Fengdu Ghost City
A temple complex on the Yangtze dedicated to the entire Chinese underworld — not one haunted house but a whole city of the dead, with a Gate of Hell, a Last-Glance-to-Home tower and judges who weigh every soul. Nearly 2,000 years of legend in stone.
Case File No. 102
FILE 01 The Legend
In the Eastern Han dynasty two cultivators, Yin Changsheng and Wang Fangping, practised on Mingshan. Folklore fused their surnames into 'Yinwang' — the King of the Underworld — and by the Song dynasty the mountain had been identified with the mythical Mount Luofeng, capital of the dead. Pilgrims walked a fixed route of terror: cross Naihe Bridge, pass the Ghost-Torturing Pass where Yanluo Wang judges you, stand one-legged on the test stone before Tianzi Palace, the oldest hall, about 300 years old. The giant rock-cut face of Yama glares over the slope.
FILE 02 The Sightings Log
Yangtze cruise passengers disembark for the descent through hell; night tours add costumed ghosts and holograms. Locals once tested customers at temple fairs — coins floated for humans, sank for ghosts. After the Three Gorges Dam raised the river, the site was cut off from the rebuilt county town, deepening its otherworldly isolation.
FILE 03 The Skeptic’s File
Fengdu's own officials have said flatly: 'I don't understand ghost culture. I don't believe in ghost culture. I won't discuss ghost culture.' Folklorists documented the manufacturing: the gate couplet attributing a Li Bai verse to the mountain was doctored — the original reads 'sunk soul in northern Luofeng', a mythical realm, and Li Bai never visited. Exposed by Liang Congjie in 1993, the inscription was quietly de-attributed. As local guides admit, Fengdu people don't believe in ghosts; they market them.