdom or compassion orientation of China's other three major Buddhist mountains.