The arhat hall behind the shops

The temple was founded in the Northern Song Zhiping years, between 1064 and 1067, because of a cave of arhats in the rock, and was first called Zhiping Temple after the reign name. In 1752 the front hall collapsed and was rebuilt as a shrine to the dragon god. In 1885 the abbot Longfa repaired the compound, built an arhat hall on the model of Baoguang Temple at Xindu and added 500 clay arhats, and the temple took the name it still uses. It is a national key Buddhist temple in the Han Chinese area.

The temple burned in one of the air raids on the city, and only the gate and the Thousand Buddha Rock survived; by 1947 the main hall, the library and the arhat hall had been rebuilt. The 500 arhats were smashed in 1966. The temple reopened in 1984, when the municipality paid for the images to be made again, and the arhat hall was built in 1986 with 524 clay figures. The cliff beside it carries more than 400 Buddha figures over a length of 20 metres, cut in the Song dynasty, in a style close to the carvings at Dazu.

Minzu Road runs through the densest part of the peninsula, and the temple sits inside the shopping district rather than away from it. Ning Hao filmed his 2006 comedy Crazy Stone here, and the courtyards, with a Ming bronze of the Three Sages of the West and a Burmese jade Buddha, are a few steps from the Jiefangbei towers. The library holds Chinese, Sanskrit and Tibetan texts and Tang and Ming paintings and calligraphy. Worshippers still count the 524 arhats and drop coins beside them, a practice the temple has kept through every rebuilding.