Mount Song­shang is con­sid­ered to be the cen­tral sacred moun­tain of Chi­na. At the foot of this 1500 metre high moun­tain, close to the city of Dengfeng in Henan province and spread over a 40 square-kilo­­me­tre cir­cle, stand eight clus­ters of build­ings and sites, includ­ing three Han Que gates — remains of the old­est reli­gious edi­fices in Chi­na -, tem­ples, the Zhougong Sun­di­al Plat­form and the Dengfeng Obser­va­to­ry. Con­struct­ed over the course of nine dynas­ties, these build­ings are reflec­tions of dif­fer­ent ways of per­ceiv­ing the cen­tre of heav­en and earth and the pow­er of the moun­tain as a cen­tre for reli­gious devo­tion. The his­tor­i­cal mon­u­ments of Dengfeng include some of the best exam­ples of ancient Chi­nese build­ings devot­ed to rit­u­al, sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy and edu­ca­tion.