Dongyue Temple

The Dongyue Temple on Chaoyangmen Street is Beijing's most important Daoist temple - founded in 1319 under the Mongol Yuan dynasty by the cleric Zhang Liusun and belonging to the Zhengyi school of Daoism. The temple is famous for its seven courtyards containing 76 "departments" - small shrines each dedicated to one branch of the celestial bureaucracy: Department of Weather, Department of Plagues, Department of Death on the Road, even one for runaway ghosts. Each department holds life-size painted clay figures of the responsible officials, earning the temple the popular nickname "Court of Hell." Today the complex also houses the Beijing Folklore Museum and ranks among the city's strangest religious sites - the figure groupings are by turns macabre and comic.