As Mount Taishan is skyscraping, the imaginative ancient Chinese deemed it a ladder to Heaven. Mount Taishan is in east China, and the east is traditionally believed to be associated with growth, and be where yin alternates with yang. The east is associated with spring among the four seasons, and therefore becomes the source of life and the symbol of hope and auspiciousness. In the Han and Tang dynasties, “Mount Taishan” became the best vehicle for poets to convey their meditations on and great affection for life in poems.

Tang poets liked depicting Mount Taishan as an earthly Xanadu, and “Mount Taishan” became a poetic image. For example, Li Bai’s Mount Skyland Ascended in a Dream—A Song of Farewell is largely based on his experience of ascending Mount Taishan four years earlier, as he wrote in Touring Mount Taishan (II): “Riding a white deer early that morning, I ascended the Tianmen Mountain.” Li Bai had already ridden a white deer to tour a famous mountain, which is Mount Taishan.