In 535 BC, King Ling of Chu built a pleasure palace on a high terrace in Jingzhou, demanding his courtiers starve themselves to fit his obsession with slender waists. This transition from royal indulgence to Buddhist sanctuary represents a profound shift in the soil of Hubei Province, where Zhanghua stands as one of the Three Great Buddhist Jungles.

The human imprint on this ground is deep. Around 618 AD, early monks built simple thatched huts on the palace ruins to meditate. In 1325, during the Yuan Dynasty, a monk named Wukai established a formal temple here after dreaming of a sacred relic. Decades later, in 1402, the deposed Jianwen Emperor fled here disguised as a monk, seeking refuge under the boughs of a ginkgo tree that still stands today, its golden leaves carpetting the ground each autumn. In 1905, Abbot Jingyue traveled to Beijing to lecture before the imperial court, returning with a fourth-rank official title, a complete imperial Dragon Sutra, and half a set of royal guard-of-honor regalia.

The architecture reflects these layers of survival. The Grand Hall features a single-eave gable-and-hip roof, built with simple support bars instead of traditional interlocking brackets. Inside, three massive Buddha statues are carved from a single, aromatic camphor tree. Behind it, the Jade Buddha Hall houses two smooth, cool white jade Buddhas gifted by the King of Myanmar. Nearby, the modern Guanyin Ganlu Pagoda rises 66.88 meters, its fifty-six bronze wind bells chiming in the breeze.

Four ancient treasures anchor the monastery to its past. The ancient plum tree, planted during the Chu State era, still releases its sweet scent in the winter cold. The Chenxiang Well, lined with agarwood, yields fragrant water. The 1,400-year-old ginkgo tree and a collection of weathered stone steles record centuries of destruction and rebirth, including the temple's temporary conversion into a factory during the mid-twentieth century. Today, the factory is gone, and the quiet chanting of monks has returned to the ancient terrace.