Any number of different examples might be chosen to illustrate the Chinese feeling for natural beauty; but the most perfect expressions of that love were to seen on the slopes of the holy mountains where the Taoist hermitages clustered […] In their vicinity, moon-viewing pavilions hung above tremendous gorges filled with iridescent clouds of spray and echoing the muted thunder of the torrent far below. As to the main buildings, these were likely to be invisible from afar, being sheltered from the mountain winds by groves of massive pines and cedars or natural rock formations. The steep and winding approach might lead through what in autumn became a tunnel of gold and scarlet foliage; or in the warm south there might be massed clumps of bamboo and tall flowering shrubs such as pink and white oleander. Trees prized for their blossom – peach, pear, cherry, crab-apple or plum – rose from the midst of the little courtyards they shaded from the summer sun. The outer wall, following the contours of the ground with dragon-like undulations, might be pierced by occasional windows, one shaped like a bell, another like a vase, a maple leaf or a moon seen in its fullness.
John Blofeld (1978)