Running a small restaurant on Mount. Lushan, Yu Hongxing has found little trace of the political influence that used to crown the mountain decades ago.

"People come to Lushan just for a cool and comfortable vacation, and not many really clear about what had happed here in the past," said Yu, 30, who also works as a part-time tour guide.

Located in east China' s Jiangxi Province, Lushan has long been known for its cool climate, wooded hills and glistening waters. But different from other mountain reserves, Lushan has on its top a small town of 120,000 people, with most of them relying their life on tourism.

When there are not many guests, Yu will leave the restaurant business to his wife and stroll around the mountain, trying to offer guide service to tourists for an extra 50 yuan (US$7.4) a day. If lucky enough, tourists will eat at his restaurant, too.

He also makes a deal with the cableway company on the mountain. For each person he brings to take a cable car, he will get two to four yuan (US$0.59) as a kickback.

"I can tell some (of the tourists) don't like us. But it's getting more difficult to make money now, so we have to try more possible ways, just like businessmen in other scenic areas," said Yu, father of a nine-year-old daughter.

The difficulties are partly from a sightseeing bus project implemented since May. The planners, determined to restore the mountain's historic and environmental glory, have bought 110 Toyota Coasters shuttling on two sightseeing routes to cover all the major scenic spots.

The new traffic system has made Yu's catering business more costly, as no private cabs, travel agencies' buses and other automobiles from outside Lushan, including trucks from the vegetable market, are allowed to run on the mountain during the daytime. He has to get up before dawn and rent a car on the mountain to carry meat and vegetables back before 7:00 AM.

"Developed as a summer resort much earlier than other mountains, Lushan has good roads for driving almost everywhere, but increasing cars have grown to be a big threat to the mountain's beauty and quietness," said Cui Feng, an officer in charge of the economy, trade and traffic with the Lushan administrative bureau.

The development can be tracked back to the end of the 19th century, although a devastating era of invasion by western powers had just started in China at that time.

To escape the hot season by the Yangtze River, foreigners fled to Lushan on its southern bank. Edward Selby Little, an English missionary, was the first to come. He rented a large area of land on the mountain in 1895, where he developed and sold real estates as summer villas.

Little named the new place Kuling, implying "cooling" , which later formed the current Guling town. He might not have thought that this ideal summer retreat would get bustling with cabs run by Guling residents, tourists' own cars and travel agencies' buses one day.

"Many make a better living because of Lushan, just as the cab drivers. But people have rested too much upon the mountain's past fame and thought too little about how to protect the mountain and how to develop its tourism economy in an environmental and scientific way," Cui Feng said.

He has been advocating to promote unified sightseeing buses with less emissions for more than 10 years, but confronted a lot of setbacks. Some worry the shuttle buses, running in an interval of every five or 10 minutes, leave too little shopping time for tourists and will dampen the local economy.

"It' s normal to have some complaints from souvenir stores and travel agencies at the beginning," he said, "but the project will benefit the mountain and the tourists in the long term, with better traffic management, less automobiles and clean air."

To launch the project, the Lushan administrative bureau cleared more than 200 automobiles on the mountain, mostly cabs not up to the state emission standards. It purchased the automobiles and offered each owner an annual compensation of 8,000 to 16,000 yuan (US$2,353) for lost profits according to the automobiles' remaining years after depreciation. Aside from the sightseeing buses, the bureau is also planning to relocate part of the Guling residents to a new town at the foot of the mountain in a couple of years to ease the environmental pressure.

Cui Xiaoyi, deputy director of the publicity department of the Lushan administrative bureau, said 1,000 mu (67 hectares) of land has been allocated for the new town, where 1,000 apartments, a school, a tourism service center and a re-employment center are currently under construction. Later it will have 4,000 to 5,000 new apartments in total.

Those living near water sources or in core scenic areas and old villas on the mountain will be among the first to move due to the urgent need for preservation. "Officials and cadres will take the lead in moving," Cui said.

The 683 western-style villas left by Edward Selby Little and his followers used to be Lushan's most precious attractions. Among them, the most famous one is Meilu Villa, which had housed both Mao Zedong, former top leader of the Communist Party of China (CPC), and Chiang Kai-shek, former leader of Kuomintang. The two were old rivals during the three-year civil war till the founding of new China in 1949.

Chiang Kai-shek and Soong Mei-ling, the then first couple of the country, spent many summers on Lushan between the 1930s and 1940s. After 1949, all the villas were converted to be state properties. Mao Zedong, showing an usual favor over Lushan, hosted three plenary meetings of the CPC central committee on the mountain, remembered as Lushan meetings, from 1959 to 1970.