Your guide and driver will pick you up at about 8:00 am from your Huangshan downtown hotel and drive about 1 hour to Qiyun Mountain, one of the Four Sacred Mountains of Taoism. Its name Qiyun means “as high as the clouds” in Chinese although its highest peak is 585 meters. If you ever have chance to see the mountain shrouded in the sea of clouds, you wouldn’t say it doesn’t live up to its name. Upon arrival, we will take cable car up the mountain and start exploration. There is a Yuehua Street, also called “Heavenly Street”, sitting on the cliff. 30 households live here, and they are Taoists and their families. You will see white-walled and dark-tiled typical Hui-style houses mixed with Taoist architecture, which is a very unique and harmonious scene. It’s also a good place to enjoy Chinese calligraphy art. Many scholars, officials and artists left their writings on the cliffs from the Song Dynasty to the Republic of China. There are 537 pieces of steles scattered on the mountain including 305 cliff carvings. If you visit the mountain in November, you can see red leaves all over the mountain, and in April, you will have chance to see a large expanse of rapeseed flowers on the banks of the Hengjiang River at the foot of the mountain.

After descending from the mountain by cable car, we will have a lunch and then visit Wanan Compass Culture Museum and Huizhou Culture Museum. Wanan Compass Culture Museum was established by Wu Zhaoguang (an art master of Anhui Province and intangible cultural heritage inheritor) on the basis of his family’s two-century-old workshop. He is the eighth generation descendant of Wu Luheng Old Compass Shop. In ancient times, compass was mainly used for observing celestial bodies, checking feng shui, and giving ships directions. Compass requires high precisions, especially for navigation, because if there’s slight error in the needle, tragedy may happen. Your guide will show you around and see the process of making compass.