Perched on Linglong Mountain’s slopes, where mist clings to 358-meter peaks, Wolong Monastery embodies a paradox: fragility and endurance. Since the Tang Dynasty, its halls have risen, burned, and risen again—each rebirth echoing the mountain’s jagged cliffs, carved by time yet unyielding.

The stone path tells the earliest story. Winding through nine bends beside a murmuring stream, its steps bear inscriptions from Song Dynasty travelers. Look west at the sixth bend: three characters—“Jiuzheyan” (Nine-Bend Rock)—etched by Su Shi himself. The poet-official’s 11th-century brushstrokes, bold as mountain ridges, mirror his praise for Linglong’s “white clouds piercing jade-like peaks.” Nearby, a waist-high boulder remembers his visit. Smoothed by centuries of pilgrims’ hands, the “Drunken Slumber Stone” still smells of rain and legend, where Su Shi once napped, wine-loosened, under pines.

War scarred these slopes. In the 1860s, Taiping Rebellion fires melted the monastery’s 10,000-jin bronze bell into weapons. Yet devotion outlasted violence. In 1881, monk Shoucheng rebuilt halls with bluestone and cypress beams. Decades later, Abbot Deqin recast the bell, its voice restored through donations from opera star Mei Lanfang and general Bai Chongxi.

Modern hands continue the dialogue. Abbot Yaoxuan’s 21st-century restorations expanded courtyards without erasing history. The gates still frame Su Shi’s portrait stele, carved in 1585—robed and serene, his gaze follows visitors past the couplet: “Mountains exquisite, waters exquisite, landscape exquisite; bells distant, towers distant, time distant.”