Nanshan Mountain

This guide to Nanshan Mountain in Shenzhen returns to March 1279, when the Song dynasty's last stand collapsed at Yamen just off this coast, and its chancellor, Lu Xiufu, chose to carry the seven-year-old emperor Zhao Bing into the sea rather than surrender. It follows the tens of thousands of loyalists who died with them, and local tradition about where the boy's body came ashore. From the summit, it turns to Shenzhen Bay and the city that rose here centuries later. Look south from the peak for the same stretch of water the story turns on.