三元宫

This guide to Sanyuan Temple in Guangzhou opens in 1903, with the abbot Liang Zongqi signing away six hundred mu of temple farmland to fund a new secular school. It rewinds to the year 319, when the official Bao Jing built this hillside compound for his daughter Bao Gu, who studied Daoist medicine and became known for treating patients with moxibustion. Local scholars and merchants kept adding fields to the temple's holdings for centuries afterward, quietly turning a family shrine into a landlord. Look for the red-stemmed mugwort still growing on the hill as you walk the courtyard.