Putuo Mountain, located outside Hangzhou Bay, Zhejiang Province, is a small island with an area of only 12.76 square kilometers. With undulating terrain and tortuous coast, the island has the beautiful scenery of seamounts surrounded by forests, caves, tidal sands, vast flood waves and clouds. The beautiful island scenery has won the praise of "seamount first" and "maritime fairy mountain". Since the Tang and Song Dynasties, the various myths and legends of "Guanyin Xiansheng" and the awards and gifts of emperors of previous dynasties have made it a Taoist place of Guanyin Bodhisattva with high incense, thus gaining the elegant title of "sea and heaven Buddha country".
In history, Putuo Mountain has been listed as one of the four famous Buddhist mountains in China together with Wutai Mountain in Shanxi, Emei Mountain in Sichuan and Jiuhua Mountain in Anhui. Although it has been repeatedly damaged and gone through vicissitudes, it has always had the same scenery and incense. Nowadays, with the implementation of religious policies and the development of tourism, the main temples and scenic spots on the island have been repaired one after another, and various tourism facilities are becoming more and more perfect. An island tourist resort characterized by famous Buddhist mountains appears in front of people.
Putuo Mountain is long and narrow, 8.6 kilometers long from north to South and 3.5 kilometers wide from east to west. The highest peak, Buddha top mountain, is 291 meters above sea level. Geologists believe that Putuo Mountain is a part of Cathaysian ancient land. It has been in the process of uplift for a long time since the Paleozoic. In the late Mesozoic, under the influence of Yanshan movement, a series of NNE and NW trending fault structures occurred, forming Horst and graben type fault block rise and fall, forming the prototype of Zhoushan Islands in China. Since the late Pleistocene (190000 years ago), it has been subjected to three sea immersion in varying degrees. The last sea immersion occurred in the middle of the Holocene. China's coastline moved from the Ryukyu Islands to the current position. Some valleys of the original Tiantai mountains became sea areas, and some peaks and ridges were exposed on the sea surface, forming Zhoushan islands including Putuo Mountain.
The rocks of the island mountain exposed to the sea in Putuo Mountain are mainly composed of acid potassium feldspar granite intruded by Yanshanian magma, and the edge is early neutral intrusion quartz diorite, which is distributed in the northwest of fanyindong and the island. Due to the periodic rise of the earth's crust, the development of fracture joints, seawater erosion and rock debris collapse, typical weathering, marine erosion and marine deposition landscapes have finally been formed in the whole island, creating strange peaks, strange rocks, different caves and Jinsha.
The mountains in the north of Putuo are surrounded by mountains to block the cold wind from the north; Jinsha is flat in the southeast, overlooking the blue waves of the East China Sea. There are many steep rock streams, ancient trees and beautiful trees on the mountain, and there are many cliff caves and clean beaches on the beach. The whole island has undulating peaks, beautiful outline, warm winter and cool summer climate, which is very pleasant.
Due to the exaggeration of religious mythology, every plant, stone and hole on Putuo Mountain is covered with the cloak of "Guanyin miracle". After the construction, reconstruction and expansion since the Tang and Song Dynasties, the temple buildings on the island have formed a "sea and sky Buddha country" system centered on Puji, Fayu and Huiji Buddhist temples. In its heyday, the island had more than 200 large and small temple buildings and more than 2000 monks and nuns.