China · Chongqing Shi · Chongqing
Fengdu County, Chongqing — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Fengdu County (丰都县) is a riverside county of Chongqing, known for the Fengdu Ghost City temples on Ming Mountain above the Yangtze River.
About Fengdu County
Where to stay in Fengdu County
The right area depends on your trip — here's what each neighbourhood is best for.
Beds gather by the water. Fengdu County stretches along both banks of the Yangtze River, and most visitors arrive by cruise, so where you sleep depends on whether you want the temples or the modern town at your door. The rebuilt county seat sits on higher ground on the south bank, close to the ferry pier and the everyday streets that serve the surrounding hills.
Across the water, the north-bank slopes climb toward Ming Mountain, where the Fengdu Ghost City complex draws the day crowds off the river. Pick your bank. Stay on the south side for shops and transport into Chongqing, or take a river-facing room to be first onto Ming Mountain when the gates open.
About Fengdu County
What are the main landmarks in Fengdu County?
One name draws every boat here. The Fengdu Ghost City climbs Ming Mountain in tiers of shrines, gates and halls built around the afterlife of Chinese folk belief, its painted figures of judges and underworld kings staring down each stone stairway. Ming Mountain itself rises straight from the north bank, a green temple hill that has carried pilgrims and legends for centuries above the water.
Below it runs the Yangtze River, the artery that brings the cruise boats and frames every view from the county's slopes. The wider reach of Fengdu County spreads back into farmed hills and river gorges, but the temples on the mountain remain the reason the world knows its name.
What is the history of Fengdu County?
The county's fame began with a legend. Folklore held that two hermits who cultivated the Dao on Ming Mountain gave their surnames to a phrase read as the King of the Underworld, and over the centuries the temples of the Fengdu Ghost City grew on that slope into a whole imagined capital of the dead. For generations the old county town stood on the river flat below, its streets tied to the traffic of the Yangtze River.
Then the water rose. When the Three Gorges Dam filled its reservoir, the flooding cut the old seat off from the temples, and Fengdu County was rebuilt on higher ground on the south bank facing Ming Mountain.
Where is Fengdu County?
Fengdu County lies along a bend of the Yangtze River downstream of Chongqing, its subtropical hills split by the water into the temple slope of Ming Mountain on the north bank and the rebuilt town on the south.
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Updated July 2026