Pǔtuó Shān

Mount Putuo is a small island in the Zhoushan archipelago off Ningbo in Zhejiang, its name taken from Potalaka, the sacred mountain of Avalokitesvara in Indian scripture; Chinese Buddhism regards it as the bodhimanda of Guanyin. Its cult began in 916, when the Japanese monk Hui'e, bearing a Guanyin image from Mount Wutai, was driven back by storms and left the statue with an islander surnamed Zhang; the shrine became the Temple of the Unwilling Guanyin.

In 1080 Emperor Shenzong of the Song refounded it as the Baotuo Guanyin Temple. Ming coastal evacuations twice emptied the island, with temples burned in 1386 under Tang He and again in 1553; monks returned from the 1570s.

The three great monasteries of Puji, Fayu founded in 1580 and Huiji founded in 1793 arose here, making Putuo one of Chinese Buddhism's four sacred mountains.