Speaking of the stories of the Red Snail Temple (Chinese: 红螺寺; Hong Luo Si), we cannot forgot the founder of it----Fotucheng (Chinese: 佛图澄), who was quite mysterious when he was alive. According to an important book named Biographies of the Senior Monks, this monk specialized in spells and curses and fully understood Buddhist sutras and could tell you the past and predict the future.

In the Western Jin Dynasty, he came to northern China to search for the roots of Buddhism but found nothing in the end after 20 years traveling in this area. Later he followed the armies of that time and came to Today’s Huirou District, realizing the shapes of the mountains here looked like the stretching wings of the sacred bird condor found in the legend of Buddhist’s classics. After finding the auspicious image of Buddhism, he finally decided to build a temple to spread Buddhist culture. The temple was named Daming Temple, namely today’s Red Snail Temple.

But why was its name changed to Red Snail Temple?

This name was the commonly known name of Hu Guo Zi Fu Chan Si (护国资福禅寺) but originated from a folk tale, which has several editions. But these editions have one thing in common: two of the Jade Emperor’s daughters came to the temple and transfigured into two giant red snails nesting in the Red Snail Lake.