[1] Mount Mian is usually credited[a] as the place of the retreat where Jie Zhitui and his mother were burnt alive in a forest fire begun by his lord, Duke Wen of the state of Jin, in the 7th century BC.

[1] Duke Wen's remorse prompted him to erect a temple in Jie's honor, with sacrifices funded by designated lands in nearby Mianshang.

By the middle of the Han dynasty, people around Taiyuan Commandery were treating Jie as a tutelary deity and observing a taboo against lighting fires for five days around mid-winter.

[8] Commoners continued to ignore these provisions and to particularly revere a stand of blackened trees, one looking as though it were held in a man's arms, where various miracles were reported.

[9] A compromise under the Northern Wei was to restrict it to the area surrounding Mount Mian in 496[10] but its popularity was such that it continued to spread until it was observed by most of China under the Sui and transformed into the Tomb Sweeping Festival under the Tang and Song.

[1] During the collapse of the Sui and rise of the Tang, Li Shimin (later "Emperor Taizong") defeated Song Jingang in the Queshu Valley below Mount Mian, prompting the surrender of Yuchi Gong.

[12] At the end of the Ming, the military governor at Taiyuan retreated to Mount Mian to lead his ultimately unsuccessful defense of the area.

[12] During World War II, Zhang Dehan and Li Zhimin led Communist guerrillas against Japanese and Nationalists in the area.

[13] The second major Taoist rite to occur in mainland China after the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War—a Great Offering to the Entire Firmament (t 羅天大醮, s 罗天大醮, Luótiān Dàjiào)—occurred at Mount Mian in 2001.

[17] A study by researchers from Shanxi University the same year, however, found that the routes through the scenic area remained insufficiently interconnected with one another and should be further optimized to increase the resort's capacity.

[3] The Dragon Ridge Peak area includes a statue of Jie Zhitui with his mother, a Tang barracks, and a park with stone inscriptions about public health.

[19] Other sites in the valleys are the Shangfang Academy, the Five-Dragon Pine, the Lingyin Terrace, and the Tongtian Yunqu ("Cloud Thoroughfare Leading to Heaven").

[25] An area named after Princess Changzhao, a sister of Li Shimin who became a nun after experiencing a vision of the Buddha while visiting the mountain with the emperor in the spring of AD 641.

[26] During the Kangxi Era (17th–18th century), the local writer Liang Xiheng compared the sounds of the water drops to notes played on the Chinese zither.

[26] The Shuitao or Water Billowing Gully[20] includes the most picturesque natural scenery on Mount Mian, with its 16-kilometer (10 mi) path passing by and through thick forests and several dozen waterfalls.

[27] Other nearby sites are Rabbit Bridge; a cypress whose shape causes it to be known as the Wangbai Dragon; and medieval fortresses around Shile Village and Dongshen Palace.

Supposedly, his father Zhu Wusi had once come to the temples in the valley to worship Buddha and the other gods and returned to shower it with favor once his son ascended to the throne.

[28] Although Zhu had actually died before his son's enthronement, later Ming emperors visited Mt Mian to offer sacrifices and restore older temples.