The Cloud Step Bridge, stretching over the Tongtian River, stands about one kilometer away from the Halfway Gate to Heaven. It is a well-known sight of Mountain Taishan.
The Bridge is a one-arch stone construction. The pavilion to the east of the bridge, named “The Pavilion for Watching Waterfalls”, is also made of stone. The river valley to the north rises steeply and the stone cliff leans forward while the rapid waterfalls pass. In the flood season, tourists walking on the bridge are usually surrounded by fog and mist and feel like they are walking in the clouds.
The ancients once praised it like this “in the clear weather of June one feels rainy here, late at night in quietness the stream itself plays and performs the bowstring”. They meant it was a sort of fairyland. The rocky level ground under the Cloud Step Bridge is very wide, and is called “the Imperial Tent's Pitching Spot”. It is said that in the year when Song Zhenzong, an emperor of the Song Dynasty, came to Mountain Taishan to make a pilgrimage and bestow honorable titles on it, he loved the place and set that up a tent to rest. Up to now one can see that the tent pitching spots still exist on the level ground. At the north of the Imperial Tent's Pitching Spot, a rock as big as a house lies on the left of the winding mountain paths. Since no one knows where it came from, some people have inscribed three words “the flying stone”.
At the side of the rock there are the famous “Fifth Rank Pines” where Qinshihuang, the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty, conferred on the pine trees the “Fifth Rank” title of the nobility for their meritorious services in protecting the emperor from rain. |
Asia Travel 
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