Kunlun- Chinese LocationLocation · Landmark"Mountain of the Immortals"

The Cosmic Mountain

Kunlun rises in the far west of the Chinese mythological world, a cosmic mountain so immense that its peaks pierce the heavens and its roots descend to the Yellow Springs. The Huainanzi describes it as rising eleven thousand li into the sky, its summit crowned by the Hanging Garden where the tree of immortality grows. Nine concentric rings of walls surround its heights, each tier more radiant than the last, the innermost wrought of jade. The Kaiming Beast guards the eastern approach with nine heads turning in all directions. To climb Kunlun uninvited is to court death.

The Shanhaijing describes Kunlun as the origin of rivers flowing in the four cardinal directions. The Yellow River springs from its slopes, flowing east to bring both fertility and devastating floods to the plains where Chinese civilization arose. The mountain's base is surrounded by the Ruo River, whose waters are so thin that not even a feather can float upon them, a final barrier ensuring no ordinary mortal can approach.

The Palace and the Peach Garden

Atop Kunlun dwells Xiwangmu, the Queen Mother of the West. Her palace of jade rises amid gardens of unearthly beauty, where fountains of liquid jade flow and flowers bloom in perpetual springtime. She presides over banquets for the immortals and maintains the registers of those who have achieved eternal life.

The Peach Garden grows on Kunlun's summit. These divine fruits require three thousand, six thousand, or nine thousand years to ripen, depending on which tier of the garden they occupy. Those who eat the three-thousand-year peaches gain immortality; those who consume the longer-ripening fruits achieve ever higher levels of transcendence. Once every great cycle, Xiwangmu hosts the Peach Banquet, to which all immortals are invited. In Journey to the West, Sun Wukong raided the garden and devoured the ripest fruits, an offense so grave that it helped precipitate his rebellion against heaven.

The Quest for Kunlun

King Mu of Zhou is the most famous mortal to have reached Kunlun. The Mu Tianzi zhuan records how this ancient king drove his chariot drawn by eight divine horses across vast deserts and mountain passes to the western mountains, where he met Xiwangmu and feasted with her beside the Turquoise Pond. She sang to him songs of longing for his return, and he pledged to come again after ruling his kingdom in righteousness. The mortal king returned to his duties and his mortality. The immortal queen remained on her mountain.

The archer Houyi also journeyed to Kunlun to seek Xiwangmu's elixir of immortality, an errand that led to the tragedy of Chang'e's flight to the moon.

The Guardians

The Shanhaijing catalogs the creatures that patrol Kunlun's slopes. The Kaiming Beast, a nine-headed creature with the body of a tiger, oversees the eastern approach. The Lu Wu, a tiger-bodied being with nine tails and a human face, patrols the lower regions and presides over the mountain's nine divisions. Within the boundaries, phoenixes nest in the trees and dragons coil around the peaks. Every creature on Kunlun partakes of the mountain's immortal nature.