Jianfu Palace sits just inside the main entrance gate, the first temple complex visitors encounter on the standard front-mountain route. Though repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt over fourteen centuries, the current arrangement of two halls and three courtyards follows the proportions of late Qing reconstruction, and the stone carvings on the gate pillars are among the finest on the mountain.
The palace is dedicated to the Taoist deity Li Bing, the engineer who designed and oversaw the construction of the Dujiangyan irrigation system in the third century BC. His deification as a water deity, venerated on a mountain that generates the very rivers his engineering controlled, is a distinctly Sichuan piece of religious logic. The incense burning here is not purely ceremonial — a significant portion of the worshippers are working farmers from the Chengdu plain.