Birthplace of Shaolin Kongfu

Mount Songshan	Mount Songshan

Mount Songshan is located in Dengfeng County, in the Henan province of the People Republic of China. The highest peak is 1440 m. It got its fame from being the place where the Indian monk Batuo founded the Shaolin temple in 495 B.C. Few years later in 527 A.D. another Indian monk, Damo (or Bodhidharma) moved to the temple to teach the Chan sect of Buddhism, best known as Zen Buddhism (Zen is the way Japaneses read the Chinese ideogram for Chan). Buddhism was been already introduced in China during the first century B.C., but the many cultural differences between India and China made the strict Hinayana form to be not well accepted. The Chan version was instead more adapt to the Chinese culture and became rapidly the most influential Buddhist school in China.
The magnificent Songshan Mountain towers on the plain between Zhengzhou and Luoyang, consisting of the peaks of Taishi and Shaoshi. Zhongyue (the Central Sacred Mount) Temple at the front of Taishi was first built in the Qin Dynasty (221-207 B. C.) and was renamed in the Northern Wei period (386-534). A Taoist temple, it has 11 gates leading to the final Imperial Library. In the temple, there are 300 ancient cypresses, and more than 100 metal-cast statues and stone tablets. Shaolin Temple at the foot of Shaoshi was first built in the Northern Wei period, and has long been renowned worldwide for kongfu, or Chinese martial arts. There are 230 brick dagobas, the largest of its kind in China, erected during the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties.