At the intersection, turn left for upmarket rooms, bank and booking office at the Hongzhushan Binguan (tel 08426/525888, fax 525666; ¥150-200), or right for Baoguo Si , a large and busy Song-era temple. Rebuilt and enlarged during the seventeenth century, four main halls rise one behind the other up the slope, decorated with carved doorways which open into courtyards containing bonsai and flower displays. The porcelain Buddha in the Sutra Hall is eye-catching, with its red-lined black garments covered with tiny golden icons, and it's said that the huge Ming-dynasty bell here, encrusted with characters, can be heard 15km away. You can, of course, stay and eat at Baoguo Si itself, or carry on past the temple to the Forestry Hotel, a drab affair with languid staff and fairly basic rooms (dorms up to ¥30, rooms ¥30-75).

If none of these appeal and you want to start up the mountain, there's another road heading off towards the lower paths from near the intersection. Twenty minutes along in a forest of nanmu trees is Fu Hu Si (Taming Tiger Temple), a comfortable place to rest up, with seemingly limitless accommodation on hand. Here you'll find the Huayan Pagoda , fourteen storeys but only 7m tall, cast of bronze in the sixteenth century and engraved with 4700 images of Buddha.

Moving on from Baoguo, minibuses leave from the bus station to drop-off points for Qingyin Ge, Wannian Si and Jinding, but they need at least sixteen people to run and so depart infrequently after the early morning rush. You can also get transport to Chengdu, Chongqing, Ya'an and Leshan either from here or down in Emei town - make bookings for these and the train through the Teddy Bear Café or the pricier Hongzhushan Binguan.