Fengdu, the City of Ghosts, is unusual among underworld realms in this atlas for having a real, physical counterpart: a town in Chongqing municipality, Sichuan, which became identified over centuries of Daoist and folk religious elaboration as the earthly gateway to, and administrative seat of, the Chinese underworld, complete with temples, statuary and processional routes built to represent the underworld's courts, bridges and torments as walkable physical space.
The association is traditionally traced to two Han dynasty figures whose names, when combined, were popularly misread as a single deity called Yinwang, "king of the underworld", an origin story folklorists cite as a good example of how a religious tradition can develop from a linguistic or textual accident rather than a planned theological decision, subsequently elaborated with an extensive supporting mythology and temple complex over many later centuries. Fengdu's temple complex, with its recreated bridges, courts and punishment tableaux meant to be physically walked through by pilgrims and visitors, made it a functioning pilgrimage site where Chinese folk religion's abstract underworld bureaucracy became something visitors could literally enter and pass through before returning to ordinary life.