Mount Penglai
mystical land in Chinese mythology
Penglai (Chinese: 蓬萊仙島; lit. 'Penglai Immortal Island') is a legendary land of Chinese mythology. It is known in Japanese mythology as Hōrai and Bồng Lai in Vietnam.
Location
According to the Classic of Mountains and Seas, the mountain is located at the eastern end of Bohai Sea. According to the pre-Qin mythology which retells the legend of Xu Fu presenting a memorial to the Qin Emperor in order to seek for the elixir of life, there are three godly mountains which are found in the Bohai sea where immortals reside. These mountains are Penglai, Fāngzhàng (方丈), and Yíngzhōu (瀛洲/瀛州). Other islands where immortals reside are called Dàiyú (岱輿) and Yuánjiāo (員嬌).
In the Illustrated Account of the Embassy to Goryeo in the Xuanhe Era (Chinese: 宣和奉使高麗圖經; Xuanhe fengshi Gaoli tujing), written in 1124 by Xu Jing (徐兢), Mount Penglai is located on an inhabited island which is found within the boundaries of Changguo prefecture and can be reached "after crossing thirty thousand leagues of the Weak Water".
Various theories have been offered over the years as to the "real" location of these places, including Japan, Nam-Hae (南海), Geo-Je (巨濟), Jejudo (濟州島) south of the Korean Peninsula, and Taiwan. Penglai, Shandong exists, but its claimed connection is as the site of departures for those leaving for the island rather than the island itself.
“Mount Penglai” enters the record as mystical land in Chinese mythology. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Mount, Penglai and mystical can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mount Penglai” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.