Yu Shan or Yushan, also known as Mount Jade, Jade Mountain, Tongku Saveq or Mount Niitaka during Japanese rule, is the highest mountain in Taiwan at 3,952 m (12,966 ft)[1][2] above sea level, giving Taiwan the 4th-highest maximum elevation of any island in the world.

The name derives from its appearance in the winter, when its thick snow cover is thought to make its peak look like stainless jade.

[3] "Yushan" or Jade Mountain was also the name of a location in ancient Chinese mythology, a paradise said to be the home of the Queen Mother of the West.

Even as “recently” as the late Paleozoic (some 250 million years ago), the land here was still but a sedimentary seabed layered with silt and sand.

As the two plates began pressing against each other, the land buckled, bent, and created the landscape – 165 mountains higher than 3,000 m (9,800 ft) above sea level on a relatively small island (38th largest in the world).

[7] As recently as seventeen thousand years ago, permanent ice caps existed throughout Taiwan's highest mountains and extended owing to the wet climate down to 2,800 m (9,190 ft); whereas currently, the nearest glaciers to the Tropic of Cancer are in Mexico on the Iztaccíhuatl volcano.

The east peak rises to a height of 3,869 m (12,694 ft) and is considered one of Taiwan's Ten Major Summits (十峻).

The North Peak is also home to Taiwan's highest permanently occupied building, the Yushan weather station, where visitors are sometimes welcomed.

[13] All of the above vegetation variations can be seen in the Yushan area from low foothills to high summits with an elevation difference of 3.6 km (2.2 mi).

Because of these wide climatic and vegetation variations, this environment nurtures the richest and most diversified wildlife in Taiwan.

It is almost an encyclopedia of Taiwan's ecological systems, a geological museum and an important habitat of one-third of Taiwan's endemic species, such as: Under the Qing Dynasty, W. Morrison, captain of the American steam freighter Alexander, sighted the mountain while departing from Anping Harbor (present-day Anping, Tainan) in 1857.

Under the Japanese, the anthropologists Torii Ryūzō and Ushinosuke Mori became the first people recorded to summit the mountain in 1900.

[18] Similarly, an asteroid discovered by National Central University's Lulin Observatory on 28 December 2007 was named "Yushan" in honor of the mountain.