Fuguo Temple Wufeng Building
Tiered wooden pavilion shaped like five phoenixes, once the ritual heart of a Tibetan Buddhist monastery.
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About this audio guide
This guide to the Fuguo Temple Wufeng Building in Lijiang opens on a question: why, in sixteen seventy-nine, did Tibetan ritual horns suddenly fill a hall built for quiet meditation. It follows the building back to sixteen zero one, when it was a plain family shrine for the Mu clan, hereditary chieftains of the region, and traces the chieftain Mu Yi's decision to bring in lamas and reconsecrate it into the Karma Kagyu school. You'll hear how the tenth Karmapa presided here for thirty years, and how the traveler Xu Xiake once sat as a guest in this same courtyard decades earlier. Look up at the roof's twenty-four upturned eaves, said to suggest phoenixes taking flight.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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