Every chinese or overseas visitor enjoys climbing to the top of Mt. Emei——the golden summit more than 10,000-feet-high. The mountain itself is shrouded in the ever-hanging cloud of fog. Fir trees, pines and cedarsclithe the slopes; lofty crags, cloud-kissing precipices, butterflies and azaleas together form a nature reserve of sorts. At the golden summit one stands above the fog and gets a beautiful view, especially in the early morning when mountaintops are bathed in the radiance of the rising sun. Late in the tare afternoon the viewers may see the magic light,which appears as a multicolored ring of light in the sky with the shadow of the viewer moves. 
This light phenomenon was traditionally known as buddha's aureole or the emei buddhist glory. Actually it is a rainbow ring, produced by tefraction of water particles that attach themselves to a person's shadow in a cloudbank below the summit. Devout buddhists, thinking this was a call from yonder,used to jump off the cliff of self-sacrifice in the belief that they would thus encounter puxian. So during the Ming and Qing dynasties officials set up iron poles and chain railings to prevent suicides.