The mountain now officially recognised as Beiyue is not the one that held that title for most of Chinese history, a rare case of a sacred designation itself being administratively relocated.
A title that moved
For centuries, the northern of the Five Great Mountains was identified with a peak in what is now Hebei province, near Quyang. In the seventeenth century, under the Qing dynasty, the official designation of Beiyue was shifted to the current mountain near Hunyuan in Shanxi, a formal administrative relocation of sacred status between two different physical mountains rather than a gradual shift in popular devotion.
A temple that seems to defy gravity
Nearby, the Hanging Temple, built directly into a cliff face and supported partly by slender wooden crossbeams inserted into the rock, houses shrines to Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian figures within the same small structure, an architectural rarity that draws considerable attention independent of the mountain's own more understated temple complexes.
Quiet by comparison
Beiyue receives markedly fewer visitors than several of the other Great Mountains, a combination of its relatively recent redesignation, its less dramatic scenery compared to peaks such as Hua, and its more remote location, leaving it a comparatively overlooked member of a group whose other mountains draw far larger crowds.