A MOUNTAIN doesnít have to be tall: as long as a deity dwells there, it will be famous.

This line by Tang Dynasty (618-907AD) poet Liu Yuxi describes how a not-too-steep mountain blessed with a deityís presence can stand out from the rest.

We now have such a deity, whose dwelling atop an urban ìmountainî in Beijing has intrigued and shocked the whole nation and made international headlines ó except that his ìmountainî is actually artificial rocks layered on the rooftop of a residential building.

Zhang Biqing, a self-styled acupuncture master, was reported to have illegally piled dozens if not hundreds of tons of rocks on the top of a 26-story residential building in Haidian District.

Peering from the rocks are windows and hidden under the rocks is the wooden structure of a villa that Zhang started to build in 2007. It was designated an illegal construction, costing around 900,000 yuan (US$145,162).

The monstrous weight of the rocks has caused cracks in the building. Whatís worse, five years of construction commotion, noise and dust badly jarred the nerves of Zhangís neighbors.

It was reported that Zhang had driven out all the property owners on the top story by buying their homes, so that he could proceed with the face-lift.

Naturally, residents lost sleep over the terrifying idea of being crushed to death by a caved-in roof and mountain of rocks.

A collapse would also injure neighbors and passers by. The whole project gravely endangers public safety. Itís a grotesque monument to vanity and a ticking time bomb.

Due to publicity, Zhang agreed to tear down his arcadia and demolition has already begun.

At last, the rooftop eyesore will be gone. But for years, Deity Zhang chose to ignore all the complaints. The neighbors he could not buy off, he intimidated and cowed into silence. He reportedly hit and harassed a septuagenarian for protesting against his castle in the air.

Flagrant defiance of law

This deity certainly isnít known for his benevolence, but for ruthlessness, and bad taste. With all the tree- and ivy-covered rocks, it looks as if the building wears a green hat.

In China, wearing a green hat is a sign of being cuckolded. In other words, master Zhang wears a gigantic green hat, and proudly so.

Ignorance, selfishness, recklessness ó you can say many things about him, but the core question is, who permitted him to build something in flagrant defiance of the law, a threat to public safety, in the first place?

Investigators from the Beijing urban management authorities reportedly paid several visits to Zhangís villa in the past five years and were invariably refused entry. The management of Zhangís complex turned a blind eye when large rocks were being off-loaded from trucks and carried by lift to the rooftop construction site.

Zhangís monstrosity and his intransigence are perhaps more attributable to his connections and influence than to official inaction.

Rumor has it that he is a political adviser of a Beijing district.

Grandiose titles

A Google check on his background reveals a string of titles: the vice president of World Natural Medicine Committee, president emeritus of the UKís Academy of Chinese Medicine, the inventor of the so-called qi jing school of acupuncture, said to cure neurological, muscle, joint and ligament disorders. He owns more than 10 acupuncture studios nationwide.

None of these entities may command the kind of power that their grandiose names suggest.

And the supposedly miraculous effects of his acupuncture is hype. Earlier media reports allege that master Zhangís qi jing therapy could only cure benign prostate ailments.

This is a shocking finding, with the potential of tossing him back into the ranks of ordinary mortals.

Worse, his expertise on prostate ailments hints at his earlier affiliations with the army of lao zhong yi, quacks who advertise cures of male genital disease in flyers often plastered on utility poles and in menís rest rooms.

Given his forged credentials, we cannot but wonder, what is the source of his arrogance? It is reported that he once warned a property manager not to cross him, citing a few celebrities among his visitors.

In a country where name-dropping sometimes works better than law, Zhangís keen awareness and astute use of guan xi has sown the seeds of fear in his neighbors, who decided to live with his excesses.

A friend who works at a local chai wei ban, or office for demolition of illegal buildings, once complained to me that they could only tear down the illegal constructions of poor households, who sleep five or six to a room of less than 10 square meters.

By contrast, they are powerless before illegal constructions whose owners are important, or claim to know somebody important.

Master Zhangís ascent from nobody to somebody is a microcosm of how brazenness and recklessness can sometimes be a recipe for quick success in China.

In the 1990s, he made a fortune by inventing and selling a type of shoes named after him, which are said to lower blood pressure. The shoes sold like hotcakes.

After a series of other questionable inventions, however, speculation arose over whether he was a superb doctor or a quack.

At some point, the media started to question his credibility, but unlike a few unfortunate, discredited fellow ìmasters,î he survived the probe.

Zhangís trajectory is reminiscent of Wang Lin, the disgraced qi gong master, who counted among his patrons such big names as Jack Ma Yun, chairman of e-commerce group Alibaba, action star Jet Li and actress Zhao Wei. Legend had it that Wang could conjure snakes out of thin air and pull off other jaw-dropping feats. But all those are now proved a sham.

While Wangís tricks, and those of his likes, are so cheap that few except the science cop Fang Zhouzi would bother calling their bluff, some supposedly wiser men somehow didnít see them through.

In China, the yearning for a long life is a centuries-old obsession that fueled such life-prolonging practices as breathing exercises, just as alchemists were ordered by emperors to create the elixir of immortal life. To some extent, Masters Zhang and Wang are the modern-day alchemists.

However, it is no secret that the secret of good health is a regular life of eating less and eating healthy, doing more exercises and not staying up late.

Too lazy to follow that secret, many choose a shortcut instead, by consulting qi gong or feng shui masters.

Another reason that fake masters like Wang Lin prosper is that he offered rare networking opportunities. Through him, his celebrity friends could socialize about their business and careers.

Considering Wangís friendship with disgraced ex-railway minister Liu Zhijun, he is a middleman for official-business interaction.

The slogan of reviving Chinese civilization has given a new lease of life to traditional arts such as qi gong.

The downfall of Wang Lin, and perhaps of Zhang Biqing in the coming days or weeks, is proof that a good but vaguely defined campaign is bound to be exploited by shady individuals.