Putuo Mountain: a temple, a stair, and a hill named for a monk

Putuo Mountain rises about 598 metres above the plain west of Changshou town and covers roughly 15 square kilometres, of which some five form the core scenic area. It is listed among the district's scenic places beside Lake Changshou, Tiantai Temple, Nanmuyuan forest park and Lotus Stone, and it has a subdistrict of its own named after it. The ground around it is shallow-hill country at the southern end of the eastern parallel ridge-and-valley belt, with the Mingyue range rising to the west and its highest peak, Wuhua, at 1,010 metres.

Putuo Temple stands at the top of the hill. It was first built in the Northern Song and has been called a Bodhidharma dojo and a true line of the Chan school; it was destroyed and rebuilt repeatedly, and the present buildings went up in October 2014. The site covers more than sixty mu and the timber halls about 4,500 square metres, from the gate and the Hall of Heavenly Kings through the bell and drum towers to the main hall and the scripture library. Between the mountain gate and the hall of the ancient forefather runs a stair of 1,789 steps, the Wanshou stair.

The Changshou county gazetteer explains the name in one line: the hill is called Putuo because the Chan patriarch Bodhidharma came here to preach. The same gazetteer explains the county. A quotation in the Shu zhong guang ji records that a Changshou Mountain stood over the place and its people lived long, and that the Yuan-period ruler Ming Yuzhen named the county after it. The temple's own treasures are listed too: a bodhi tree from Sri Lanka, a Buddhist manuscript in palm leaves, relics of the Buddha, 108 carved wooden statues, and a six-metre, six-tonne image of Bodhidharma in sunken nanmu wood.