The sea of clouds — twisted pines and granite peaks
Huangshan (Yellow Mountains) in Anhui Province is the mountain that shaped 1,000 years of Chinese ink-wash painting — a UNESCO World Heritage Site of razor-edged granite peaks jutting through a rolling sea of cloud, with ancient twisted Huangshan pine trees growing improbably from sheer rock faces. The mountain has four distinct seasons of spectacle: spring cherry blossom, summer green, autumn foliage, and winter rime ice.
Huangshan has been celebrated in Chinese poetry and art since the Tang dynasty (618–907 AD), when Li Bai wrote about its peaks. The mountain was named after the legendary Yellow Emperor (Huangdi), who is said to have achieved immortality here. By the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) it was the center of the Xin'an school of painting, which codified the misty-mountain aesthetic that defines classical Chinese landscape art — and influenced everything from Japanese woodblock prints to modern fantasy illustration.