Yaowang Mountain

Yaowang Mountain, on the eastern edge of Tongchuan's Yaozhou District, is dedicated to Sun Simiao, the Tang Dynasty physician and Taoist known as the "Medicine King." The mountain is topped with a temple complex of caves, pavilions, and stele halls containing inscriptions going back to the Tang. The cave temples are carved into the cliff face in a style reminiscent of the Longmen Grottoes but on a smaller, more intimate scale. The stele forest contains medical prescriptions and philosophical texts alongside the usual imperial proclamations.

The mountain is an active place of both Taoist veneration and medical pilgrimage — people come seeking blessings for health and recovery, and the incense smoke is nearly continuous. The views from the top over the Yaozhou District and the plateau landscape to the north are good. Allow two to three hours for the whole site, including the climb and the cave temples.

things to do sight
A story
Sun Simiao, the Tang Dynasty physician venerated here, wrote the Qianjin Yaofang — "Thousand Ducat Prescriptions" — a thirty-volume pharmacopoeia that systematised Chinese medicine and remained in clinical use for centuries. He is said to have lived on this mountain into extreme old age — some accounts claim to 101, others to 141 — treating patients, cultivating medicinal herbs, and writing. His statue on the summit holds a prescription scroll in one hand and looks out over the plateau below with the confident expression of someone who has seen enough cases to know exactly what he is doing.