Wenfeng Temple

This guide to Wenfeng Temple in Lijiang goes back two hundred fifty years, to a traveling Tibetan lama who arrived carrying only a grand title and one request: money from the local Qing magistrate, Guan Xuexuan, to expand a modest shrine into the supreme Kagyu academy of northwestern Yunnan. It follows the fundraising drive that took five years, and how the monastery grew into the largest in Lijiang prefecture, with five main halls, twenty-four courtyards and hundreds of resident monks. Above the temple sits a spring-fed cave where monks once sealed themselves away for three years and three months of solitary retreat.