Gude Temple 古德寺

About Gude Temple

Gude Temple (古德寺) is a Buddhist temple at No. 74 Shanghuapo Road (上滑坡路) off Huangpu Road (黄浦路) in Hankou (汉口), in Wuhan's Jiang'an District (江岸区). The Wuhan Municipal Archives Bureau counts it with Guiyuan (归元寺), Baotong (宝通寺) and Lianxi (莲溪寺) temples among the city's four great Buddhist monasteries.

In 1877 a wandering monk named Longxi (隆希) built a small temple called Gude Maopeng (古德茅蓬) on what was then empty sloping ground. The name draws on a phrase meaning a mind that loves the old ways and saves all beings through virtue. After the Wuchang Uprising (武昌起义) of 1911, the temple lay on the first battlefield of the 41-day Battle of Yangxia (阳夏战役); the monk Changhong (昌宏) led the monks in caring for wounded revolutionary soldiers, and more than 3,000 of the dead were buried beside it. Sun Yat-sen (孙中山) came in April 1912 to honour those graves. In 1914 Li Yuanhong (黎元洪), then vice president of the Republic, renamed it Gude Temple and wrote the name on a vertical plaque, an honour the archives bureau says had been reserved for imperial temples.

A large rebuilding began in autumn 1921; the 1931 Hankou flood submerged the site, and work finished in 1934, leaving a complex of more than 20,000 square metres. The surviving Yuantong Hall (圆通宝殿) dates from that phase. It is a square, reinforced-concrete hall 16 metres high inside, its roof set with nine stupas for five Buddhas and four bodhisattvas, ringed by 96 lotus piers and figures of the 24 devas; the stupas are topped with crosses like those of a Christian church. The entrance echoes Ananda Temple (阿难陀寺) in Myanmar, with wave-shaped double lintels on octagonal columns, while the round window and pointed lancet windows are Gothic details. The archives bureau notes that the designer is unknown because no drawings survive.

India's prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru visited on 19 October 1954. Closed in the Cultural Revolution, the temple lost its images, and from 1974 the Wuhan Camera Factory (武汉照相机厂) used its halls as workshops. The city returned more than 5,100 square metres of land in 1996. Gude Temple became a city-protected site in 1959, a Hubei provincial one in 1993 and in 2013 a national key cultural relics protection unit (全国重点文物保护单位), in the seventh batch.

What to look for

• Yuantong Hall (圆通宝殿), the 1921-1934 main hall modelled on Myanmar's Ananda Temple, with Gothic windows
• The roof's nine stupas, 96 lotus piers and figures of the 24 devas
• Carvings of lion heads, garudas, elephants and peacocks on the hall's walls
• Statues of Shakyamuni, the Medicine Buddha and Maitreya in the main hall, with the Three Sages of the West behind them
• The Hall of Heavenly Kings (天王殿) and the small garden courtyard behind it
• The west-facing layout, entered through the mountain gate

Location & getting there

Getting to Gude Temple

• Search for 古德寺 with 武汉市 and 江岸区.