Kunming Wanshou Palace

At the southern foot of Yuanbao Mountain, one kilometer from Heilongtan Park, Kunming Wanshou Palace stands on a quiet slope in Suan Village. This Taoist sanctuary grew from several older folk shrines, including Zisun Temple and Qingfeng An. In 1803, a village manager named Li Fu joined local residents to build Qingfeng An. Their project took more than ten years to complete, eventually covering ten mu of land with twenty halls and a theatrical stage.

Time and neglect wore the structures down until 1990, when a Taoist priest named Liao Dongming initiated a reconstruction. He renamed the site Wanshou Palace, expressing a collective wish for long life and blessings. A major government-backed expansion began in 2005. Workers finished the main gates and central halls in 2007, and completed the final ancestral and regional deity halls in October 2008.

The palace ascends the mountain in a tiered, vertical layout. Visitors enter through the Chaosheng Gate, a two-story structure with vermilion frames and traditional eaves. Its side walls bear the carved characters "Dao Follows Nature" and "Teaching through Actions." Inside the second courtyard, the Qunxian Relief Wall displays more than one hundred distinct immortal figures carved into the stone. At the center of the complex sits the Sanqing Hall, the grandest structure, which houses large statues of the Three Pure Ones. Surrounding it are smaller halls dedicated to deities like the mountain god, the medicine king, and the god of wealth, alongside the Cangjing Pavilion scripture library.

Today, Wanshou Palace remains an active monastery. Resident priests perform traditional rituals and play liturgical music. In 2011, the temple hosted fifteenth-generation successors of the Wudang Sanfeng Sect. These martial artists, including instructors like Li Chao and Jiang Lukui, taught Tai Chi, Qigong, and traditional martial arts to the public for free in the courtyard. Visitors find a quiet retreat here, where the scent of incense and the sound of wind chimes blend with the daily rhythms of a living community.