Luohan Temple stands in the Yuzhong peninsula a few minutes from the Jiefangbei monument, in the middle of Chongqing's densest commercial district, and the setting is part of what makes it memorable: a compact courtyard temple pressed against apartment towers and shopping malls, with incense smoke rising between the high-rises. It was founded in the Song dynasty and has been rebuilt many times, most recently after the war years, and it remains an active Buddhist temple with a resident community of monks.
The halls and the arhats
The complex is arranged along a central axis in the usual way, with a gate hall, a hall of heavenly kings, a main hall and, at the rear, the hall that gives the temple its reputation: a large room containing five hundred arhats, the enlightened disciples of the Buddha, each carved as an individual figure. The arhats are the point of the visit. They are modelled and painted in clay, in a dense set that fills the hall on tiers, and each has its own face, posture, attribute and expression - some calm, some furious, some comic, one notable figure with a long eyebrow, and a great deal of incidental detail in what they hold and wear. Devotional practice in Chinese Buddhism includes finding the arhat that corresponds to one's year of birth and making an offering to it, which is what most of the visitors are doing.
The old city around it
The temple is the last substantial historic building in a district that has been almost entirely rebuilt, and it functions as a quiet point in a very loud part of the city. Around it the lanes of the old commercial quarter have been replaced by shopping streets, though a few fragments of the earlier town survive in the side streets, and the walk down towards the river passes some of the steep stairways and layered streets that define Chongqing. The Jiefangbei monument, the Liberation Monument, is within a few minutes' walk, as is the riverside at Chaotianmen.
Practical notes
The temple is open daily from early morning to late afternoon and charges a modest admission. As an active religious site it asks for quiet and modest dress, and photography inside the halls is restricted; ask before taking pictures of worshippers. Allow about an hour. The location means it is easily combined with the rest of central Yuzhong, and it is a short walk from several subway stations. The busiest times are the first and fifteenth days of the lunar month and the Lunar New Year period, when the temple is full of local worshippers rather than visitors.
