Puning Temple and the Wooden Bodhisattva of Chengde

The Great Vehicle Pavilion stands at the top of the slope, and its roof is the first thing that has to be counted. Five roofs gather to a point. On the south side six eaves step forward, the second of them a false eave; east and west have five each. Yellow glazed tiles cover them. At the top, four small square pavilions with gilded bronze finials sit at the corners of the fifth level, and a larger one rises at the centre of the sixth, so that the roof ends in five points rather than one. On the east and west walls, Tibetan trapezoid blind windows are set into the plaster.

The pavilion is hollow for three storeys, with galleries running around the void, and the walls are covered with niches for small figures. There are 10,094 of them, and the gilded clay images they once held have been replaced by 10,078 copies. The figure they surround stands on a lotus in the centre: Avalokiteshvara with a thousand eyes and a thousand arms.

It is carved from five woods, pine, cypress, elm, linden and fir, then lacquered and gilded. Its weight is 110 tonnes. Forty-odd arms spring from its back, each with an eye in the palm and a ritual object in the hand, and the main pair is held together at the chest. The crown is openwork, with a seated Buddha at the front; above the head sits a smaller figure of the Buddha of Limitless Light. Two attendants, 15.6 metres tall, flank it.

The temple was begun in 1755, the twentieth year of the Qianlong reign, and completed in 1759. In those years Qing armies campaigned in the north-west against the Dzungars, who followed Tibetan Buddhism. After the defeat of their leader Dawachi, the emperor held a ceremony at the Chengde resort to confer titles on the nobles of the four Oirat groups.

The temple was built to hold that settlement in stone and timber. Its name comes from a phrase in the founding inscription: that the peoples of the frontier should live at peace in their homes, take pleasure in their work, and enjoy peace for ever. The stele of 1755 stands in the pavilion just inside the gate, inscribed by the emperor himself. Two further steles beside it record the pacification of the Dzungars and the inscription at Ili. All three carry their texts in Manchu, Chinese, Mongol and Tibetan.

The plan is a compromise between two traditions. The front half follows the Chinese monastery layout of seven halls: gate, stele pavilion, Hall of the Heavenly Kings, the Mahavira Hall, with bell and drum towers and side halls flanking the axis. The rear half is a Tibetan mandala, modelled on the Samye monastery in Tibet. The Mahavira Hall has three seated Buddhas, Shakyamuni in the centre, and a ceiling painted with the six-syllable mantra. The whole compound covers 33,000 square metres and holds twenty-nine principal buildings.

Puning is the most complete of the Outer Temples, and it is also the one that is lived in. In June 1985 religious activity was allowed to resume, and it became the only temple in Chengde with resident monks. Lamas were invited from Inner Mongolia and Qinghai, and the reincarnate Hamur Living Buddha became its first abbot after the reopening. A religious affairs committee was formed, daily rites were restored, and one or two large assemblies are held each year.

The temple had been a centre of Tibetan Buddhism north of the passes long before that. The sixth Panchen Lama, travelling from Tibet to congratulate Qianlong on his birthday, came first to Puning to worship, and only then went to the resort to meet the emperor. The Zhangjia and Jebtsundamba lamas, the Buddhist leaders of Inner and Outer Mongolia, lectured to the lamas here after each audience at the summer palace. By the 2000s more than sixty large ceremonies had been held since the reopening, including a three-day assembly in 2005 for the temple's 250th year.

It was listed as a national key cultural relic in 1961, inscribed as part of the World Heritage property in 1994, and in 1999 the wooden figure was entered in the Guinness World Records as the tallest of its kind. The statue has outlasted the empire that commissioned it, the campaign the temple commemorated, and the craftsmen who carved it.