China joined the World Heritage list in 1987 with six sites at once — the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Mogao Caves, the First Emperor's mausoleum, Zhoukoudian and Mount Taishan. Mount Taishan was inscribed under seven separate criteria, more than any other Chinese property, and its reference number 437 comes in ahead of the Great Wall's 438: China's true "number one" site is a mountain, not a wall. Two more surprises hide in this list. The three sites added together in 1992 — Jiuzhaigou, Huanglong and Wulingyuan — are all natural properties, so China's natural heritage story started earlier than most people assume. And of the four mixed cultural-and-natural sites China has, three (Taishan, Huangshan and Mount Emei with the Leshan Giant Buddha) sit inside this top twenty. Just missing the cut at number 21 is Beijing's Temple of Heaven, inscribed in the same 1998 session as the Summer Palace and separated from it by a single reference number.