Xia Temple, Tibet's Most Adorable Temple: Pagodas Like Little Mushrooms That Will Melt Your Heart

The pagodas are exquisitely cute, all with pink spires and round white bodies. The larger ones are about three meters square, while the many smaller ones look as if you could cup them in your hands, like little mushrooms. You might mistake this for a children's playground—red umbrellas, white stalks—or a beach resort dotted with parasols.

Behind the Potala Palace we see the Gangmula and Bala mountains. Crossing these, you reach Lhünzhub County of Lhasa, and further north lies the Nyenchen Tanglha Range. Xia Temple is tucked away in the mountain hollow of Danma Hill, in Guoji Village of Qiangga Township, encircled by these peaks, about 90 kilometers from Lhasa.

While acclimatizing to the altitude in Lhasa, I had just the time to visit the legendary Xia Temple in northern Lhünzhub County.

But the driving route there involves a detour, taking about an hour and a bit.

On the hillside, a few old temple buildings are somewhat dilapidated, said to be over 700 years old. The newer structures next to them look like ordinary temple buildings, apparently serving as monks' living quarters. Most of the religious activity areas are scattered among the pagoda zone, all compact in space and miniature in design.

The whole temple complex is enclosed by a simple wall, roughly the size of a football field. The pagodas are arranged irregularly, and the circumambulation path circles the entire area. There's a slope in the center, and in autumn, green trees contrast with the red pagoda tops.

Legend has it that there was originally a temple in Guoji Village. One day, three girls came to worship Buddha there, but with no place to stay overnight, they recited a spell to transform it into a nunnery. In its historical heyday, Xia Temple housed over 100 nuns and built the 108 warm and lovely pagodas we see today.

To commemorate the three worshippers, later generations built three pagodas—I'm not sure if these are those three, but they certainly look the part. As for why it's called Xia Temple, no one knows for certain. Could it be that the three girls came just in summer? ('Xia' means summer in Chinese.)

Stepping onto the pagoda grove path feels like entering a fairy-tale labyrinth. Crisp wind chimes echo among the stupas, and your thoughts wander at every turn. Pick a favorite one for a photo, then you might not know which exit you'll emerge from.

Perhaps because the temple is small in scale, or its location is relatively remote, few tourists ever come here. In Tibetan areas, there are many nunneries and female-centric temples, but a temple as exquisitely cute as this, radiating the gentle glow of human tenderness, might be one of a kind.

Faced with such a warm and adorable temple, don't you feel a sudden impulse to take refuge in Buddhism?