Discover Inner Mongolia
Dazhao Temple
大召寺
Hohhot's biggest and best-known Tibetan Buddhist monastery, founded in 1580 under Altan Khan, with a silver Sakyamuni figure at its heart. It is the clearest single place to see how Mongol rule and Tibetan Buddhism fused, and the lanes around it are the old city's most walkable quarter.
The story
What makes this place special
Dazhao, also called Wuliang Temple and the Silver Buddha Temple, is a Gelug Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Yuquan District, Hohhot, and the oldest major building in the city. Altan Khan of the Tumed Mongols began it around 1579 after meeting the third Dalai Lama in 1578, and it was finished in 1580; the Dalai Lama later consecrated its silver Buddha. It survived the fire that destroyed much of Guihua city in 1632, was expanded by the Qing in 1640, and in 1697 was granted yellow roof tiles as a mark of imperial favour. It was used as a factory during the Cultural Revolution, returned to the monks and reopened in 1980, and listed as a national key cultural relic in 2006.
What you’ll discover
A seven-hall complex on a south-facing axis in the old Mongol quarter. The Great Hall is the one that matters: a building that mixes Tibetan and Chinese form, holding the silver Buddha, pillars carved with dragons, and Ming-period murals, which are together treated locally as the temple's three treasures. Behind and beside it are a jade Buddha hall and the Nei Qiong shrine with protector-deity murals. The complex is in daily use by monks, with the annual Buddha-sunning and the Ba Ling ritual to drive away misfortune as its set-piece events.
A little local insight
Good to know before you go
- Look up, not at the altar. The Ming murals on the side walls and the carved pillars are the genuinely old fabric here, and the silver Buddha, remarkable as it is, is the only thing most visitors photograph.
- Go in the morning for the monks' chanting. By mid-afternoon it is a visitor site; before about 10:00 it is a monastery.
- The lanes immediately around it, rebuilt as a tourist street, are modern reconstruction. Dazhao itself is not, and the distinction is not signposted.
- Dazhao and Xilitu Zhao are five minutes apart on foot and are much better seen in one visit than on separate days; the Great Mosque is another ten minutes north.
- Hohhot's temple halls are dark and photography rules vary by hall. Ask at the door rather than assuming, and never photograph protector chapels without permission.
When to come
Morning, for chanting and for light into the halls. May to September for comfortable weather; the Buddha-sunning festival and the Ba Ling ritual, both on the lunar calendar, are the days the temple is at its most alive and most crowded.
Getting around
Fair. The site is flat and the courtyards are level paving reachable without steps from the entrance, so a wheelchair can move around the complex. Each hall is entered up two or three steps and over a raised sill with no ramp, so interiors need assistance. A bad knee will have no real difficulty.
Worth knowing before you go
Combine it with Xilitu Zhao, five minutes' walk east - the two monasteries face each other across the old city and one ticket does not cover both.
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