Special Supplement: Lush mountains, crystal rivers provide the scenic stuff of fables

If you read stories of the Monkey King, known to the Chinese as Journey to the West, a classic novel written by Wu Cheng'en (1500-1582) and finished during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), you may wonder where to find a place where freely roaming and frolicking monkeys attain supernatural powers and offer their services as apprentices to a grand monk on his pilgrimage to a fantasyland.

One place that fits the description is Mount Emei, about an hour and a half's drive from Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport.

Mount Emei is in a mountain range that includes many picturesque peaks. The scenic zone covers 154 sq km and has four mountains, all named "moth eyebrow" - what emei literally means in Chinese.