The hill of temples that named a county
Fengdu's underworld is a real hill with real halls, built out of two hermits, a misread character and a river that keeps stopping.
Fengdu County stands on the north bank of the Yangtze about 170 kilometres downstream of Chongqing. A county was carved out here in 90 AD as Pingdu, with its seat against Pingdu Mountain, which is Ming Mountain; the name became Fengdu in 618, was written with a different character from 1380, and was changed back in 1958. The hill carries the Ghost City, a complex of halls and shrines laid out as the capital of the underworld, which appears in Journey to the West and Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. The old county seat in Mingshan Subdistrict drowned, and the seat moved to Sanhe Subdistrict.
Fengdu's underworld is a real hill with real halls, built out of two hermits, a misread character and a river that keeps stopping.