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Baima Longtan Monastery
Lijiang, Yunnan, China
At the southern foot of Lion Mountain, cold freshwater bubbles from a natural spring known as the Lion Breast Spring. In 1754, Lijiang's imperial magistrate, Fan Haoren, built a temple beside this pool, installing a Dragon King deity to pray for rain. War destroyed the original structure during the mid-nineteenth century. In 1882, local villagers pooled their resources to rebuild the sanctuary, leaving a physical record of community resilience.
The monastery faces east, its architecture climbing the mountain slope. In the upper courtyard, the main hall rests on a 1.04-meter-high stone platform. This rough timber-frame structure features a single-eave gable-and-hip roof. Inside, the scent of incense drifts past Tibetan-style murals and colorful tangkas. On the central altar, Shakyamuni Buddha sits flanked by Samantabhadra and Mahakala on the left, and Manjushri and Vaisravana on the right. The right wing of this courtyard serves as the residence for the seventeenth Dzongsar Living Buddha, while the lower courtyard operates as a Han Buddhist nunnery.
Human presence is carved directly into the stone. Embedded in the southern wall of the left wing are five smooth, white marble stelas. These stones preserve eleven Tang-style poems written by nineteenth-century Naxi scholars, including Yang Zhulu, Ma Ziyun, Sang Yingdou, and Niu Tao. Nearby, a stone monument commemorates Li Ruzhe, a local student who traveled to France to study law and died in Paris in 1917.
Outside, the circular spring pool, ten meters in diameter and bound by stone balustrades, feeds the neighborhood. The water flows into three sequential stone basins. Local residents preserve a strict ecological order here: they draw drinking water from the first pool, wash vegetables in the second, and clean laundry in the third. The rhythmic splash of this cascading water connects the spiritual quiet of the upper halls with the practical daily life of the streets below.
Today, the water still flows, the stone basins remain full, and the quiet chanting of nuns connects the modern traveler to centuries of shared community life.