China Guide
Yunnan
Qiongzhu Si
Opening time: Daily 7am–8pm
Price: ¥15
Address: 10km west of Kunming (charter minibus or 8am tour bus from the Yunnan Arts Theatre on Dongfeng Xi Lu)
Qiongzhu Si, the Bamboo Temple is an essential trip from town thanks to a fantastic array of over-the-top sculptures. The temple, a dignified building with black and red woodwork standing on Yuan-dynasty foundations, has been restored continually through the ages. Late in the nineteenth century, the eminent Sichuanese sculptor Li Guangxiu and his five assistants were engaged to embellish the main halls with five hundred clay statues of arhats. This they accomplished with inspired gusto, spending ten years creating the comical and grotesquely distorted crew of monks, goblins, scribes, emperors and beggars that crowd the interior – some sit rapt with holy contemplation, others smirk, roar with hysterical mirth or snarl grimly as they ride a foaming sea alive with sea monsters. Unfortunately it all proved too absurd for Li's conservative contemporaries and this was his final commission. A fourteenth-century stone tablet in the main hall records dealings between imperial China and Yunnan in Mongolian and Chinese script, while a good vegetarian restaurant is open at lunchtime.