Chimpu Hermitage Official Route 青朴修行地正规开放路线

About Chimpu Hermitage Official Route

The county government's description places the Qingpu gully scenic area about 40 kilometres from Zedang, which it calls the political, economic and cultural centre of Shannan, and roughly an hour's drive from it. It explains the name in two parts: 青 for the Qing clan that held the ground at the time, and 朴 for the upper part of a mountain gully. The county reports a tradition of 108 meditation caves, 108 springs and 108 sky-burial sites, along with a tall white stupa and a large quantity of cliff carvings, and it records the saying that to reach Samye without going on to Qingpu is as good as not having reached Samye at all. On the approach, the county's own wording is that Qingpu sits on a hillside but involves no hard climbing, the narrow winding track being a gentle slope rather than a steep one; it adds that on horseback the journey takes a little over two hours.

The 108 meditation caves are attributed to Padmasambhava (莲花生), Shantarakshita (寂护), Trisong Detsen (赤松德赞) and Vairotsana (白若扎那), named as historical figures of the Tubo period, and to devout followers of later generations. The county states that age has buried or destroyed most of them and that more than forty survive. It also records a large body of cliff-carved images made by Longchen Rabjampa (隆钦饶绛巴, 1308-1363) and others — a lama of the Red sect (红教) of the early fourteenth century — together with his reliquary stupa and the stone stele set up for the stupa's construction, and says these remain basically well preserved.

A 2010 China Ethnic News account carried by the Shannan municipal news portal deals with Wenzha Monastery (温扎寺), whose full name it gives as 温扎那热祖拉康, glossing 拉康 as the Tibetan for a shrine and 祖拉康 as the term reserved for larger, fully equipped ones. That account says the historical Qingpu temple was one of five temples built to house Buddhist scriptures and is the predecessor of today's Wenzha; that historical records give the former monastery more than 600 square metres and a three-storey hall; that its last remains were levelled during the Cultural Revolution; and that the surviving single-storey hall has been restored in stages since 1989. It adds that Wenzha had already been a nunnery by the early twentieth century or before, was restored on the old pattern in 1995, and at the time of writing housed more than 200 practitioners living on tsampa, butter and spring water. No cited source designates an 'officially open route' at Qingpu, or states which of its structures visitors may enter.

What to look for

• The surviving meditation caves — the county states that more than forty of the traditional 108 remain
• The cliff-carved images attributed to Longchen Rabjampa (1308-1363) and his circle, with his reliquary stupa and the stele erected for it
• Wenzha Monastery (温扎寺), a nunnery restored on its old pattern in 1995, whose single-storey hall replaced a three-storey predecessor levelled during the Cultural Revolution
• The tall white stupa and the gully landscape closed by mountains on three sides, which the county gives as the setting of the scenic area

Location & getting there

Getting to Chimpu Hermitage Official Route

Check which interiors and courtyards are accessible. Active places of worship and protected monuments may have different visitor rules.

• Search for 青朴修行地正规开放路线 with 山南市 and 扎囊县.