Mt Heng Bei (Northern Sacred Mountain)

Sacred Daoist mountain in northern Shanxi. The Hanging Temple (Xuankong Si) is on its slope.

Mt Heng Bei — the Northern Sacred Mountain, Beiyue Hengshan — is the northernmost of China's Five Great Mountains (Wuyue), a Daoist designation that assigned cosmological significance to peaks at the five cardinal directions (with the centre at Mt Song in Henan). The northern peak, by convention, governs winter and water — the ritual logic of the system places the mountain in the context of the five elements and the seasons. The mountain rises to 2,016 metres in Hunyuan County, Shanxi, approximately 65 kilometres southeast of Datong.

The summit approach follows a trail through a landscape of granite outcrops, stone-carved steles, and small Daoist temple buildings that have accumulated on the slopes over more than a millennium of religious activity. A cable car provides an alternative ascent from the lower section. The summit temples — part of the Hunyuan Taoist heritage — include the main Northern Sacred Mountain temple complex that has been rebuilt repeatedly since the Han dynasty.

The mountain is most often visited as part of a Datong-area itinerary combining the Yungang Grottoes, the Hanging Temple, and Mt Heng in a two-day circuit. The Hanging Temple (Xuankong Si) sits on the lower slopes of the mountain range at Jinlong Gorge, about 5 kilometres from the main mountain park entrance — the two sites share the same scenic area entry fee. The mountain's independent visit character is less developed than some of the other Five Sacred Mountains (Taishan in Shandong, Huashan in Shaanxi), which have more extensive hiking infrastructure and visitor facilities; Mt Heng Bei rewards visitors primarily for the Datong cluster context rather than as a standalone destination.