Qingyang Palace (Green Ram Temple)

Qingyang Palace, also known as the Green Ram Temple, stands on Section 2 of the West First Ring Road in Qingyang District, the district that takes its name from the temple. Taoist tradition holds that Laozi arranged to meet a disciple at this spot in the form of a green ram, and a temple has occupied the site since at least the Tang dynasty, with the earliest structures dated to around the 7th-8th century. The complex was destroyed during the Ming-Qing dynastic transition in the mid-17th century and rebuilt under the Qing Kangxi Emperor between 1667 and 1697, which is the layout and architecture visitors see today. The temple is arranged along a north-south axis through a series of halls of increasing height, culminating in the octagonal Bagua Pavilion (Eight Trigrams Pavilion), completed in 1697, whose copper-tiled roof and eight-sided plan represent the Taoist cosmological diagram. The Hunyuan Hall houses two bronze goat statues that give the temple its popular name, cast in the Qing dynasty, and worshippers traditionally touch the statues for good fortune. The grounds also preserve a Qing dynasty woodblock library that once held printing blocks for the Taoist canon, and a bonsai garden reflecting Sichuan penjing traditions. As a functioning Taoist monastery rather than a static museum, the site continues to host ordained priests, daily rituals, and the Chengdu Flower Fair held on the temple grounds each Lunar New Year, a tradition recorded since the Tang dynasty. Restoration work has been ongoing since the 1990s to maintain the Qing-era timber halls.