At the foot of the mountains on the edge of Shangri-La stands the Ganden Sumtseling Monastery. It was built at the behest of the fifth Dalai Lama in 1679 through a process of divination and remains the center of the Yellow Hat sect in south-west China, taking its blueprint from the Potala Palace in Tibet. The main temple consists of a prayer hall capable of holding 1,500 monks and two lamaseries the Zhacang and Jikang, surrounded by eight sub-lamaseries. Being geographically close to China proper has greatly influenced its development. The Kangxi Emperor (r.1662-1722) fully patronized its construction and is said to have even been involved with the reincarnation search for the Seventh Dalai Lama. The influence of the Chinese and other local minorities is clear in many of the structures, for example the Zhuo Kangcan, a temple built in the Qing period for monks of the Naxi ethnic group.
At its zenith the monastery housed over 3,000 lamas and nine living Buddhas. It contains a valuable gold-leaf statue of Shakyamuni as well as numerous sculptures, thangkas and scriptures written on palm leaves. In the 1930s the monastery provided full support to communist general He Long, though in 1959 the situation was reversed when it suffered considerable damage by the Red Army and subsequent Cultural Revolution. In 1981 a series of restorations took place to honor an official visit by the tenth Panchen Lama, and since then it has gone from strength to strength. Various sections of the monastery are supported by the surrounding villages, creating a strong sense of community and in 2005 the latest reconstruction project began. While many of the monasteries in Tibet remain shadows of their former selves the Ganden Sumtseling positively glistens and is currently home to around 600 monks.